Yay – Sunday! A second trip out to Enemanot on the Cramers' boat. It was just Jeff, Grace and me as Stacy and Oliver were staying back at the hotel and the Wilsons were (probably) landing in Columbus, OH. Last week we'd asked what we can do to help with food or gas but our offer was quickly dismissed – instead, Ken suggested we bring some beer next time. They have the same law here as in MN where you cannot sell/buy alcohol on Sunday so we'd picked up a couple 12-packs of Bud and Bud Light (ugh – but that's what they were drinking) and one of coke to go with the rum.
We were the first to arrive at the boat again (besides the captain and his crew of 3 local boys) so we loaded our stuff onto the boat and just waited. The boys immediately gestured us over to the end (stern?) of the boat to point out a ray swimming just behind it. It must have been about 3-4 feet across and swam around lazily for a handful of minutes. I would have snapped a picture but I don't think you would have been able to tell it apart from the dark patches of rock and coral on the sandy bottom anyway.
Soon a number of trucks and cars arrived and a dozen plus kids and adults jumped on the boat and we were off to the island. I got a better sense of how the normal flow of the day works after this second trip. By next weekend, I'll be a pro. There are a few people who live on the island with the agreement that they'll keep an eye on things during the rest of the week and will help on Sundays when the Cramers and their guests are there. A few others who arrived earlier in the morning to begin cooking some of the food. A nice Philippino couple (Silvie and her husband) were there at 8:00 am preparing batches of pork adobo from a couple of freshly slaughtered pigs – it was phenomenal!
When the boats arrive, the kids jump off first and head straight for the beach where they grab kayaks or swim out to the floating raft where the high dive board and slide are. The women are next and on the way we grab a few small items to bring to the picnic area. Usually, the women gather in the open-sided, thatched huts and start their gabbing. The men take care of getting all the other things unloaded and put on a big push cart to bring to the picnic/cooking area and then they start setting up with a beer or rum & coke in hand.
Jeff went off with the men to help drink some rum and I, after putting our stuff on one of the big tables in the picnic area, took Grace and decided to introduce myself to Ken's wife, Lani. I also met a few of her girlfriends and cousins and we sat around (in the hut) chatting about various things. Lani has just been appointed to manage the World Heritage program for the RMI. She'll be flying to Paris on Friday to observe and then head out to Japan for a workshop. I'd never heard of World Heritage but Lani says it's a very large, world-wide organization that's dedicated to helping people preserve their cultural identities. I was intrigued! One of her goals while there is to solicit help from other countries (both financial and logistical) to conduct both land and water surveys of the Bikini Atoll. They'd done studies in the early 90's and found so many unexploded ordinance in the waters there that they decided it was safer to leave things be for the time being. She'll also be trying to set up what she called a Peace Museum to promote tourism to the area. We had a long discussion about the nuclear testing that the U.S. conducted in Bikini and the reparations that have been made to the Bikinians. Very interesting to hear from their point of view.
While we were waiting for the food to be done, we were brought a metal tub with a few bottles of wine chilling. Cups were poured and more chatting resumed. At any given time there were 3-4 women in the hut and, in all, maybe 8 or so. We talked about the states as a few of the women had lived there and I got the chance to ask a lot of questions about the Marshallese culture. We also talked a lot about adoption. They were very interested in the process and how long we have to wait both before coming to the islands and once we're here. They were amazed it takes so long to get the U.S. Visa and even that one is required.
They'd wanted to know where the other families were so I explained that Stacy stayed at the hotel to get some rest and that the Wilsons had left the day before. They were all really happy for them as they know they were looking forward to getting home. And when I told them about Tyler being sick the past week and how I'd ticked off the embassy, they immediately jumped in to say they supported what I'd done because, in their opinion, Marshallese healthcare is at best ineffective and, at worst, harmful. One of the women then shared that she was a diabetic and that she'd almost died because the doctors here (mostly Philippino) hadn't been able to diagnose her. This was about 15 years ago when she was 19 or so – she'd lost so much weight she was down to 85 pounds. She's not normally a big person but 85 would have been way too low. I guess they never did a simple glucose test on her as they believed diabetes to be an “old person's disease”. They didn't really know about or consider juvenile (type-1) diabetes until her case. It really makes you wonder what else they don't know.
Grace was awfully cute and the subject of her hair came up more than once! Something I had not known was that many times the Marshallese will cut an infants hair off believing that removing the “baby hair” will cause their regular hair to grow in thicker and healthier. I'm not sure that there's any truth to it but maybe it explains why Emi keeps joking that she's going to cut Grace's hair. She wouldn't, of course, but it is something that crosses the language barrier and we have a little chuckle about.
I also worked on my Marshallese a bit. I told Lani that I couldn't quite get the pronunciation of the Marshallese word for “baby”. It's spelled “nin nin” but the second “n” has more of a “ng” sound – like “king” but without the “ki”. I think I finally have a passable version that would probably be understood if I said it but it's far from perfect. Another funny moment was when one of the women brought by her daughter who was around a year to 18 months old. The mom was talking to Grace and doing this thing I'd seen a lot of women do – hard to explain but it's unmistakable – and then when her little girl did the same thing, I just had to ask what it was. I was told it's similar to peek-a-boo... not really translatable but with the same effect.
After a while, the food had been cooked/grilled and laid out for everyone to eat. The kids pop over when they're hungry and serve themselves... the men too. As I was getting hungrier and wondering about going to get some food, Jeff stopped over to say hi. After meeting the women and saying hello to Grace, he offered to get me a plate of food. Sounded good to me so he went off to do so... and then was heading off into the water to drink some more rum with the other guys. To be fair, he gave me the non-verbal “they want me to go with them into the water near the floating cooler of rum... can I go, huh, please?” kind of look – so I waived him off and he followed the boys. When I mentioned that my food was not forthcoming, Lani said not to worry and they be bringing us food. No sooner had they said so than one of the husbands started bringing plates over. What I hadn't know until later is that Ken had told Jeff not to worry about getting my plate as the women were being taken care of. It was kinda nice just sitting back and being served :)
After eating, the next thing on the agenda was a trip into the water... having Grace, I was not sure I'd stay long but while the women were getting ready to venture in (read: getting more drinks), I waded out to my waist to chat with Jeff and the boys at the floating cooler for a few minutes. After a bit I wandered over to where the women were standing... wine and beers in hand. A few more minutes later and Ken and the boys pushed a kayak over to us – a floating crib for Grace :) The young boys who'd been playing with it weren't all that happy about it being commandeered for alternate uses but there were more kayaks and they just went to get another one. All of us huddled around the kayak and I held on to Grace at the front (bow?). It worked great for probably a half hour and then Grace decided she wanted to head to shore.
Once on shore I struck up a conversation with a woman from the U.S. who was here visiting family. She is somehow related to the Reimers (of the Robert Reimer Hotel) but I've forgotten exactly how. Her god-daughter also lives here and just graduated from High School so she was here to celebrate that. Many years ago she lived on Kwajilan with her husband so they've been involved in the RMI for a long time. Now she's a real estate agent in Honolulu and gave me her contact information should I ever need anything while we're there. Such a nice woman and we had a wonderful talk.
The day seemed to go by very quickly and before we new it, the boat was loading up to go home. In all, we actually spent more time there than the week before... about 7 hours in all. I checked in with Stacy when we returned to make sure all was well and then headed upstairs... too tired for an actual dinner I popped open some Pringles and Jeff grabbed the Cheetos. A day well spent.
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