This, was our first day of ‘work’, or at least the first day of our trip during which we actually did research/ collected information for the project.
We left our hotel in L.A. at 5:30am, but our plane did not leave until after 8:00am. The (almost) entire flight I spent silently rehearsing my speech and reading Beverly Keever’s book News Zero, while Erica watched ‘Nancy Drew’ and ‘Ocean’s Thirteen’. After 6 ½ hours, we finally touched ground in Hawaii, 4,000 miles closer to our destination.
When we stepped off the flight, we were still in clothes from two days previous. I felt smelly anddisgusting, and the hot, damp climate of Hawaii did not make the immediate arrival very comfortable. We collected our bags from the baggage claim, and rather going directly from the airport to the hostel to change, Mr. Fielding contacted Dr. Barclay, who offered to pick us up and take us out to lunch! Dr. Barclay grew up on Kwajelein (the U.S. military base and largest island in the RMI) and is author of “Melal”, a fictional story of a man from Ebeye (the overcrowded island three miles from Kwajelein) who battles with spiritual connection to land and old customs, while surviving in a ‘modern world’.
While waiting for him, we held a copy of his book up in the air. He was very friendly and seemed genuinely interested in our project. We went to a restaurant on Waikiki for lunch. It was a very casual ‘interview’, and the restaurant was far too noisy to record anything. He told us that his book was actually in the process of being made into a movie, and the ‘producer’ was going to look for local talent in RMI and Ebeye for the movie.
By the end of lunch (which for me, was a salad of locally grown tomatoes, fresh mozzarella, bunches of basil, and Hawaiian sea salt, YES!) I was really starting to enjoy Hawaii. The weather was beautiful and the boys were tan. When we were finished eating, we walked over to the beach to take a few pictures. The sun! The beach! If it wasn’t for the massive amounts of brightly and scantidly clad tourists crawling over the san like ants snapping photos, eating icecream, and applying massive amounts of sun-tan lotion, I would have called it paradise. A group of kids started showing off, diving off the dock into the warm water as we posed for photos of our own. After taking the photos, Dr. Barclay took drove to the hostel, where we dropped our stuff off in he lounge, and went to a bookstore. Erica and I never even got to touch the sand.
The bookstore was called ‘Revolution Books’ and was definitely my kind of place. Posters listing President Bush’s crimes against humanity and anti-war images served as the shop’s thought provoking and ‘activist-ic’ decoration. Two shelves, layered one in front of the other and the length of an entire wall, held a huge collection of second-hand pro-revolution books. Books on ‘nuclear war’, ‘weapon proliferation’, and ‘affects of nuclear weapons’ made up a large portion of the collection. The women working were very interested in our project. They were volunteer and appreciated our interest in their bookstore. I bought a book called “Empire and the Bomb”.
When we finished exploring ‘Revolution Books’, the four of us walked back to the Hostel then down to a little restaurant/café called “Lava Joe’s” where we met Dr. Keline, author of “Marshall Islands Legends and Stories”. He was good friends with Darlene Keju (who we portray as one of the characters in our piece), and spent a lot of time training drama groups at Youth to Youth in Health (the organization she founded). He was a very enthusiastic and interesting guy, as most story tellers are, but we didn’t get to record the interview because the recorder wasn’t functioning right. He told us about his experiences of traveling to outer islands to collect stories for his book and personal enrichment; about the sacredness of these stories. He also talked indepth about the ownership of stories and the importance of preserving these stories. He talked to us about Darlene Keju as well as praised Julia Alfred (the current director of Youth to Youth), the Youth to Youth foundation, his drama program, travel tips for the RMI, and how to prepare for performing in front of a Marshallese audience.
He explained that the Marshallese generally find it offensive or bizarre when one or two people appear to ‘stand out’ or ‘attract attention as an individual’. It was probably the most valuable interview we had all day, and I’m terribly sad that the only form of record we have of it is a couple pictures, some written notes, and our memories.
In our performance, we have a scene depicting a women giving birth to what turns out to be a “Jelly-fish baby”, which were deformed, translucent, and breathing ‘monsters’ which generally passed away minutes or hours after birth. This scene is intended to relay to awful, and REAL, affects of radiation on the human body, and the torture which many Marshallese were put through as a result of the Nuclear Testing Program. However, we understand that is a sensitive, and to some of our future audience members perhaps personal, subject. So, we asked Dr. Keline if the scene would be offensive or inappropriate for a Marshallese audience. He replied “probably not, people will be really grateful for the story you are telling, but be prepared if they laugh”. Erica and I went into temporary shock when he said this. Laugh? Laugh at death? At Pain? Why?
He went on to explain that this is just a part of their culture. When they are uncomfortable, or don’t immediately understand something so dramatic or strange, they laugh, and we should not be upset by it. I’m SO glad that we heard that from him before hand, rather that discovering it the hard way.
When we had pretty much wrapped up the interview, he drove us over to his house and sold us a signed copy of one of his books. At the Hostel, we still did not change our clothes before heading out to meet yet another author to interview, Beverly Keever: author of ‘News Zero’.
Now, none of the people we’d met before were really what I had expected, but Dr. Keever was a complete surprise. Her book is so passionate, so activistic, I was expecting to meet this energetic, young, journalist. Instead, Dr. Keever was this very sweet, patient, elderly lady. She was wise, and her passion about the subject of Nuclear Testing in the Marshall Islands out shined most people I’ve ever talked to.
I really enjoyed this interview, which we were able to record, and felt it went very well. She was so intellectual, and excited about our project. She feels, and rightly so, that the Nuclear Testing Program which took place in the Marshall Islands was a ‘Holocaust’, and wishes that a large video producer would take time to record all the memories of victims and survivors before they were lost forever.
After our interview with Dr. Keever, we walked back to the Hostel. FINALLY, I got to take a shower! But, of course, my shampoo had exploded all over the inside of my toiletries bag. What fun it was cleaning that up! (note the sarcasm)
Jacqueline, Erica, I shared a room in the Hostel with a woman named Mia. She offered pineapple sherbert to share with us after dinner, and was excited to have roommates from Alaska. However, she was noticeably exhausted and seemed very melancholy. As we talked, we learned that her daughter was currently on her way home from Iraq, and was now being placed in Hawaii. Mia had been waiting in Hawaii for her daughter for over a week now.
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