Seven weeks in Majuro, capital atoll of the Marshall Islands. We came here for a week en route to Micronesia, but boat repairs and a crew change have slowed us up and allowed me to get mixed up in the community. Every week or so I sit down and blog about this place, polemic as ever, but before it is finished I observe or am shown something from an angle that alters my understanding, just like I imagine the queen does as she sits and looks at the light hit the diamond on her crown each night in between Coronation Street and bed, and I have to start again. But we will leave soon, it is now or
never...
Humans first arrived here around 1500BC on canoes, probably from Taiwan. They developed their mastery of canoe building and navigation, created the objects needed for their daily and ritual lives from coral, coconut and pandanus trees, and shark bones, and listened to Pink Floyd. Then the Europeans came. First as explorers, then whalers, then missionaries, then soldiers and diplomats, then businessmen, then tourists, then teachers/NGO wonks (who are also often missionaries), and last but by no means least, Richard 'coralbleachedheart' Branson, the `ocean elder` and 'environmental
figurehead' who owns both an airline and a space tourism company and uses the billions he pledged to spend on reducing carbon emissions writing off his tax bill. One of his private islands is here, and if we happen on it i am going to climb a coconut tree and stay there until he walks underneath it.
While this is a narrative familiar to islands across the pacific, the Marshallese have been, and continue to be, struck by the blunt end of `civilisation` more than most. Colonised first by Germany in the 1880s, then Japan between the
world wars, the Marshalls were the focus of numerous brutal battles between North America and Japan during WWII. They were then taken as a 'protectorate' of the USA until independence in 1979. This protection came in the form of 67 US nuclear tests until 1959, and ongoing Intercontinental Ballisic Missile tests. Three islands are still uninhabitable due to radiation in the soil. A few hours before one test the wind changed, meaning tons of mashed up radioactive coral would fall on the island of Rongelap and it`s 1600 inhabitants. The american government know about this and went ahead anyway. Thyroid cancer and miscarriage/birth defect rates spiked. The residents were evacuated but, incredibly, were resettled there a few years later and told it was safe, allowing the US to secretly study the long term effects of eating irradiated food. They were treated as nothing more than lab rats. Indeed, they were described as uncivilised but `more like us than mice`
at the Atomic Energy Commission.
In the years that followed, the US tried to make amends in the only way it knew how: by piling in money and aid. It wanted to give locals a taste of the
American Dream, and the main island has gone from subsistance living to
post-industrial capital city in 80 years. A single lifetime. Compare
this to the 500 years of development in europe.
So
And what do we find? 30,000 people on an atoll island that is at no point
more than 600 metres in width and three metres in height. 60 million in
US Aid each year (two thirds of the country`s GDP). A strict social
heirachy, with a handful of 'royal' and historically powerful families
owning literally all the land and making up most of the government and business
elite. Extreme and not very well hidden government corruption. Public
schools with no board rubbers or running water. One in five babies born
to a teenage mothers (highest rate in the pacific, about 5 times that of
the UK) One of the highest diabetes rates in the world. A massive
suicide problem - in the 1980s, the suicide rate among men aged 19-30
was 20 times higher than in the USA. An annual migration of 4% of the
population to the USA. 40 purse seiners (tuna fishing boats) and tuna
cargo boats in the harbour, part of a pacific tuna fleet that catches
40% of the world's tuna - 300,000 tons , 2 billion dollar annual profits. Cargo
ships that bring in everything an expat could ever want, from hummers to
hummus to ... humburgers ... all for sale in US dollars in US style
supermarkets. A massive drought that sees public water turned on only
three times a week for 4 hours. One coconut oil factory. Three jehovah's
witnesses temples. Young Mormons with southern accents riding bikes in
28 degree heat in startched white shirts and ties. Weekly bingo. Merl
Haggard's old guitar player riffing out on a yacht next door to us. If
there was ever a microcosm to show how fast-tracked capitalism affects a
society, it is here.
The people - ex-pats and locals both - are of course totally fantastic, but walking around at any time of the day or night you see people, especially young men, sitting around doing absolutely nothing. Not even smoking. Bored and laconic. There are few jobs, and many of the things that gave
Marshallese men a sense of purpose are no longer available to them. The
island is living on imported food, imported values, imported religions.
Americans run most of the NGOs and teach at the high schools and college.
Affluent Marshallese live in Hawaii or Oregan on rent collected from
shanty town plots of land back home. Poor Marshallese save up for the
1500 dollar flight to Arkansas to work in `chicken processing plants`,
or join the US army; paid to kill humans instead of chickens.
Not many options.
It could be argued that all societies are like this in part, and that it is the microscopic size of this society that bring these issues into such stark relief. But in my opinion it is more than that. At the heart of the matter is a lack of agency - the ability to make choices and define ones own destiny. The best analogy I can come up with, and it is not a nice one, is that of the wife of a violent man. He performs acts of violence (nuclear testing, concealing truth, denying soveriegnty, emptying the seas of fish), then showers gifts on her in apology, but these gifts are chosen in the image the abuser, and tie her to him, unnourished, and rob her of her ability to assert her own identity. She
becomes a market into which he can dump his own high-fructose corn ego
excrement.
Fishing is a great example. The Americans (and others) pay a pittance for fishing rights in Marshallese waters, take so many fish that the locals can no longer catch any using their traditional methods, then sell the fish back to them in cans. Fisherman from the outer islands move here to look for alternative work, some ending up working for 2 dollars an hour in the fish processing plant, others dependent on handouts. No pride in work, no mastery of traditional skills This in turn leads to addiction and family breakdown. Over time the local fishing knowledge is lost, and people become even more dependent on their benefactor.
