The Marshall Islands

Bob in his infinite wisdom and benevolence has allowed me to post on this site. So welcome to my first entry.

I’m going to talk a little bit about the Marshall Islands. When people ask where the Marshall Islands are, I tell them that they’re between Australia and Hawaii – but I might as well say that Denver is between Honolulu and London. When people ask what other countries the Marshall Islands are near, and I tell them that they’re a mere 2500 miles from the Philippines, or, if you prefer, just north of Kiribati (but no one has heard of Kiribati), or east of the Federated States of Micronesia (but no one has heard of the Federated States of Micronesia).

Location aside: the Marshall Islands looks like paradise but is something much more interesting than that. If you want to find a place that feels untouched, you won’t be disappointed here. There are more than 1000 uninhabited islands, most of them smaller than a city block, all of them gorgeous. But the feeling of isolation is in some sense an illusion. The US tested nuclear weapons on a few of the islands in the 40s, 50s, and 60s. (The office of the displaced people of Bikini Atoll now sports a mural saying “One Nuclear Bomb Can Ruin Your Whole Day”, which is probably true.) The Marshall Islands is also one of four sovereign nations which might be uninhabitable within the lifetimes of its citizens due to sea level rise and other consequences of global warming. The people are Christian and have been for more than a hundred years. This is no Lost World – but one of the things that makes the country so intriguing is how the people adapt their Pacific Island culture to these foreign influences.

A great way to experience the Marshall Islands is as a volunteer or temporary worker. The Ministry of Education always needs teachers, and American citizens have the right to live and work in the country with no questions asked. (It’s part of the close relationship between the two countries; Marshall Islanders are surprisingly fond of Americans considering that whole H-bomb episode, and they were one of the countries in Bush’s coalition of the willing.) I went to the Marshall Islands as a WorldTeach volunteer, which offers a wide variety of placements. You might be living in the capital city with DVDs, hot showers, air conditioning, and dial-up internet. You might be living on an outer island with no electricity or running water, where your most frequent contact with the outside world is on a communications radio in a, well, radio shack.

The Marshall Islands is not the place to go for a cheap vacation (round trip airfare from Honolulu will cost you more than $1000). It’s not the place to go for fine dining. And if you’re honest about some of the threats facing the country, it’s not a place to go to forget your problems, either. But it is beautiful, safe, friendly, fascinating, and unique – not to mention untouristed.

Peter Rudiak-Gould is a writer and graduate student in anthropology. His book Surviving Paradise: One Year on a Disappearing Island has recently been published. Learn more at www.peterrg.com.