Lucky vs Blessed

Ok so that was a catchy kind of controversial headline ending in neither or both.  I'm not so religious, but its good to cover the bases.

This place  ....I feel fortunate/lucky to be here.

Lucky vs blessed.  Gratitude is Gratitude, it shouldn't matter who you blame.  Good fortune, Karma, God, your mamma....shouldn't matter.  Being grateful is being thankful.  Being thankful means you've taken a step back, thought about things and realized somehow that something beyond you and your efforts has stepped forward and helped you.

Maybe it's not been "something beyond you and your efforts".  Maybe it works out that way if you just do what is right.  Maybe if you just treat people right, live right, and do your best to do the right thing ...it works out.

So there's been an overuse of the word "right" without a definition of what "right" actually means.  I'd say 95% of us know what it is without putting words behind it.

May we teach the other 5%, and may the rest of the 95% not lose sight of it.....as we often do

Walked out the door into the hallway of my BQ...Feb 2018

It was weird.  It's nearly weird nearly every time.  This little 240 square foot place is my man cave, my comfortable spot, my little refuge in a place that doesn't require a refuge at all.  I walked out the solid oak looking door a while ago to take out some trash.  My door opens to a hallway lined with doors.  Kind of eerily similar to the Matrix with the pods, except well, its doors.  Maybe 18 or so doors in a carpeted hallway.  Its nearly always empty.  Before I moved in to this BQ (bachelor quarters) from the new and improved "man camp" I was living in, thoughts ran about seeing a lot of familiar people in these hallways.  Worries over them seeing my disheveled self in the morning or carrying out dead cats ran thru my head.  Kidding with the cats.  The huge football field long hallway with tons of doors is nearly always empty.  Maybe 3 is the biggest number of humans seen in it at one time, but that was a split second.

So tonight I walked out, thinking how strange it is that I am here in this place.  I've never lived anywhere else but Ohio, no farther than 40 miles from the hospital that my mother birthed me in.  It felt strange that I could just give up all that after seeing a post on Craigslist of all places for a job on (the picture was an island with a runway on it) island in the middle of no where.  I swear I thought this is how they harvest kidneys from people on the black market.  I have a ton of friends there, good...no great people...I don't hang out with turds.  My two sisters whom I will always always always love are there.  My nieces and nephews are about the best kids you could imagine.  All of my family too.  My mothers side mainly stayed near Columbus.  My fathers side not so much.  I left some good folks.

The money was the biggest draw in the beginning.  My future didn't really have a monetarily responsible answer to "how the hell" at that point.  I left my best friend "Benji" for this place and the money.  I did leave him in capable loving hands and I thank Catie for that.

So I walked out into that strange empty hallway tonight obviously wondering if I've done the right thing.  I did.  We all have to do what is the best for us, as long as it doesn't screw someone else.

I almost said "sorry Benji", but I know Catie loves you

Christmas Eve...random thoughts...Jamber

Wondering.....

I've met some great people in this world.  I mean like really great.  People I can only hope to be half of.  My parents were two, but I didn't really appreciate it at the time, and now it can be mostly said it was the great way they raised me and my sisters.  Kind of lame/tame, unless it's compared to others who haven't had that sort of luck in their upbringing.  My folks were pretty damned good people.  Maybe they set the bar.

My sisters, both, would be the next examples.  I'm recognizing this more later in life, the same as realizing / discovering the difference between just being a nice guy (me) and being a really great person.  I'm an aspiring "great person" an in-intentioned mentor has made me realize now.  I really thought I was good because my thoughts were golden.  My actions haven't quite kept up with my thoughts.

My sisters, both, have helped people in their communities unselfishly.  Both are very religious, one being devout Catholic, just as i was raised, and the other more deeply Christian.  From knowing them I would describe the difference as one religion based on tradition, and the other based on that plus a lot of self discovery and study of the bible.

An example of my first non religious thing that is driving this part of this blog.  I say "non-religious", but it's only that because no mention of god or church, but it has every part of those teachings.

Sunny day in August in Ohio, 20...whatever.  We tie a parasail to a jeep.  Someone (Marty Brown) ends up going through a windshield of a truck, just after I leave after having done it all afternoon.  I can't find the newspaper article from the Circleville Ohio newspaper, but it started with "Parasailing, which is normally done behind a boat.........."

