During our program orientation in July, a group of us swam just about every day in the Ajeltake lagoon, a short walk from the elementary school we were staying in, across the street and down a path at the house of a very nice local family. It was a great place to bust out our snorkel equipment and the explore the reef communities underfoot--the lagoon was teeming with graceful angelfish, shy eels, those neon-colored fish that sell for 5 cents at pet stores, zebra-striped wrasse, and myriad other kinds that I know no names for. We would wade out to shoulder depth and alternate between snorkelling and floating, getting to know our fellow volunteers as we whiled away our free time in the electric blue water.
Maybe a mile down from our swimming spot, we could see the bulk of a sizeable fishing boat. We assumed it was anchored and waiting to depart, but the first two weeks of orientation came and went without the ship ever changing position. Eventually we realized what an odd angle it rested at in the water, and concluded that it was more than likely beached on a sandbar, abandoned. A number of us made a pact that we would swim out to it before the end of orientation, when we would part ways for four-and-a-half months as we headed to our placements.
Eleven of us set out on a Sunday morning after breakfast and walked down the road towards our launching point. (It is worth noting that on Majuro, the capital island and site of our orientation, it is not necessary to specify a road. There is literally only one, and it runs the entire length of the island.) We caused a minor uproar along the way, because large groups of white people are always an object of curiosity in the RMI, and our little band fared no differently. True to my Boy Scouting roots, I bore a length of forest-colored nylon rope tied around my waist, just in case. I had glorious visions of lassoing a cleat at the edge of the ship's deck and hauling myself hand over hand up the hull, to the wonder of my companions. Naturally, they would be full of gratitude for my timely (and badass) solution to what I assumed would be our chief logistical problem.
After receiving permission from the family whose land we needed to cross to enter this new stretch of water, we entered the lagoon. The eleven of us fanned out at various speeds as we struck out for the ship, which we now saw was a good deal farther out than we had anticipated. I was the second person in line for the duration of the journey. This is not a reflection on my swimming prowess--I am competent at best, and not exactly resilient--rather, I just wanted to get the boring part of the adventure over with, and arrive at that towering red and white sentinel of the lagoon. Plus, I didn't want anyone to be able to claim they had to wait up for me.
As we worked our way out into the water, I periodically looked behind me to check the progress of my companions. The number appeared to be dwindling--eleven, nine, seven, five...I was spared from any sentimental revels about comrades lost at sea in the brazen pursuit of the unknown when I saw them in the distance hauling themselves back ashore, tired and soaking.
I arrived at the ship just behind another volunteer, a girl by the name of Julia. Julia gets points in my book for having frequented Manlius during her four year tenure at Colgate, and she is the oldest of five girls. Her father gets points in my book for living through that. Anyway, the ship was severely tilted on the sand bar, with the high side facing us. I have no idea how to estimate the length of a ship like that. I just know that it appeared massive--the hull and deck painted red and rusting; a white cabin and upper deck/control room rising above these. From the bow end, a formidable anchoring chain dropped some thirty feet into the water. The bow was pointed towards shore, but we had had to come up on the side to have a place to stand. It was calm inbetween waves, with waist-high water and level ground, but the slow swells came in at around seven feet, and it was quite an exercise to jump up and crest the waves each time a new one hit.
The upside to these saline battering rams was that they provided me a way onto the ship that didn't involve utilizing expert knot-tying skills, deadly accuracy, or mermaid-seduction techniques. I simply sat in the ship's shadow and rode the natural elevator high enough to grab onto the outside of a now-windowless porthole. The next wave lifted my legs high enough to plant them inside a good-sized gap that had been rusted into the hull just below the deck rail. From there, I could maneuver myself through the hole, and did. Gentleman that I am, I went first for safety purposes, silently praying that my tetanus shot was up-to-date. Thankfully, I alit without incident.
I helped Julia up through the gap and we took stock of our surroundings. I know pretty much zero about nautical terms, so please forgive any forthcoming errors of nomenclature. Directly in front of us was a door, and the cabin rose behind it, looming ominously, its paint peeling. The deck was upturned to such a degree that attempting any kind of movement without a railing would have been foolish, so we stayed off the main section of the deck. By this time, three other volunteers had made it to the ship--Michael, Jules, and Jessica. Five of us had made it from shore to ship, ready to explore the unknown.
