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Holliston Native Ventures to the Marshall Islands Part 4: Marshallese Time

by Beth Flynn
6/23/2013

(Boo and I dressed in church clothes, with handmade Marshallese jewelry)

The saying “Marshallese time” is used to shrug off everything from boats that don’t arrive to a school day that inexplicably starts late. When word gets out that a party will start at 4:00 only a visiting Ribelle will be there expectantly at 4:00. Several hours later, when there still doesn’t appear to be enough momentum to get things under way, only the Ribelle will be growing antsy.

In America, a 10:00 church service is just that. But at 10:00 on a Sunday morning on Bikarej, Boo and I went out on the reef, to the edge of the ‘blue water’, and snorkeled. Then we bucket-showered, dressed for church, stopped to chat along the path, and thanks to Boo’s acquired sense of Marshallese time, arrived at the 10:00 church service just as the music began.

Marshallese time can easily be read by the sun. The Marshall Islands are close enough to the equator that year round the sun rises at 6:00 and sets at 6:00, with 12 noon being conveniently in the middle. Boo’s host father, Baba, pointed out to me how he reads the time, with the 12 o’clock sun being directly overhead. It makes an American smile to think you can tell time this consistently every day of the year - even without a smartphone - and yet still be late for everything. When I stood on the high point of the island of Bikarej, about three feet above sea level, I almost felt like I should enter global warming into my calendar, knowing that the Marshallese would be woefully late for this as well.

Marshallese time, though, is fully a way of life, not just a way of keeping time. In fact, it could be looked at as a way of not keeping time – the antithesis of our habits of over-scheduling and tightly booking. The Marshallese attitude towards time seems to typify their attitude towards most things in life. The people on Bikarej use the term ‘Marshallese time’ like a little shrug of fatalism. It’s similar to the way we sigh ‘whatever’ when we’re resigned to something that didn’t turn out the way we planned. But the difference is that Marshallese people are able to shrug off rather significant things that we may not be apt to dismiss by simply saying ‘whatever’. My impression was that they use the saying ‘Marshallese time’ with humorous self-awareness, and they have a pretty cheerful complacency about things that just don’t get around to happening. They have an enviable lack of indignation and exasperation when it comes to time slipping away, and when it comes to most other things as well.

In Boo’s letters she has described many circumstances that were maddening to her, but which her Marshallese friends were able to dismiss by applying their knack for humorous shrugging-off. The original source of aggravation always seems to evaporate like the figment of a Western imagination. When she found one of her window sticks missing one morning as she was propping open her classroom windows, she wrote, “This happens all the time – kids love to chase each other around with them. But I had just about had enough and went off hunting for it. I ran into my principal and told him, ‘Pretty soon I’ll have gone crazy’ and he just started laughing and I did too. How else can you relieve your anger here when you can’t find the culprit, or they run away from you cackling? You have to laugh."

(Eating salt fish, in the cookhouse)

When Boo’s host family planned a feast to celebrate my visit, a pig was slaughtered and butchered, food baskets were woven, night was coming on and the tide was rising in the channel before Baba decided he should wade across and nudge the party-goers to come over. “Marshallese time”, he apologized, and I loved the mix of self-deprecating humor and solid pride that seemed to go with this saying, as well as with the overall demeanor of the Marshallese people. I’m used to a more strident, American type of pride so it took a little while for me to recognize such a gentle brand of it. The Marshallese may laugh at Marshallese time but they’re also proud of it, as they are of everything Marshallese. I realized the most encouraging compliment they could give me was to say I was doing something the Marshallese way – using my hands instead of a fork, trying to pronounce a Marshallese word, or eating a raw fish (though I only asked for a raw fish on accident when Boo wasn’t around to translate).

While I was conscientiously trying to be Marshallese I was envious of their concise well-defined sense of Marshallese identity. Though I have a strong sense of being American, I’m not sure I could define it as precisely as I could define being Marshallese. After a year on Bikarej one of Boo’s younger host sisters believed she was half Marshallese and half Ribelle – as though she had been genetically altered. There are only two types of people from her perspective – Ribelle and Marshallese – and since they are opposite and mutually exclusive categories, it makes it a singular feat to become half of each.

(Boo and I and her kitty, on the family compound, with her family's house in the background)

Marshallese time may give the impression that things in the Marshall Islands are unreliable and unpredictable. To add to that impression, Boo has written about several periods of time when her island was out of food. ”Food has been scarce here for the past few weeks. Sometimes there’s no rice on the island, sometimes no flour. If you want to eat something you need to hunt for it – nuts from breadfruit trees (they’re only just in season), clams, snails that come out at night, eggs you might happen upon in the jungle.”

It makes it seem we are much more secure, being people who are only running out of time, rather than running out of food. But in the Marshall Islands the community runs low on food all together, and no single person is allowed to go hungry – or homeless or otherwise in need. The security of being part of such a community, even if it’s never on time, seems profound to me. When word of the devastation of Hurricane Sandy reached Bikarej (in very slow time) the Marshallese did not understand the problem of so many people being made homeless. They wondered why someone who lost a home wouldn’t just go to some else’s house. They didn’t realize that people can be homeless.

(Helping weave baskets - Marshallese plates - for a feast)

When I got back from the Marshall Islands I had a train to catch early the next morning (the 6:40 to be exact). I was overwhelmed with wistfulness for the sense of contentment, security and complacency that goes with living in Marshallese time. I knew it would take a while for me to regain my appreciation for running water, electricity, phones, chairs, ice cubes and other things I never missed while I was gone. When I got off the train I hurried across the street in a big throng of commuters, past homeless people sleeping in doorways and a bus that said “Everyone has a role in ending hunger in our community”. Before going up to my office I stopped at a corner market just long enough to buy an apple, as I hadn’t had a piece of fruit in ten days. It cost me about a dollar, plus an extra minute of my American time.

Comments (1)

Thanks to the Flynn family for sharing Boo's journey with us. I enjoyed the wonderful descriptions of a place so unlike Holliston.

AnnT | 2013-06-24 22:00:56