So Marty broke a bone or got some stitches or something mainly minor.  I didn't know him that well at the time, nor did I know the guy who gave him the $300 the next day.  I remember clearly thinking that was the coolest thing in the world.  It wasn't a ton of money, but that guy didn't know Marty at all.  He just saw he got hurt, was part of it kind of, and he decided to give him what little money he had to help him.  I remember being so jealous that I wasn't like him.

There's a couple out here like that.  "Jamber" or rather Jobe and Amber.  I would guess it's more Jobe driving what this is about, but Amber is completely agreeable, but maybe more like me and less ....thoughtful.   I don't really know, maybe it was Amber's idea.

I go over there today, and they are talking about the anxiety facing the Marshallese at the small boat marina.  The leader, Gary, told them that the new contractor had offered him 65% of his current salary to continue to do what he does.  Kwajalein is going thru some fairly radical changes as the contractors who run the island are being ...replaced.

This in a unique place, and no one coming here can instantly appreciate the Marshallese.  They are the most awesome of people....it's unexplainable until you spend time working or living with them.

So Jamber, worries about the guys at the Marina.....collects ("collects"...meaning they and two others maybe) $2500 and goes down with $500 envelopes of cash and gives it to the guys working there, because they think its shitty that the new contractor offered them a week before Christmas ....65% of their current pay to keep their job.

I want to be like Jamber.

Nearing Christmas on Kwaj.....12-21-17...a visit to Ebeye

My recent move to Chugach (August) from San Juan Construction has been a fairly good tradeoff.  I traded more life for money.  In other words, making less money is just fine, given that I will get to experience more life.

That original thought was only related to time.  The hours Chugach works are from 7:30 am to 4:30 pm.  San Juan was working 6:30 to 5:30, and they are a construction company, which if you've ever spent time with construction companies, they are always behind.  Always.  Since leaving them, things have rang true to that axiom.  One foreman from San Juan Construction reported to me that he put in 90 hours one week.  They are behind which makes me feel good about leaving them.

I now report to work with 90 guys at 7:30am, 86 of them are Marshallese.  The numbers were different at San Juan.  They had many more "rebelle" or white guys (read Americans).  70 total with maybe 47 Marshallese.   The point is I now spend more time with the Marshallese, specifically two of them ...Tiny and Wagner.  However, getting to know the rest of them has been great.  The guys I grew to appreciate and genuinely liked to be around at San Juan were all Marshallese.  Language barrier or not, they were awesome to work with, to spend time with.

I've gotten to know these guys a little more, maybe because there are less "rebelle" to talk to at Chugach.  Humans are lazy.  It's easier to talk to someone that speaks your language.  It is work to talk to the Marshallese, their accents and English language skills are great, but its just easier to talk to another American.

So my choice has forced me to embrace them even more.

It's Christmas time on Ebeye.  Our manager started two weeks ago speaking about the lack of sleep all the (Marshallese) workers would be getting and pleaded with them to be careful, and to remain focused on work.  "I know you guys are goin to be up late dancing and getting ready for Christmas" and "we all want you to be safe over here during Christmas and to stay focused on work".

I had no idea.  These guys are always looking for extra hours normally to provide for the circle of folks they cover back on Ebeye.  Always looking for weekend work.

December seemed to change all that.  Everyday of this month , many were absent.  I sat down for "roll call" one day and talked to "Billabong" who had his head resting on the crux of his arm on the table.  "what time did you go to bed last night ?"..........."3am" he replies...."Jesus"    "why do you say his name?"  "why were you up so late last night?"   "We were dancing".  They were practicing their dance for Christmas.

I went over there last year for Christmas, just for a few hours.  A group of us went to two churches....it was different than in the States.  Crowds sat around while overly loud music played on speakers in the church and tons of Marshallese danced in unison to the music, while more Marshallese and a small percentage of "rebelle" sat watching.

They go into debt to pay for their kids outfits, to buy the material to have them sewn.  Many kids belong to different groups at a church or two, so its very expensive for them.

I have a soo much deeper appreciation for Christmas on Ebeye now, and am going to head over much earlier this year.

Awesome names.....12-13-17

The Chugach "roll call" starts at 7:30 am Tuesday thru Saturday.  Nearly 90 guys, 6 or 7 of them Americans sit around an open air sheltered workshop waiting for Claude to call their name.  Claude is Marshallese.  It starts out with "Billy" who is an American.  There are 3 or 4 of them (Billy's), one Phillipino, one American, and two Marshallese.  My name gets called after Claude switches to the second sheet, I'm the first on the second sheet.  He calls my name, but always answers for me, unless I don't wear my neon orange high vis shirt.  If I wear any other shirt, it seems, I have to say "ho".