For most of my life, I assumed and applied an incorrect definition of the word "sublime". I had always believed it to mean wonderful, excellent, pleasant. But that's not it, not really. I was fortunate enough in my last quarter at OSU to take a fantastic lit. class with "The Mad Dr. T", Les Tannenbaum. In this class we explored the depths of Gothic narrative, and focused especially on the impact of the sublime in these works. More correctly, the term refers to things of such magnitude, aesthetic, or power as to render them beyond the scope of human reason or comprehension. Standing on board what we had dubbed "The Ghost Ship" was, by its correct definition, one of the first utterly sublime moments of my life. The ship's builder might well have been Ozymandias himself--"Look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair."
I've never been a fan of wanton destruction, but decay has always fascinated me. Creaking, abandoned barns; crumbling, centuries-old bridges; rusting shells of once-proud ships--these things have a certain haunting aesthetic to them that I cannot explain but never tire of. I guess there's something comforting in the slow march of the ages, the continued success of entropy. Remember, all those horse-and-buggies were new once, too.
So there we were, five relative strangers, standing on the edge of something resonant with that wonderful quality of being beyond mere words. It was then, as we were clapping each other on the back and congratulating ourselves on doing what we had set out to do, that we realized the only member of our expedition with a camera had been amng the first to turn back. Oops. My initial thought was that this was a huge blow to the experience. How could I capture a triumph like this without a camera? I am a child and disciple of the Facebook age, and I enjoy (too much) being in front of the lens. This was among the traits that earned me the nickname "Hollywood" from some of my more bullshit-proof college friends.
But I came to realize that no matter how many pictures we might have taken that day--as we worked our way around the deck, into the haunting engine room, through the disastrous cabin--I could not make you see it the way we had. Even if we had managed to fit ourselves and the whole length of her into the frame, frozen and unchanging, it would not tell the ship's whole story. Trivial or not, that moment felt so much bigger than a paragraph. To paraphrase Kerouac, we were on the roof of the world and all we could do was yell, I guess. And yell we did, whooping it up as we clambered down ringing metal stairways, clanging chains and tugging mooring lines as we scrambled like drunken sailors across the unmoving vessel.
At no time was the other-wordly quality that possessed the Ghost Ship more apparent than when I came around a corner to mount the cargo hold and found, beyond all reckoning, a three-foot tall tree growing out of the deck, surrounded by a small square plate of new grass. A mile from shore, in the midst of abandonment and the harshest conditions imaginable--salt, wind, heat--life had found a way. And I found that fact to be just as incomprehensible, just as sublime, as the massive decaying ship creaking beneath my feet.
Monday, March 18, 2013
Friday, March 8, 2013
Marshall Islands Chronicles, Volume I: Nighttime Speedboat Turtle Hunting
I was walking home from school on Thursday afternoon when I ran into my friend Manny on the island's main path. He mentioned that he was about to go on a kawonwon, which means "sea turtle hunt", with a few other men from the village. Having only my lessons plans and a nightly routine of shower-read-sleep to look forward to, I did the prudent thing and invited myself along. I had resolved to break my monotonous daily after-school rituals, and this seemed like a good opportunity to make myself a more integrated member of the community.
"Will we be gone long?" I asked.
"No," he replied, "not long."
Perfect. I ran home, grabbed a camera and my life jacket, and headed for the lagoon. Preparations were already underway--rinsing out snorkels, spooling endless amounts of fishing line, and loading the snacks--in this case, an entire pandanus fruit, which was large enough to serve all six of us taking the trip.
We motored out into the lagoon. As many times as I experience the crossing of the reef's edge into the open ocean, I can never get over the sublime end-of-the-earth feeling it gives me to see such an awesome drop down into the rich blue water. Things got a lot less picturesque about five minutes later, as we entered into some heavy swells, which persisted for the rest of the hour it took us to reach our destination- a small, uninhabited island about 2.5 miles from Aur.
