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Its dawn, although the light has trouble seeping through the heavy grey clouds. I'm watching the buckets at the back of the cockpit fill with water. As always we gather every precious drop, still mindful after the recent four month drought.
The events of the last three days dance around in my mind looking for a place to settle, reframing my veiw of the society we are momentarily dipping into. I recently did a little rave on Facebook about the dysfunctionality of this place. And that still stands, but the prevention conference we just attended showed me that there are a many people doing a lot of good work on healing the people of this land. They have been harmed. First it was out and out destruction, 67 nuclear bombs were detonated experimentally on Bikini Atoll, with fall out affecting many other occupied fragile atolls. "For the good of mankind," the Americans said persuasively. And the fallout has lingered decade after decade. These people continue to have exceptionally high cancer rates. And Many of them are not of the land anymore. Whole communities were displaced by the effects of the nuclear fallout, previously occupied attolls still not habitable. Many many people have left the Marshall Islands altogether, to the land of milk and honey, the US, most not knowing the horrors of working in a chicken factory. And lastly the debateable spectre of global warming, this land only two or three meters above high tide.
Another legacy of the US bombings is money. Bucketloads of it. And with it its own destruction. Amongst the worst effects is the growth of a culture of dependency, and a loss of connection with their own culture. More on that when I finally get to do blog posts about this place.
But Kumit, where David works, has another vision for RMI. Kumit Bobrae is an organisation, albeit US funded, that aims to make people's live better. Their mandate covers substance abuse - drugs, alcohol, cigarettes and betel nut chewing, teen preganacy - rife here, and non communicable disease (NCD) a legacy of the ubiquitous western diet. With the advent of rice and spam has come a dramatic loss in the culture of growing and gathering local food. Suicide rates are high, in young men very high, and human trafficking. yes people are being stolen and abused, slave labour on fishing boats, enforced prostitution in the US, to name a couple.
At the annual conference, the 6th one held, 2-300 Kumit staff from Majuro and the outer islands gathered to share their strategies. Despite most of the proceedings being in Marshallese (we were the only two ribelle, white people, there for 90% of the conference) many modern words were in English and the slides and videos told their own stories. My sense of hopelessness abated, infiltrated by the hope the speakers promoted.
David participated in this. At the end of day two he and his group of counsellors presented their strategy for suicide prevention. "Ask the question," the strategy being getting people to talk about suicide. Not just people who were contemplating the deed but families, teachers, health professionals. David shared his experience of suicide prevention at Victoria University and two of his students did a role play on asking the question, one playing the counsellor and the other doing a heart-rending perfomance of a young suicidal girl who was enduring sexual abuse from a family member. it brought some of the audience to tears.
The conference finished with a day of hilarity, a sports day complete with egg catching and tug of war.
Then its back to life as usual, David winding up the first of his counsellor training courses, me off to work with teachers from the outer islands on their assignments, then in three weeks we fly to Canada for six weeks first world time. Hills, greenery, a decent coffee at a cafe, shopping, and connecting with freinds and family.
This life is utterly fascinating.
Cheers
Janet[END]