7-13

Today I had my first really problem with jetlag. I’ve been getting sleepy quite early in the day, but I’ve been able to keep myself up until 9 or 9:30 PM. This morning, however, my body decided it was time to wake up at 3:30AM (which would make it around 9:30AM in Utah). I’m staying with my friend Britt, who is leaving the island to teach in United Arab Emirates this week. It’s been great to have someone to talk to and to have a place to stay. The problem with waking up this early though is that the AC in the bedroom is broken, so you have to leave the door from the front room open. What that means to me right now is that I am sitting in the dark in the front room because I can’t close the door for fear of it getting to hot in the bedroom, and I can’t turn on the light. Hopefully, my typing isn’t too loud.

I’m going to start doing fieldwork again today with two speakers I’ve worked with before. One is a student at BYU Hawaii who is home for a few weeks. The other is my friend Lanny, who was one of the first people to join the LDS church here in the Marshall Isalnds. In the traditional Marshallese caste system, there are 3 classes. From highest to lowest, they are iroij (chiefs), alap (landowners), and ri jerbal (workers). Traditionally the workers give a tribute to the iroij, but it is the job of the iroij to take care of the working class. Lanny is both an iroij and an alap, and he’s also mayor of the outer island of Jaluit. I really enjoy talking with him because I can see that he is really trying to help his island and improve the quality of life of the people there. He is headed to Jaluit in a couple of weeks and invited me to go with him. So I might finally get to visit one of the outer islands. Yeah!

This morning, I also discovered that I think there is sand coming out with the water in the shower. Our building uses rain water rather than city water, so it’s a little more clean in general. There must be sand in the tank or something. I asked Britt about it, and it apparently clogs any shower head that she puts on there, so she has given up and doesn’t have one. I guess this will just be another little quirk about life in Majuro that I’ll have to learn to live with.

Not only did it rain yesterday, but the power went out 2 or 3 times. My apartment building has a generator, but last night I was out doing fieldwork with Lanny when it went out. We were sitting outside of his house, when suddenly the only light coming from anywhere was from my computer screen. I figured it was probably a bad idea to keep working, so instead we all ate dinner by the light of his cell phone. It was a rather fun experience.