We tied up the boat and went ashore amid a storm of terns and frigatebirds, and hauled our supplies onto the beach. We followed the tracks of a turtle up the sand, a 3-foot wide pattern of dragging bulk and shuffling flippers. Manny immediately set to work with a long, sharp stick, driving it into the dune where the tracks ended. He was not disappointed--his fifth thrust saw the stick's tip covered in yellow goo, and he began shoveling with his hands until he uncovered his prize--a cache of perfectly rounded, soft-shelled turtle eggs. We collected these in a bucket and set them aside for dinner.
Afterwards, I went on a jambo (hike) with Herby and Timothy, two of the other men on the expedition. Five minutes into the walk, they had each wrangled a shiny black seabird with their bare hands. Timothy is lean and quick, but Herby is bigness incarnate, and I was pretty impressed by his nimble grab. They were beautiful birds, too--jet black with white crests, and beaks like knitting needles. Neither the men nor the birds made much fuss during any of this, as though each of them knew their roles perfectly.
We circumnavigated the whole island in a matter of 25 minutes or so, including a brief jaunt through one of the most ethereal collections of trees I've ever seen. They were towering, without branches for the first forty feet or so, and their bark was almost silver. The whole thing looked like Middle Earth transplanted in the jungle.
The sun was setting as we arrived back at camp, and the dinner preparations began. Those majestic birds whose praises I have sung quickly had their necks snapped and feathers plucked, and they were soon spitted on green saplings over a tidy cooking fire. On a separate blaze five feet away, the gigantic pot of turtle eggs was put on to boil in saltwater. At some point I began to wonder a few things: When would the 'turtle' part of our turtle hunt actually begin? Was this an overnight activity? Would I be playing hooky from teaching the next day, in pursuit of something whose taste I didn't even particularly enjoy? Luckily, Manny was able to illuminate some of the finer points for me while the eggs boiled and the birds roasted.
"When it gets dark, we go to the water. After we catch the turtle, we go home. Maybe soon, maybe middle of the night. Okay?"
Fortunately this was okay with me, since I didn't really have another option. While the food cooked, we began drinking coffee. Far and away the most successful western import in the RMI is coffee, and Marshallese men in particular fiend for the stuff in a fashion that would put to shame all of the Starbucks-addicted girls I knew in college. Each man also has his own strategy for making the perfect brew, though to my uninitiated palate, the instant coffee-powedered creamer-sugar triumvirate tastes exactly the same no matter which order you put them in or how slowly the creamer is added. We talked (okay, they talked, I barely understood a word) over a few cups of it and eventually dinner was ready.
There's a reason that stores put juicy chicken legs and breasts on display, cleaned and separated from the body, before sale. Mainly it's because it looks a whole lot more appetizing than being served the whole bird at once, from the tip of its beak to its kinked neck to its blackened feathers to its roasted lungs. This thing truly looked like someone had taken a flamethrower to Beaky Buzzard at close range. But hey, when in Rome, do as the Romans do, and when in the Marshall Islands, ask as few questions about your food as possible.
Down it went, tasting slightly more agreeable than the stuff you scrape off your grill after a 5-hour 4th of July barbecue. I managed to take the edge off with a few turtle eggs, which unfortunately do not nicely harden after boiling like a chicken egg does. While they actually taste pretty good, they retain their (to put it mildly) semen-like consistency even when cooked, and it can get all in your hair and nose and drip off your face if you're not careful with your mouth. But I digress.
Darkness fell. Manny and Herby donned their goggles and snorkels and fired up their flashlights as they hit the water, wielding a big coil of rope and a brutal-looking gaffe. After a time, we saw them signalling with their lights from somewhere a few hundred yards off shore. We jumped into the boat and sped off in pursuit. We pulled up alongside them, and Herby tossed the weighted end of the rope into the boat as Manny struggled with something under the water that clearly outweighed him. We hauled at the rope, and Herby came up underneath the turtle to shove it on board as we tugged on it.
