Lets try that again...

You all will have to forgive me. Outside of blogging for the Dartmouth Undergraduate Admissions Office, I have little experience doing these things. I realized after writing my first post that you readers would probably be much more interested in details than overviews. I will do my best to do this from now on as time permits.

As I said, the other DVTP volunteers and I have been in the midst of orientation since we arrived. We have been living in a trailer on the Marshall Islands High School (MIHS) campus in Rita, the lower most portion of the Majuro Atoll (and probably the poorest/most overcrowded). Despite the tight quarters and variety of personalities we have been getting along pretty well, laughing through our follies in this new country that we are all experiencing for the first time together. By the end of this coming week we will all be at our different sites. I will be at the Majuro Middle School, which is on the MIHS campus. I will actually be living one trailer over in the newly refurbished dorms that I will be sharing with three World Teach Volunteers (all of whom will be teaching at different places in Majuro). Two of the other Dartmouth volunteers will be close to me. At low tide you can walk across some of the dead reef at the end of Rita, across two very small islands (one of which is called Demon Island...there is a large belief in demons here, in conjunction with the large belief in Christianity, somehow) to another small island called Ejit. Alex Huestis and Justin Curtis will be staying there and teaching at an elementary school. On the other end of the Majuro atoll, a three dollar hour long bus ride away, Dan Hopkins will be teaching at Laura High School. The other volunteers will be on outer islands -- Wotje, Kili, and Jaluit. I will definitely miss the Dartmouth volunteers who are leaving, but I am looking forward to moving into my own space and getting my own routine.

#5 on the list of surprising things about Majuro is that you can take a taxi for 50 cents pretty much anywhere on the atoll. You just hold up the number of fingers of people that you have in your party that want to take a taxi and if the taxi has room it pulls over. Everyone shares the ride and people are constantly getting in and out of the cars. It can be a bit scary depending on the time of day or who gets in the cab but most people are extremely friendly.

#6 The city has an initiative where some of the students got together and painted public service announcements about HIV/Aids and posted them around the city. Unprotected sex is common in the Marshall Islands and Majuro in particular and people become sexually active with multiple partners at a young age. The postings depict various illustrations of how to say no or avoid Aids, my favorite being a knight with a shield that has "Defender" on it (a type of condom) that is blocking bullets that say "gonorrhea," "syphilis," and "HIV." Pretty clever.

I also forgot to mention in my last post the two coolest things that we have done so far during orientation. During the first sunday we spent here I actually saw paradise. There are two families that own the most profitable businesses in Majuro -- Reamers and the Kramers. The Kramers happen to own an island a short boat ride away from Majuro. We were fortunate enough to be able to hop on a boat and go out for a sunday picnic on Enamanet. The boat ride was amazing. Myself and a number of other volunteers sat on the front of the boat and were able to see a bunch of huge fisher boats and decrepit boats in the lagoon in the atoll. When we finally arrived at the island the most striking feature was the crystal clear blue water. The next thing we noticed were the floating diving board and water slide docks that had been made in the middle of the ocean. Our boat driver stopped before we reached the island, about 100 meters out, and said to look down in the water. There, fully submerged about 20 feet down was the front of a WWII fighter plane. One hundred meters away from the plane in the ocean was a recently submerged fisher boat. The island itself was paradise. Very small but full of palm trees and wild animals--dogs and pigs to be exact. When we got to our manmade bungalow, we attempted to go in the one room to change and opened the door to see the largest pig any of us had ever seen sitting on the bed planks. Other pigs and their piglets were running around the island being chased by dogs. Many Marshallese children--relatives part of the extended family of the Kramers--were playing in the water with ocean kayaks and jet skis (seriously, I saw an 8 year old driving the jet ski...terrifying, but totally normal here). We had a barbecue on the beach and Anna, our field director (FD), handed us some lobsters to crack open on the water. She told us her favorite thing was to sit on the beach, throw the shells in the ocean, and watch the fish gather around the remnants. This didn't happen (the fish didn't gather, I mean) but I was extremely pleased to find out because of geographic locations and dietary preferences only two of the other volunteers actually ate lobster. I was happy to have a lobster tail and another half to myself. The day was wonderful full of kayaking, snorkeling, backflips, and exploring the oceanside reef (where a baby reef shark swam past our feet).

The other awesome thing we did was go to the US Embassy. This was less eventful but still cool. They have one of 3 tennis courts on Majuro and I was sure to ask if I could come and play sometime. The ambassador was not there (we actually met her at a community fair this past saturday where she came up to me very nonchalantly and dropped in conversation that she was the ambassador after I had made a fool of myself) but it was very nice to see that the US Embassy knew of our presence on the island and was proud of our work. We were given pizza there (and promptly told that it was provided by our tax dollars, which made me feel totally enabled to eat as much as I wanted).


The only other thing of note is that our FD downloads all of the HBO True Blood episodes every week! This was a great relief to me since besides my family and friends, True Blood was the one thing from America that I knew I would miss the most. Sad, I know.

That is all for now.

Pictures to come soon!

Bar Lo Kom,

Andrew