"Kilep Ching"....It's been mentioned in here before. Marshallese for "big fart". "Kilep" is big, so "ching" must be fart. However, after belching in front of the Marshallese workers, they referred to it as "ching". Maybe it just refers to gas leaving the body.
I try very hard not to talk in the first person. I think its the mark of a good writer, or so I've convinced myself. I cannot finish this post without overusing the letter "I", however I will try.
So the Marshallese workers at San Juan taught me the two words "Kilep Ching" after one of them stunk up a room in building 602 that SJ construction had the contract for. It was all as bad and as funny as you would think. It appears, while our cultures are very different in many ways, we share the same societal norms regarding farting. It's not done in public, unless at a construction site or a confined space where only your workmates can truly (read: not) appreciate it.
So I had Amazon send me a "fart machine". The "reviews" on Amazon mostly gave it a great rating. "Realistic mostly" would sum up the reviews. One has to consider the technological differences between the people living in such a remote place and people in the States. The Marshallese are not stupid at all, but not quite up to date with many things. The fart machine is one of them.
It works off a matchbook size remote control button. The speaker is about the size of a pack of cigarettes and a half. Small enough to fit in the bottom pocket of my cargo work shorts. It puts off about four different fart sounds. Some long, some interrupted, some short....
I gave it to Liz the first day. Liz has the arduous task of trying to make old people look and feel good by cutting their hair at the salon on island. Donna is her compadre, also trying desperately hard to shape dead cells on old peoples scalps so they may feel better about themselves while walking around other old people. Sometimes they shape younger peoples livelier dead cells.
So Liz had Donna going all day long. She had the little speaker hid in a towel or her bag or something that kind of muffled it, but where she was able to keep it close enough to ensure people thought it was her "kilep ching". Apparently, it produces a good enough, realistic and varied version of a fart to have fooled Donna for 8 hours. She actually had one customer offended, which she heard about later from another victim.
It got used during our "after frisbee" campfire time, where we all sit around a light covered with one of the red cones that mark the field for the game. It gives a nice red glow like a campfire, while we relish in our endorphins and alchohol. Liz had the remote, and the speaker in her bag next to her sealed up. The first time she let it go, Aaron's eyes made a quick scan of the group as if asking "umm did anyone hear that?" . She let it lose a few more times and apologized for the Lentil bean dinners she's been eating. It was funny how uncomfortable the guys were for her. She let it go enough that one of the guys let loose and "bbbwwwwwaaaaap". I guess Peter felt comfortable enough. We let the "cat out of the bag" after the second time Peter saw fit to let some methane go. The guys, except for Peter, seemed a bit relieved.
So we see one of the security cars on island pull up a hundred yards away and stop. The guy walks up and says he was wondering about the strange red light and what was going on. He sees all of us and the beers and figured it out. Liz pushed the button. The security guy says...."Well, I guess I'll get going now" and heads off as we all die laughing at how uncomfortable it made thim.
So Tiny and I, are working on a new strange project we got handed. We're tasked with painting the inside of the boom sections from a 185 foot lift. There's six of them, around 45 feet long and around 18 inches square. They are basically 18 inch square tubes of very thick steel painted on the outside, but bare metal on the inside. Raw steel doesn't last long out here so we got the job of painting the inside of these things. We had a lot of fun with the sound travelling thru to the guy on the other side. You could try and talk to the guy on the other end of the boom, outside of the boom and he couldn't hear you unless you were yelling. On the inside however, the square channel carried your voice just fine to the other side 45 feet away. Just talking lightly into the thing saying "DAN is your momma" would get good laughs from the other side.
The fart machine was perfect for this. It was just Tiny and I, Wagner had called in sick. I kept pushing the button on the speaker in my pocket everytime Tiny's head got near the end of the boom. We were pulling a cinder block with sand paper on it with ropes tied to it.....thru the thing back and forth a bit to sand the inside of it.
"That's Horrible" and "what is wrong with you?" and "it's 9:30, break time, time for you to take a shit". I had him going for 4 hours. He is laughing a little this whole time. He explained to me at some point that "we (Marshallese) don't do that in public". Of course he's still smiling as he objects to it, just as we do in 'Murka. I keep saying "sorry I had a lot of beans recently for dinner". Finally, right before lunch he's got his head in the other end of the boom and he's working on the rope on the block and he says "this is the worst day of my life...."
I had to tell him. Best $11 I ever spent
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