Meanwhile the lights of the huge purse seiners and cargo ships create a cityscape out in the lagoon, my last view before sleep each night. You
can tell a purse seiner by it`s reconnaissance helicopter and the (not
so) mini fishing boats that hang at the stern. These are launched at sea to drag a net in a big circle – up to five miles in diameter – around the main boat, bringing in everything that happens to be in the sea at that time into the mothership, which then comes back to Majuro where the fish are hoisted onto cargo boats and then on to markets in asia and beyond. I spoke to a russian sailor who said that a cargo ship needs a load of 1000 tons of tuna to break even and sometimes wait four or five months to fill its hold. The
philippino, chinese, burmese, vietnamese sailers hang out at wifi
hotspots, creaseless t-shirts and three quarter length shorts, absorbed
in their 7 inch samsungs or smoking cigarettes, surrounded by boxes of
ramen noodles to take back to their boats. I imagined heavy drinking,
pasty, tattooed russians selling heroin and debasing the local female
population, but if that is here (and it may well be), it is not apparent.
But take a boat 20 minutes out of town and across the lagoon, and all this is forgotten. Here more than anywhere we have been, our idea of `tropical paradise` can be photographed, climbed up, swam in (those underwater photos taken by emma). The sand a thousand pale yellows.
Reef fish almost camp in their vivid blues and yellows. Smoke from the
coconut husk fires shining white in the shifting light that streams
through the palm leaves. One night the moon rose full, tiptoeing above the
palms and illuminating the reef 10 metres below the waterline, fish as
shocks of silver above ghostly coral. We donned snorkels and wiggled
around underwater, waiting for mermaids.
Education
Laura and I have been continuing our penpal project, writing songs and
letters with two schools here, one public, one private, the gap in
musicality minimal, the gap in learning vast. It reminded me that it is
in the institution of the school that a child is told what is expected
of him/her in life, and by extension their worth. Music is the great
leveller - everyone can make it, it is non-competitive, it can be used
to develop other skills (in this case language and literacy), and it
makes people feel good about themselves. Here is the Co-op school song,
written and rehearsed in three workshops. Even though the lyrics are
simple, they sum up very succinctly the reasons why locals love it here,
and stay (and what is missing for them in the US):
I also had a great time working with the Assumption school Jazz band. The
amazing music teacher there, Ashleigh, has built a music department out
of nothing in just two years, with the Jazz band just a term old, and I
tried out some approaches to improvisation from Victor Wooton`s book
`the Music Lesson`. The students were naturals.
I also met college teacher Nina, and ended up facilitating a handful of
Sociology and Psychology classes at the College of the Marshall Islands.
I have never studied these two subjects, but the psychology class was
looking at `Educational Psychology`, so I developed a session looking at
(and, of course, trying out) approaches to learning and group dynamics
in informal music education. The sociology students were examining
`Cultural Hegemony`, something I had to look up. Early in our stay, at a
yoga class, I met and made friends with Lala (yoga classes - the
place where everyone is the best version of themselves, so if you have
any chance of liking them, you are going to like them then). A
Marshallese native, she had spent her formative years in the USA before
moving back with her new husband, having a child and starting a
business. She was just about to join her husband and child back in the
states when her grandfather, a clan leader on an outer island, had died.
In his will he left her two things - an island (not a big one, but an
island nonetheless), and a thirteen year old girl whose mother was
unable to take care of her, and who he had been bringing up since she
was young. He wanted Lala to adopt her, and pluck her from her life in an
extremely remote island community to.... Scottsdale, Arizona. Lala had
agreed.
The teacher in me wanted to go right away to her atoll and let
her know that american kids might act tough but are actually products of
a society that has made them insecure consumers, and not to worry if
they seemed completely bonkers. But flights to her island are once a
week and 200 dollars, and the prevailing wind meant it would be
difficult for Karaka to back. So instead, I used the sociology classes
(and then, when I got invited back, the psychology classes too) to
discuss with the CMI students - aged 18 to 30, some of whom had been to
or lived in america - the realities, decisions, threats and
opportunities that this young woman was going to face when she entered
her new life. The most interesting discussion was about integration
versus retaining culture, the example being whether or not she should
wear hotpants (Marshallese culture traditionally isn`t fond of
hotpants). The students felt a loss of culture wasn`t inevitable, but
that she shouldn`t hold her own culture as sacrosanct. Then we summed up
the general conclusion in song form, ready to send to her. Killer.
An in between the classes and the socio-cultural hand wringing I have been doing my best to fill the days with fun and adventure. I found a nice selection of musicians who let me play with them - country music with the Bilge Water Band, a Romanian fiddler, a very hairy , well-wisdomed irish singer (they tend to be...). The only low point was an absolutely horrendous karaoke duet rendition of `you`re the one that i want` from Grease (she was quite good, which made me seem even worse), reminding me once again to never be talked into doing karaoke. We visited the coconut oil factory and spent many evenings driving to moonlit beaches listening to the Notorious BIG and making badass gestures with our arms. After 7 weeks of almost daily yoga and meditation my mind is light and I feel like there is a column of air around my spine. Have also become much more sensitive to how my body reacts to what i put in it - caffeine,food, tequila, sleep - but have yet to listen to these sensations fully.
Tomorrow we leave for the outer islands; back into the wild. It will be good, but then round here everywhere is...
No comments:
Post a Comment