The roll call doesn't really exemplify the name thing.  If one were to sit around and listen to Claude call the names, it doesn't do it justice.  You just can't hear him well enough, or maybe its just me...

Jurajar....tall thinner young guy with hair trimmed to about a half inch, except his tail mostly at the top of the back of his head.  I hear  he's an exceptional basketball player, and very strong

Yoda....yes Yoda.  very early twenties, one inch long hair that sort of juts out in the front at the bangs, at bit tall for the Marshallese around 5'8"

Tiny.....older, around 48,  doesn't drink or smoke, and has an obsession with fishing, mainly casting a net.  His last name is Bobo.  Yes Tiny Bobo.  He's by far the most impressively humorous one I've worked with.  He is cleanly awesomely funny.  He calls my knife a cereal box knife because that's how you get one of those knives on Ebeye.....

Wagner. ...last name Ned.  He has a great great weezy laugh and has no problem letting it go.  The stupidest things get all of them laughing, but he opts in regardless ...stupid...really stupid...funny...it doesn't matter...this guy loves to laugh

Billabong....younger kid....he calls me "fart man" after I had the fart machine going for a while. 2-01-18 correction - his name is Billy Pound, it just sounds like Billabong when Claude calls his name.  Great kid, leads all the singing at company parties.

Junior...Ebeye is full of them.  3 of them are in our roll call.

Batlock Batlock....so the last name is shared by many, as many last names are on Ebeye.  It just goes against our norms for the most part to have two last names.

Bugbwich Batlock....I wonder if I'm spelling it right.  Every time  I say it, they say it back to me exactly the way I thought I said it "Boogevitch"...but apparently not.  It's an old Marshallese name they tell me.  Great forklift operator and funny guy

Swingly....shorter guy around 5'2" and kind of wiry.  His family lives on Carlos, one of the outer islands that the US is renting and has some equipment.  I'm not sure if that's his first name or last...either way I don't know the one I'm missing.

Kakaro....22 years old maybe.  Very intelligent kid, and a great operator of equipment.  He works for San Juan....He has a really great personality too..  Last name is Kaitonga.  His father John, also a great guy, is from the Gilbert Islands.

Chum Gum....that's James' last name as best as I can spell it.  He's older and smart as hell.  He's probably more ornery than smart, but it's a tight competition....The first thing he says to me when I walk into his ....area....is "what da f*** you want?" with that accent.  While that sounds kind of harsh, its meant totally to be funny....most days I answer him using the same language of trying to work the f bomb in as much as possible for every sentence.  This can continue for 5 minutes, while everyone around him dies laughing.  It may not be that funny, but Marshallese laugh easier than we do.

Bruce Lee.....this guys sticks around the shop tirelessly cleaning and sweeping. 2-1-18 Correction his name is Anthony, which is boring.

Tibich....45 years old missing many teeth, great guy.

Matson....not sure who he is, but I imagine he is named after the shipping container company.  I like to think the Marshallese mothers walk around while trying to think of a name, and just see things sometimes and say "that would be a nice name for a boy, Matson" while looking at a shipping container.

In the U.S. kids would be tirelessly tormented having some of these names.  Maybe because I was never around for these names and these guys while in school, they don't do that.  They don't pick on each other at all.

I mean, at the softball games, when a Marshallese guy whiffs it with the bat, they all laugh, but the guy who did the whiffing is laughing just as hard.  The joke is not on him, its a moment that is just funny, just like it should be.

Kilep Ching...12-5-17 Yes I am 12

"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

Nov 1, 2017....the "Reverse Halloween"

14 of us loaded with backpacks full of around 20lbs of candy, loaded the ferry to Ebeye at 4:45pm.  Amber wanted to redo last years "reverse Halloween".  Last year it might have been 7 of us.  We all slightly dressed up in costumes or had some sort of face paint on.  She named it "Reverse Halloween" because instead of the kids coming to us, in short, we came to them.  It's explained somewhere in this blog from last year that the "command" here on Kwaj.....read ...the powers that be.....only allow so many Marshallese kids/families to come to Kwaj on this day to join the kids here going house to government owned house to collect candy.

