Surviving Paradise (21 page)

 

 

 

 

CHRISTMAS WAS COMING, AND ONE ISLANDER CHOSE TO MARK IT IN A
rather Western way: he put red and green lights on his house. I would not be around to see the festivities, however, because all the outer island volunteers were required to return to Majuro for a brief winter break. (It didn't seem quite necessary to mandate this vacation. Would a sailor refuse his shore leave? Would an inmate refuse his parole?) On December 23, I stepped onto the same little plane I had stepped out of four months before. After so much time on this tiny expanse of land, ending with the crucible that was December, it was thrilling beyond words to be anywhere but there.

We sped down the runway and were lifted into the sky. The world changed: the one-dimensional horizon opened into a living map. While the plane followed the perimeter of the atoll, huge expanses of reef passed by below, and their colors were not ones that should exist in the real world. A thousand shades of blue blended into a thousand
shades of white. From the deep colors of the lagoon, the reefs rose to brilliant edges and barely submerged peaks. Every depth and underwater feature gave a different color to the sea. From underwater, coral reefs were the most alien landscapes I had seen on Earth; from the air, they were easily the most beautiful.

The plane landed briefly at Wotho Atoll, home to not much more than a hundred people. The country's first president, now deceased, had stated his intention to retire there, and some said it was the most beautiful atoll in the world. I couldn't vouch for the superlative, but it was lovely without question. Even its inhabited islet looked pristine, with houses barely visible between tropical trees, and a fringing reef hypnotically blue. But none of that mattered. What mattered was that this was the first piece of new land I had seen in four months. The onlookers at the airport shocked me simply because they were not the people I knew on Ujae. For a third of a year, I had seen no unfamiliar people, and now my mind turned the faces of these strangers into the faces of my Marshallese friends. I could not look at any of them without imagining that he or she was someone I knew.

The next stop was one of the country's more surreal spots: Kwajalein Atoll, site of an American military base. In addition to the odd volunteer, another item sometimes uprooted itself from California, flew across the Pacific, and plopped down in this unlikely place: a missile. Five thousand miles away on the California coast, Vandenberg Air Force Base launched unarmed ICBMs into the catcher's mitt that was Kwajalein Lagoon, where the warheads were tracked or shot down to test National Missile Defense technology. Fifty years after Bikini, the country's remoteness was still earning it an unlikely position in geopolitics. Perhaps the missile base was an uncomfortable reminder of the country's nuclear history, but it was also the entire economy of the neighboring islet of Ebeye, where eleven thousand Marshall Islanders lived in cramped but not desperate circumstances. Between the land lease payments and the paychecks of the islanders who worked at the base, Kwajalein brought cash from the United States at the same time that it brought missiles.

From the air, the base resembled a tacky retirement community. Next to the paved roads, the manicured grass, and the immaculate condos, palm trees looked more like Las Vegas glitz than native flora.
A nine-hole golf course, two tennis courts, and an artificial-sand beach (complete with barbecues) completed the image. From the ground, the base reminded me more of a university campus: joyless official buildings alternated with student-style dorms, accommodating the few thousand Americans who were stationed here.

One hundred and twenty-six days before, this bit of America superimposed uneasily on Micronesia had been my farewell to civilization. A Marshallese man had guided me into a little purgatory of a waiting room, where I had experienced my last air-conditioning, bought my last cold soda from my last vending machine, entered my last restroom and gazed into my last mirror, memorizing my face so that I could compare it to what I would look like when (if?) I returned. I had vegetated at my last television; it was tuned to the US Armed Forces Network, so I watched my last episode of
Donahue
, which, thankfully, was also my first. I saw my last advertisement, a military-sponsored exercise in self-congratulation. “Where would we be without courage, honor, discipline?” it had asked me, perhaps appropriately, before the little plane had growled back to life and taken me to the edge of the world.

Now, as the same plane landed on the Kwajalein runway, I realized that this ocean of asphalt was larger than the island on which I had just lived. As I walked into the waiting room, I had an overwhelming urge to say “
yokwe
,” or at least “hello,” to everyone, including the grim-faced military personnel with their extremely unpettable drug-sniffing dogs. It seemed absurd that something as simple as a greeting would be unwelcome, but such was the case.

In the restroom, I saw my reflection in the mirror for the first time since I had been in that same restroom before. I was shocked to see what I had become. I was bearded, and my brown hair had become long and streaked with bleached blond from sun and saltwater. I had turned into a hippie without meaning to. I was even more shocked to see what I had always been: Caucasian. I had never noticed that before.

White people now looked very peculiar: sickly, bleached. Their hair was unnaturally light, and the highlights of their complexion were too reddish. I could see the blood glowing pink right under their skin. Caucasian children looked like ghosts.

There was a delay at the Kwajalein airport. The plane to Majuro was going to fill up with passengers from Ebeye, and the airport staff informed me that I would have to be transferred to a flight the next day. Oh, how little they knew: Senator Lucky was on the plane with me, and he would not
stand
for me, his beloved American volunteer, to be delayed. Exercising some sort of clout that I didn't know was possessed by a man who represented only six hundred people, he swiftly transferred me back to the correct flight. I had a senator in my pocket, and I hadn't spent a dime for the privilege.

Back in the sky, we followed the curved edge of Kwajalein Atoll with its dot-dash of uninhabited islands. Kwajalein was easily the largest atoll in the country—the seventy-mile-long lagoon was like an ocean, and even the formidable military presence had left most of the hundred-odd islets untouched.

