7-23

What a marvelous day I’ve had. Instead of studying, my friend/Marshallese consultant Ierutia and I took the morning off and jambo-ed to the other side of the island. Jambo doesn’t have an exact English translation. I guess the closest I can come up with is to go or visit somewhere, usually with the purpose of having fun or visiting people. It’s such a good word; I really wish I could get English speakers to start using it.

I met Ierutia downtown around 9AM, where I picked up a rental, and then we were off. The purpose of our trip was to drive out to a spot just on the other side of the airport, the Peace Park, to look for shells and to go swimming at the jikin tutu by the airport. It was really fun cruising out there in a car, rather than with strangers in a taxi. I turned on my iPod so we had some music, we stopped in Long Island (the town between the airport and the bridge) for donuts, and just had a great time. The Peace Park is both a “park” (people go there to have picnics) and a beachy area. The tide was out, so we walked along the beach and out on the coral trying to find shells for me to give to my nieces. I found some nice ones, but I think my favorite part was Ierutia singing to a little hermit crab, trying to get it to come out of its shell so I could take it home (the shell not the crab). She ended up taking it out by force, and it died, which I still feel bad about.

Afterwards, we drove back towards the airport and stopped at the swimming area. On the ocean side of the island, there is this huge pool of water that is mostly cut off from the ocean, almost as if it were a small lake. So the water is calm, there are no waves, and there is always water for swimming. There was a summer school elementary class having a picnic, and a few of the boys were in the water swimming with us. Across the way, there were also the rusted remnants of WWII trucks.

The funniest part of the morning was also the most painful. When Ierutia and I were swimming near a large rock in the middle of the water, she got stung in the foot by a sea anemone, which is apparently quite painful. I felt so bad for her because we were in the middle of the water, and she had to swim to shore. As it turns out, there is a quick remedy for the pain: someone has to pee on the sting. Once we reached the shore, Ierutia yelled for the boys in the water to swim to shore and help her. So they found an empty water bottle, someone swam it out to them, and the boys all passed it around because apparently when they found out what was happening, they all wanted to help out (so to speak). Since the boys were out on a rock in the middle of the water, when they finished, they took turns swimming the bottle over to shore, holding the bottle up so as to not spill it. In the end, Ierutia’s pain was cured, although she still had to pull the stinger out when she got home.

Ierutia had to do some errands in the afternoon, so I used the car to get groceries, and then decided to head back out to the other side of the island to do some snorkeling. The place I went wasn’t really that good. There weren’t many fish and it was hard to get past the coral reef to get to where it was deep. After I got out of the water, I walked up and down the shore a bit and found a few more shells.

I have the car until tomorrow morning, but I really can’t think what to do with it now. I am downtown in a restaurant, waiting for my food. But I walked down here so I could get some more exercise. The thing about Majuro is that, at night, there really isn’t anywhere to go. The white people (and some of the Marshallese) go out to restaurants; there’s a bowling alley, which seems to be open at very random times; there are a few bars; and that’s about it. Oh, and I forgot about the video stores that rent and sell DVDs that are clearly illegal copies.

My food just came. I ordered the steamed reef fish, and it still has a head, eyes, fins and a skeleton. I’d better go…