Jobe, and Amber decided that was bullshit because it is mainly the more "privileged" kids on Ebeye that get to come to Kwaj and collect a child's dream: tons of candy. The Landowners usually pull rank.  So they suggested we load up and go there and fulfill the American "holiday" tradition on the children of Ebeye.

There is a key part of the beauty out here that many Americans working here will never see.  It's warm, the skies are gorgeous, the sunsets spectacular, the water is insanely gorgeous, and the under water is the second most beautiful thing out here.  The first and most beautiful thing out here is the Marshallese people.  I would guess 80% of the "rebelle" here will never realize that.  That percentage is probably higher, but I'm trying to be positive.

We definitely, could all take lessons from them.  I've seen them being yelled at by some (insert all the negative words) American guy, new to the island or sometimes not so new.  They listen with eyes locked on the guy, then the guy walks away and they turn and smile and laugh.  It's amazingly awesome.  I've worked with them in places that can only be described as ovens in the sun with hordes of flies.  They work at their own pace despite my stupidity.  As I worked steadily, taking no breaks to set useless "examples", they lay down in the shade and sigh, then say something in Marshallese to the others and crack up laughing.  They "waste" more energy laughing then they would have if they just stayed working.  They disappear, as I follow my role of (read stupid rebelle) supervisor and continue to pick stuff up or work in any way in the 90 degree sun, 80% humidity, with no wind, surrounded by trees on a sparsely inhabited island, covered with 50 flies.  The flies don't bite but they love my sweat, and don't seem to care if its filtered thru the long sleeve shirt or pants or buff that I wear.

After a bit, I walk toward the lagoon, where the wind is coming from, and find 3 or 4 of them lying in the shade on the beach or in trees with a beautiful cooling breeze that eluded me just 50 feet away.

So this is mainly about a ten or so day period where we were sent to an island 13 miles away to do some "cleaning up" of the stuff the Americans had put on the island.

We would board an LCM (landing craft mechanized)(a floating steel bathtub that had a drop down door in the front where we loaded equipment and such), in the morning.  Then throw out the "handlines" as we left the harbor, and chill for 50 minutes.  It was a great ride.  The work was miserable, in fact as miserable as I've had since being here.  I volunteered to work the weekend.  I didn't have to work, but looking at the situation, where a guy from Ohio would get to head out on a boat with these great fun Marshallese guys to a slightly inhabited island in the middle of the south pacific.........

So the first day of the weekend, Sunday, it was raining when we got on the boat.  I'm not sure why we got on the boat with such heavy rain and wind, but it was up to the supervisor of the heavy equipment.  James Chum Gum should be Marshallese, he's been in the Marshalls long enough.  He's Gilbertese, a string of atolls maybe 400 miles south of Kwaj.  He's been around long enough that the Marshallese all respect and love him.  He has a white old man ponytail, dark island skin, and the features of these island people.  His speech is sort of hard to understand, but he's funny and incredibly smart.

So we do the handline dragging behind the boat in the rain for 50 or so minutes all the way to our destination.  After arriving, as the  captain lowers the LCM ramp onto the concrete ramp on the island in the rain, I walk down off the stern platform that is covered from the rain to grab the box of "meals" the cafeteria boxed up for us for lunch that was sitting on the deck of the lcm.  Venturing out into the heavy rain was something the Marshallese don't normally do.  After returning with their lunches in the box, there was no one there.  All my guys left the boat.  Strange, they hate the rain, but they did have rain coats mostly.   So as I sat there under the tarp draped over the stern of the LSM, waiting for them to return, Tenaka, the captain, said something to me.  I don't recall what i thought he said, but I nodded in agreement.

The LCM pulls away with my guys onshore, where I knew they wouldn't work, and in the pouring rain we went "bottom fishing".  I wrote "we" but it was Tenaka and his first mate throwing out baited hooks about 300 yards offshore of the island in heavy rain and high winds.  We drifted fast, they caught maybe six grouper and a few other fish that weren't in my kwaj fish vocabulary.

The powers that be nearly cancelled the ferry from Ebeye that day, something they have done on one day since my arrival on Kwaj 3 years ago, due to the heavy west winds.   So our LCM captain Tenaka almost cancelled the day too.  The waters were rough, south pass was rough.  The captain of the largest boat on Kwaj said he wouldn't want to be on our boat going thru south pass.  It wasn't that bad.

I'll try and add some pictures ...