The flight from Kwajalein to Majuro went smoothly, except for the plane being struck by lightning. The pilots switched on a light that illuminated the wings, and it seemed they were checking them for damage. But there was none, and the flight went on. This was a good thing, since we were in the air at the time. I recalled the time I had been on a 747, thirty thousand feet above Nebraska, when I heard a loud crackling boom. The pilot switched on the intercom and offered the following unconvincing reassurance: “Yes, as you may have suspected, we
were
just struck by lightning. But, well, a plane is exactly where you want to be when that happens.”

After that, there was only dark ocean for two hours. Then I saw it: the universal code of civilization, a constellation of electric lights. I had become country folk; small-town Majuro was now the Big City, a bustling hub of activity at the center of the universe.

I felt like the Count of Monte Cristo, newly escaped from the Château d'If, albeit without the fabulous wealth or lust for cold, calculated revenge. I counted myself a king of infinite space. It was a joy to be back with the other volunteers. Half of them had been on the outer islands, and six had been solo volunteers like myself. We shared joys and frustrations. In the joy category was one literary-minded volunteer's mosquito netting, which she immortalized in this ode:

 

O! Diaphanous cloud envelop me,

By day keep the flies at bay,

By lantern light in the darkest night,

Keep the creatures I fear away.

 

Because of your gossamer strength,

I do not wake with roaches on my face.

No feeble bug repellant,

Your gentle caress shall ever replace.

 

So now I lay me down to sleep,

In your womb of golden filigree.

Catch my dreams like schools of fishes,

When daylight comes, set them free.

 

In the frustration category was everything I had experienced and more. I hadn't had a problem with underwear thieves on my island; unfortunately, the same could not be said for several of the female volunteers. I had toilet paper, while one volunteer said she had to make do with rocks. I didn't grasp exactly how this worked, and I didn't ask.

We ate food with far too much enthusiasm. We referred to ourselves as
ribelle
s. We peppered ordinary conversation with those Marshallese words we wished existed in English. “Hey,” we would say. “We should meet and
bwebwenato
[talk] and
kakkije
[relax]. Maybe
jambo
[walk around] and get some
mona
[food]. But it's really
am wot pepe
[up to you].” Majuro was “the Madge.” Ujae was “the Oodge.” We mused about how the course of history would have changed if the United States had tested the H-bomb on Eniwetok Atoll instead of Bikini. Would beach-going women wear eniwetoks? Would there be a movie called “Eniwetok Car Wash”? Only a historian could say.

If I haven't mentioned Marshallese Kurijmoj (Christmas), it is for a reason. I didn't attend it. Undoubtedly it is a fascinating ceremony that blends native sensibilities with foreign influences, the analysis of which would have enriched my understanding of Marshallese society. But I didn't attend it, because I didn't care. After four months steeped in local culture and starved for my own, I wouldn't have stepped outside to be granted personal audience with the chief himself. My
Christmas was spent with a fellow American watching
Sex and the City
on DVD indoors with the lights on and the air-conditioning set to high while eating Mexican quesadillas with extra cheese and salsa. It was the best Christmas I can remember.

I had forgotten what a real conversation was. I had become so accustomed to perpetual confusion, to being able to observe but not understand, that I was startled to realize that anything else was possible. It was like when a white surface becomes dirtier and dirtier over time, and turns gray or brown, and has been this color for so long that you have forgotten that it was ever white, or even think that this dingy color
is
white, that the world never gets brighter and cleaner than this. And then one day you take a sponge to it, wipe off the layer of grime, and are dazzled by the brightness and cleanness of what had been covered. The impossible was once again occurring: thoughts became words and words became thoughts instantly and effortlessly.

Now I was with my own people, the tribe known as the middle-class left-leaning Westerners. Together we spoke our own exotic language, performed our own curious rituals, followed our own inscrutable values, shared our own stories in our traditional huts of metal and concrete. I was a member of a group.

Through this, I came to terms with two facts. The first was that I was Western. I had always fancied that I wasn't, that I had somehow escaped the influence of my upbringing and emerged free-thinking and unburdened by cultural baggage. How wrong I was. I was Western—deeply and terminally so. I carried my civilization with me at every moment: my nervous efficiency, my emotional openness, my sense of individual entitlement, my war against the status quo. How ludicrous it would have seemed to the people of Ujae if I had told them that I wasn't truly Western, when they could see so plainly that I was. Living in another country had finally made me realize how much I was a product of my own country.

The second realization was that I loved it. I loved my culture. For the first time in my life, after finding so much fault with my native society, I could finally see what made it great. It wasn't the West's wealth or power. It was the fact that friends hugged each other; that men and women freely interacted; that children were openly treasured;
that both intimacy and anonymity were possible; that a person could determine his own path in life.

IT WAS DURING THIS TIME AWAY FROM UJAE THAT I GOT TO KNOW THAT
curious Marshallese character: Majuro, the capital city. It was certainly not beautiful. In a year, I heard no one, white or brown, even suggest such a thing. Its streets were treeless and far from clean. Its architecture was generic and decaying. Its lagoon beach was unswimmable because of pollution, and its ocean beach was littered with rusting war relics. Its children sipped Coke instead of coconuts. It was, somehow, both poor and expensive.

Its layout was as ridiculous as it was unique. Built on a long, narrow islet, the city was not a grid but a line. It was three hundred feet wide and ten miles long, a thread of habitation with the sea visible on both sides. Arriving in Majuro for the first time five months before, I remembered the odd sensation of landing on this ribbon of land. The plane was very low. I could see individual waves, and the islands in the distance had flattened into green lines on the horizon. But on the left and right, I could see only water. Suddenly the plane made contact with land—a strip of island so narrow that it could accommodate only the runway and a barely two-lane road. It was so thin that the body of the plane had blocked my view of it until the moment of touchdown, and the builders had needed to use landfill to achieve even this meager width.