This thing was an absolute beast. Massive, glossy shell; pebbled, scaly flippers; a tail like a tapered club. It didn't seem to struggle or protest much, but it waved its tail like crazy for the first few minutes. We roared off in the boat, the men whooping up their triumph, and headed for home under a blanket of stars. On the way back, we met those same ugly swells head-on, and within five minutes we were absolutely drenched. By the way, whoever decided to use the name "Ocean Spray" to market a line of sweet, refreshing juices clearly had no idea what they were talking about. There is nothing tasty or refreshing about the spray of the ocean after the third or so shot to the face. I found it comical at first that grown men who weren't swimming would put on Snork-worthy goggles to take a boat trip, but they had the last laugh as I tried to keep my eyes open in the cold, salt-stinging spray. I also got hit by a flying fish at some point. Our boat passed through a number of swarms of bioluminescent jellyfish, their electric blue glow helping light the way home like miniature neon signs. Or tazers.
It would feel disingenuous not to mention that on the ride home, I also pissed myself a total of three times. The first two times were out of urgency--the coffee absolutely doing me in--and the third time was out of convenience, once I realized how warm I had gotten the first two times. So this trip marked a number of firsts for me: first seabird dinner, first time helping hunt an endangered species with intent to eat, first time struck by a hydroplaning fish at high speeds, and first time pissing my pants in front of five grown men. Thankfully, it was pitch black and we were being constantly soaked anyway.
I would like to add, in conclusion, that despite all of the weirdness, there was not a single unpleasant moment in the six hours that we were gone.The company and the experience made all of the minor inconveniences seem like something thrilling and fun. I've discovered during this island year that I truly love being on boats of any kind, especially when piloted by a race of people who are some of the most impressive ocean navigators in the history of the world. This trip was no exception. As we sped towards the warm lights of home, with the cold sea in my face and warm piss on my legs, I couldn't imagine feeling more alive.
"Will we be gone long?" I asked.
"No," he replied, "not long."
Perfect. I ran home, grabbed a camera and my life jacket, and headed for the lagoon. Preparations were already underway--rinsing out snorkels, spooling endless amounts of fishing line, and loading the snacks--in this case, an entire pandanus fruit, which was large enough to serve all six of us taking the trip.
We motored out into the lagoon. As many times as I experience the crossing of the reef's edge into the open ocean, I can never get over the sublime end-of-the-earth feeling it gives me to see such an awesome drop down into the rich blue water. Things got a lot less picturesque about five minutes later, as we entered into some heavy swells, which persisted for the rest of the hour it took us to reach our destination- a small, uninhabited island about 2.5 miles from Aur.
We tied up the boat and went ashore amid a storm of terns and frigatebirds, and hauled our supplies onto the beach. We followed the tracks of a turtle up the sand, a 3-foot wide pattern of dragging bulk and shuffling flippers. Manny immediately set to work with a long, sharp stick, driving it into the dune where the tracks ended. He was not disappointed--his fifth thrust saw the stick's tip covered in yellow goo, and he began shoveling with his hands until he uncovered his prize--a cache of perfectly rounded, soft-shelled turtle eggs. We collected these in a bucket and set them aside for dinner.
Afterwards, I went on a jambo (hike) with Herby and Timothy, two of the other men on the expedition. Five minutes into the walk, they had each wrangled a shiny black seabird with their bare hands. Timothy is lean and quick, but Herby is bigness incarnate, and I was pretty impressed by his nimble grab. They were beautiful birds, too--jet black with white crests, and beaks like knitting needles. Neither the men nor the birds made much fuss during any of this, as though each of them knew their roles perfectly.
We circumnavigated the whole island in a matter of 25 minutes or so, including a brief jaunt through one of the most ethereal collections of trees I've ever seen. They were towering, without branches for the first forty feet or so, and their bark was almost silver. The whole thing looked like Middle Earth transplanted in the jungle.
The sun was setting as we arrived back at camp, and the dinner preparations began. Those majestic birds whose praises I have sung quickly had their necks snapped and feathers plucked, and they were soon spitted on green saplings over a tidy cooking fire. On a separate blaze five feet away, the gigantic pot of turtle eggs was put on to boil in saltwater. At some point I began to wonder a few things: When would the 'turtle' part of our turtle hunt actually begin? Was this an overnight activity? Would I be playing hooky from teaching the next day, in pursuit of something whose taste I didn't even particularly enjoy? Luckily, Manny was able to illuminate some of the finer points for me while the eggs boiled and the birds roasted.
