July 1st, 2015

Sandra, from what I understand,  runs the kitchen here in our shire.  Yea, I think from this point forward I'm going to use Lord of the Rings references to locations on the island.  Sandra is also my neighbor and can be found sitting on her "porch" a lot.  Her porch is just a sheet of plywood raised off the ground as a step to get in her box (I can't think of a LOTR reference for our little boxes).  We were talking the other day and she was telling me about a cultural difference with the Marshallese.  The main things she told me was that they "share everything".  There are 15,000 people living on 90 acres on Ebeye.  "Nobody goes hungry over there" she said.  I remembered a few days ago at work when I had an orange in my pocket for a snack later.  I was sitting to the right of one of the Marshallese guys who work with us.  I think his name is "Arty".  I gave him the orange, then started paying attention to something to my right.  When I looked back in Arty's direction a few minutes later I saw 6 Marshallese guys eating a piece of orange.  The first time I went to "Bigej" there was a Marshallese guy out swimming in the water as our two boats partied.  I made sure he had a beer, and then later when I was trying to talk to him (his name was Daniel) he pointed at my sunglasses like he wanted to try them on.  We were floating face to face in the awesome turquois water, him on a unattached fishing net float and me on a lifejacket.  I handed them to him and he put them on his head and gave me a thumbs up sign like I had just given them to him.   That was another thing Sandra said, that if you have something and  someone else wants it, its expected that you give it to them.  I guess you have to keep in mind that that idea was born from a time when there weren't really any material possessions (I'm guessing).The last two times I've been out to that island, I've brought a pair of sunglasses and some snack bars for Daniel, but he hasn't been out swimming like he was the first time. 

They are also super nice, always ready to smile, and a bit touchy sometimes.  I mean touchy, like they want to hold on to your hand a little longer than we might in America after you shake hands.  I've also heard, and don't doubt this, that they are fearless.  I recently took a first aid class and the fire department teacher told us that the "Marshallese don't express pain" which preceded her story about a Marshallese woman, who was just "standing there" then "grunted a little" and a baby hit the grass.