May 1, 2015.

I received an email today ....

Look me up if you come through majuro.  I will be staying here for awhile. I'm stranded here. HMA said I don't get a final paycheck. I'm just trying to get a job here now while I can still afford a room.
I may end up staying forever who knows.

Eli

 

Homeless and penniless in the Marshall Islands, what a quick turn life can take...

May 2 and May 3 , 2015

"Thank you for having us on your island, your island is better than our island"  That is the last thing I said to them tonight at the Outrigger bar on Roi-Namur.  Nevermind the ownership of these islands, there is a deep difference in between the two besides the fact one is the southern most and the other is the northern most in this Atoll..the largest one in the world I've read.  These Islands are separated by about a hundred miles.  I'll back up a bit with the pictures....the following pics are from leaving Kwaj on a twenty person prop plane that a tall person has to nearly crawl through to get to their seat. 

I've said this numerous times in my life....and I repeat...I am still the luckiest guy I know.

 

 

 

 

We leave work early on a Saturday (which is your Friday and our 5th day at work).  We ride our bikes home, shower, pack and ride off to he airport.  Of course, we live on the airport basically, but its still kind of cool to say we rode our bikes to the airport.  Originally, there were around ten of us going.  Our company announced some layoffs, and the number dwindled quickly to around 4. Four of the twenty were being sent home, or laid off.  The rest bailed in some sort of misguided stand down.  What was left was basically my lab crew.  Ray, James, myself and the safety guy who was organizing it.  By the time Saturday rolled around it was just James and I.  The fact that I didn't want to go because I thought I might miss something struck me as odd then, and even more so now that I had such a great time.  James is a little odd, but in a great way.  He's hyper, but not hyper, he can eat ten hamburgers and ask for more.  He doesn't really get drunk, even after drinking a bottle of Jameson.  The guy has an incredible heart, and while sometimes at work he can be a bit much, he has turned out to be a guy I'll be happy to call a friend at the end of this. 

So we leave our lab at around 2:30 Saturday to go home ..do all the stuff necessary and get to the airport ...well James had to go to the Kwaj lodge and get his key for the lodging on Roi first...by 3pm.  Of course we are on our bikes, like anyone back in the states would be in their cars travelling to the terminal at the airport.  We parked our bikes at the airport and leave them there for the weekend.  No parking fees.

There is no real check in deal.  I mean you check in, of course, but there is no security scan or taking your shoes off or anything.  Its' basically get to the airport about a half hour before, weigh in, then hang out in an open air warehouse until the plane gets back from the last flight and get on and go.

I'm getting tired so I'll just add a bunch of pics of Roi...

 

Roi is much prettier and kept up than Kwaj, more manicured.  Roi is actually only half of what is actually called Roi-Namur.  Namur is attached by a causeway that you can't really tell is a causeway.  The Namur side of the island has a ton of vegetation on it, and it looks like it would be fun to go exploring, but we didn't take the time.  By the time we had gotten down there and looked around a bit, it was nearly 6pm, and we hadn't eaten all day.  We decided we would go get another (like the previous evening) "missile burger" and chill out and call it an early night.

 

 

We were wrong.  The "Outrigger Club" where the burgers are served is also a bar and pool hall.  We stayed way too late playing pool on Saturday night, and when we walked in Sunday (your Saturday night) there was a band playing.  4 kind of middle aged mostly drunk people, who ended up being pretty good, and pretty funny.  Two housewife looking ladies, one bass player, one all around guy and they called themselves "Smells like Fish".  We sat there for a while, two of only around 17 people in the bar, just listening and dancing in our seats and watching the girls that were there dance.  I even got up and danced a few times, the music was good, ok and so was the beer.  The older guy they called "the shark" showed up again with his nice pool sticks and James and I started taking turns playing pool with him.  I was getting lucky and winning until "The Shark" finally said "that's it, we gotta take him out".  Then he lost again, but it was all in good fun.

 

 

Here's some more pics...