Marshall Islands: Sitcom Expectations
By Tim Lane

I tend to skew towards sentimentality, and my hopes for my time in the Marshall Islands were no different. I wanted my year of volunteer teaching to be like a TV sitcom set on a tropical island. I wanted to surf, fish, and sleep under the stars in a hammock. I wanted the year to be filled with lots of laughs, wacky situations, tears of joy, and a sweet little life lesson to wrap things up.

It didn’t exactly work out that way.

Things haven’t worked out for the Marshall Islands over the years either. The country’s natural beauty and friendly people have been overshadowed by things like: two-pieced swimsuits, World War II, and nuclear bombs. The islands, small coral atolls perched delicately a few feet above sea level like soap bubbles in a bathtub, are now dealing with issues like poverty, hunger, global warming, and a diabetes epidemic. It’s a country trying to work itself out in the long run, so I had no right thinking things would work out sweet and easy for me.

To start out, I was attacked by four dogs my first week in the country. People had told me that the feral dogs weren’t really a problem. People said all you had to do was throw rocks at the ground and the dog would leave you alone. People never said anything about four at once. Isn’t there any kind of fairness in the animal kingdom?

I started my first week of classes with a big bite in my ass. It was kind of funny, kind of sad. This theme continued throughout the year. My first day I got to school early, set up the classroom, and let my kids in, only to find out that I was the sole sixth grade teacher to show up that day.  Later I found one in the stairwell, navigating a cloud of his own cigarette smoke as he fought off a hangover, and I learned that the other two hadn’t shown up because they were sleeping off the bender from the night before. The weirdest part of it all was that my kids were neither surprised nor angry that their teachers had failed them.

“They’ll probably come tomorrow, Mr. Tim,” one of my students said.

I learned that nothing happens on time on a small island. The weather is the same every day, and everyone you know lives within a mile of you, so there is always tomorrow. Tomorrow sits, as a beautiful possibility that everyone believes will solve all of the problems. They call this Island Time.

Also, it seems to me that when you are on a tiny island, which shows up as a speck of pepper on the world plate, the amount of coincidences, déjà vu’s, and Ripley’s Believe It Or Not experiences are concentrated and happen much more often. I saw this most clearly in the fact that I apparently gained super powers.

One day in class, a student said something very vulgar about the mother of one of his classmates.

“Get up out of your chair Bobby and come talk to me outside,” I said to him in the sternest voice I can muster. Bobby didn’t move. “Bobby,” I said, “the whole class will just have to wait until you get up and talk to me outside.” Finally Bobby got up. “I can’t believe you said that Bobby; we’re going to have to talk with your parents about it.” When I went to open the door to the outside hallway, a man was standing there.

“Can I help you?” I asked.

“Can I see Bobby?” the man asked. “I’m his father.”

That’s right, it was his father. Through some freak side effect of the increased speed of the earth's rotation at the equator I had gained the power to instantly summon students’ parents to my door with thought only. The rest of the students quaked in their seats.

And that’s not all; the list of coincidences, newly acquired super powers, and bizarre experiences goes on and on. I swam with sea turtles and then sat down to a Marshallese Easter feast only to find the featured dish was sea turtle. I swam with sharks with dead fish hanging from my belt and survived unscathed.  I saw a halo on the moon. I met a kid who liked to chew rocks.  I sat in a cab which took thirty minutes to go thirty feet as the driver paused to pick up and drop off people, buy himself cigarettes and turn around suddenly to fill up his tank.

And that was my year. Yes, there were nights in a hammock under the stars and days filled with surfing and fishing, but they were not always how I imagined they would be. Sleeping in a hammock is great until the rain and mosquitoes come, surfing is phenomenal until you hit a landmine diaper in the water and fishing is fun until you get a third-degree sunburn. I’m not complaining; there were great times, but there were other times too.

Everything was a strange mash-up of century-old custom and modern influence. People did their traditional Marshallese dances to Akon’s latest rap songs. Everywhere was littered with plastic wrappers and tin cans because a few generations ago everything you threw on the ground or in the lagoon just disappeared. Kids couldn’t speak English but could quote every dirty lyric from the newest dance track. I can’t adequately describe the strange feelings conjured when walking past the cutest Marshallese kid in flip-flops and swim trunks gnawing on a coconut and singing “Smack That Ass,” at the top of his lungs.

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