"Tell Them" by Kathy Jetnil

With less than a month to go (25 days to be exact) I have extremely mixed feelings about leaving the Marshall Islands. If you asked me a few weeks ago how I would feel about leaving, I would have said "Ecstatic! Super! Incredible! SOOO ready!" But, the closer the day comes, and the more I think about it, the more I realize I will miss this place. This little floating island in the middle of the Pacific has many magical elements to it--things that will never be emulated in any other part of the world. Instead of getting into the nitty gritty of my internal turmoil (sounds dramatic right?), I wanted to present to you readers the best and most powerful description of the islands that I have heard to date. While in the islands, I have had the fortune of meeting a Marshallese girl by the name of Kathy Jetnil at the Thursday night gatherings. She works in communications at the College of the Marshall Islands and, to steal a bit from her blog, is a "poet, writer, and spoken word artist" on top of being an absolutely wonderful and fun person to be around. She studied writing at Mills College in California with a BA in Creative Writing. Her writing background is prolific. Among other achievements, she just found out that she was accepted into VONA Writer's Workshop at UC Berkley! I went to a poetry reading at CMI this past week and had the fortune to be moved by her reading of this poem of hers. So, I leave you with "Tell Them" by Kathy Jetnil, a poem thats says more than I ever could about this place.

"Tell Them"

I prepared the package

for my friends in the states

the dangling earrings woven

into half moons black pearls glinting

like an eye in a storm of tight spirals

the baskets

sturdy, also woven

brown cowry shells shiny

intricate mandalas

shaped by calloused fingers

Inside the basket

a message:



Wear these earrings

to parties

to your classes and meetings

to the grocery store, the corner store

and while riding the bus

Store jewelry, incense, copper coins

and curling letters like this one

in this basket

and when others ask you

where you got this

you tell them



they’re from the Marshall Islands



show them where it is on a map

tell them we are a proud people

toasted dark brown as the carved ribs

of a tree stump

tell them we are descendents

of the finest navigators in the world

tell them our islands were dropped

from a basket

carried by a giant

tell them we are the hollow hulls

of canoes as fast as the wind

slicing through the pacific sea

we are wood shavings

and drying pandanus leaves

and sticky bwiros at kemems

tell them we are sweet harmonies

of grandmothers mothers aunties and sisters

songs late into night

tell them we are whispered prayers

the breath of God

a crown of fushia flowers encircling

aunty mary’s white sea foam hair

tell them we are styrofoam cups of koolaid red

waiting patiently for the ilomij

tell them we are papaya golden sunsets bleeding

into a glittering open sea

we are skies uncluttered

majestic in their sweeping landscape

we are the ocean

terrifying and regal in its power

tell them we are dusty rubber slippers

swiped

from concrete doorsteps

we are the ripped seams

and the broken door handles of taxis

we are sweaty hands shaking another sweaty hand in heat

tell them

we are days

and nights hotter

than anything you can imagine

tell them we are little girls with braids

cartwheeling beneath the rain

we are shards of broken beer bottles

burrowed beneath fine white sand

we are children flinging

like rubber bands

across a road clogged with chugging cars

tell them

we only have one road



and after all this

tell them about the water

how we have seen it rising

flooding across our cemeteries

gushing over the sea walls

and crashing against our homes

tell them what it’s like

to see the entire ocean__level___with the land

tell them

we are afraid

tell them we don’t know

of the politics

or the science

but tell them we see

what is in our own backyard

tell them that some of us

are old fishermen who believe that God

made us a promise

some of us

are more skeptical of God

but most importantly tell them

we don’t want to leave

we’ve never wanted to leave

and that we

are nothing without our islands.

-----------------------------

For more of Kathy's work, check out her blog at http://jkijiner.wordpress.com/

Until next time (only 3 more blogs in the RMI, then onto Bosnia! Stay tuned!)

Bar Lo Kom,

Andrew