"When it gets dark, we go to the water. After we catch the turtle, we go home. Maybe soon, maybe middle of the night. Okay?"
Fortunately this was okay with me, since I didn't really have another option. While the food cooked, we began drinking coffee. Far and away the most successful western import in the RMI is coffee, and Marshallese men in particular fiend for the stuff in a fashion that would put to shame all of the Starbucks-addicted girls I knew in college. Each man also has his own strategy for making the perfect brew, though to my uninitiated palate, the instant coffee-powedered creamer-sugar triumvirate tastes exactly the same no matter which order you put them in or how slowly the creamer is added. We talked (okay, they talked, I barely understood a word) over a few cups of it and eventually dinner was ready.
There's a reason that stores put juicy chicken legs and breasts on display, cleaned and separated from the body, before sale. Mainly it's because it looks a whole lot more appetizing than being served the whole bird at once, from the tip of its beak to its kinked neck to its blackened feathers to its roasted lungs. This thing truly looked like someone had taken a flamethrower to Beaky Buzzard at close range. But hey, when in Rome, do as the Romans do, and when in the Marshall Islands, ask as few questions about your food as possible.
Down it went, tasting slightly more agreeable than the stuff you scrape off your grill after a 5-hour 4th of July barbecue. I managed to take the edge off with a few turtle eggs, which unfortunately do not nicely harden after boiling like a chicken egg does. While they actually taste pretty good, they retain their (to put it mildly) semen-like consistency even when cooked, and it can get all in your hair and nose and drip off your face if you're not careful with your mouth. But I digress.
Darkness fell. Manny and Herby donned their goggles and snorkels and fired up their flashlights as they hit the water, wielding a big coil of rope and a brutal-looking gaffe. After a time, we saw them signalling with their lights from somewhere a few hundred yards off shore. We jumped into the boat and sped off in pursuit. We pulled up alongside them, and Herby tossed the weighted end of the rope into the boat as Manny struggled with something under the water that clearly outweighed him. We hauled at the rope, and Herby came up underneath the turtle to shove it on board as we tugged on it.
This thing was an absolute beast. Massive, glossy shell; pebbled, scaly flippers; a tail like a tapered club. It didn't seem to struggle or protest much, but it waved its tail like crazy for the first few minutes. We roared off in the boat, the men whooping up their triumph, and headed for home under a blanket of stars. On the way back, we met those same ugly swells head-on, and within five minutes we were absolutely drenched. By the way, whoever decided to use the name "Ocean Spray" to market a line of sweet, refreshing juices clearly had no idea what they were talking about. There is nothing tasty or refreshing about the spray of the ocean after the third or so shot to the face. I found it comical at first that grown men who weren't swimming would put on Snork-worthy goggles to take a boat trip, but they had the last laugh as I tried to keep my eyes open in the cold, salt-stinging spray. I also got hit by a flying fish at some point. Our boat passed through a number of swarms of bioluminescent jellyfish, their electric blue glow helping light the way home like miniature neon signs. Or tazers.
It would feel disingenuous not to mention that on the ride home, I also pissed myself a total of three times. The first two times were out of urgency--the coffee absolutely doing me in--and the third time was out of convenience, once I realized how warm I had gotten the first two times. So this trip marked a number of firsts for me: first seabird dinner, first time helping hunt an endangered species with intent to eat, first time struck by a hydroplaning fish at high speeds, and first time pissing my pants in front of five grown men. Thankfully, it was pitch black and we were being constantly soaked anyway.
I would like to add, in conclusion, that despite all of the weirdness, there was not a single unpleasant moment in the six hours that we were gone.The company and the experience made all of the minor inconveniences seem like something thrilling and fun. I've discovered during this island year that I truly love being on boats of any kind, especially when piloted by a race of people who are some of the most impressive ocean navigators in the history of the world. This trip was no exception. As we sped towards the warm lights of home, with the cold sea in my face and warm piss on my legs, I couldn't imagine feeling more alive.
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