Crime and Punishment
Yokwe. Tonight I was sitting in the bar at Buffalo Wild Wings playing buzztime trivia with my friends. I was having a decent night having won one game and finished second or third in all the others and had a perfect game going into the last question when I heard a voice behind me talking to his buddy and mentioning that a basketball player had played at Kwaj. The average person would have minded his own business but then the average person does not go and live on a small tropical island for 3 years, so instead I turned around and asked the dude if he’d been to Kwaj. That might sound cheeky to you but there is a certain camaraderie amongst Kwaj and Roi survivors. As it turned out he had lived there approximately the same time as I did but perhaps a little before me but with some overlap. Naturally we discussed life there and common acquaintances etc. Turns out there is a reunion group here in Tucson and if you’re a part of it please contact me because I’d like to participate. I registered on some kind of Kwaj roll at some point or you can get a hold of me through this highly entertaining and informative blog site. But our mutual reminiscences brought to mind a story that a good friend of mine from Kwaj once told me. To protect his identity I’ll refer to him as Sam.
Figure 1 Typical housing on Ebeye
First of all let me tell you this Sam was no rude boy. He was a good law abiding man. But one night on Ebeye he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. As I’ve mentioned in other blogs, just as Seattle is known as the Emerald City and Cincinnati is known as the Queen City, Ebeye is known as the ghetto of the Pacific. There are a lot of nice people crowded into a very small place in less than optimal living conditions. On this particular night the long arm of the law reached out and arrested Sam for what I don’t quite remember but I kind of recall he was helping out a friend who was in trouble. In the Marshall islands it is a matter of great shame to be put in prison. It is so shameful that many convicts will commit suicide. For that reason the prisoners are usually stripped of their clothes to prevent them from using them to hang themselves with. So on this night Sam was stripped of his clothes and placed in the jail cell on Ebeye. This was not a place Sam wished to remain in. The floor was grimy and wet, I mean use your imagination about how bad a 3rd world prison could be and that is what the jail on Ebeye was like (I have no personal experience of if though). So Sam rolled around on the floor to cover his body with the slime in order to make himself slippery. Next he used his lubricated torso to squeeze out the jail cell door. There was a box on the floor containing clothes of different prisoners. He grabbed the first pants he could find and pulled them on. They were a few sizes to small so he could only zip them up so far. The lone guard was outside having a smoke or something so when he wasn’t looking Sam fled the jail house holding the pants together as best he could. If my memory serves me well Sam went to his parent’s home on Ebeye and hid there until he could catch a boat to Kwajalein. The Ebeye police came to his parent’s home and offered to let him off with community service if he would only turn himself in. But no dice, he wasn’t going back and did not return for many years until the coast was clear so to speak. Now he has no trouble going there, all if forgiven. He was the first and maybe only person to escape from the jail there.
Figure 2 Another Street on Ebeye
This also brings to my mind of a different more tragic story. I knew a very nice happy go lucky young woman on Majuro who always had a big smile on her pretty face. I was shocked to hear the following account and am not sure if it is true so I will refer to her as Ms. X. One night Ms. X was drinking heavily (I believe that part of the story) when she got in a argument with another woman. The other woman pulled a knife on her and Ms. X (a rather petite lady) pushed this woman off a bridge into the ocean and the other woman was never seen again. Ms X was arrested and put into prison. I do not know the status of the case but I had heard she was out of prison. She had written a brief friendly letter to me after all of this but did not mention any of her troubles. I don’t know how much of the above story is true but I hope it isn’t. Ms X was a very friendly lady who was always laughing and joking and showed me great kindness. So it is hard for me to conceive of her being involved in such an incident unless it was to protect her own life and also perhaps under the influence of alcohol.
Well that is tonights crime blotter. The Marshall Islands is a place of great beauty both above and below the water. But it is also a place that is quite isolated from the rest of civilization. Some islands are remote and sparsely populated. But Majuro and even more so Ebeye are very densely populated and are facing the problems of many urban centers but also coupled with great poverty. Shortly before I left there was a tale that a boat load of cocaine washed up on the shore of Ebeye. Some of the citizens found it and now it is a very severe problem there both from the amount the washed up and from later shipments that arrived there after some of the people became addicted. I had a friend on Ebeye who was a very good man devoted to his family and an avid basketball player. He remained straight but I heard his wife got involved with cocaine and it tore the family apart. It is very sad for me because I knew this lady and she was very nice and they had a son between them.
Figure 3 Anrohasa Hotel ($95 a night and water only available for several hours a day)
I’m going to end this blog on that cheerful note. I’d like to invite any of my readers to add to this blog site particularly if you have experiences in the Marshall Islands or even if you’ve never been there but enjoyed this site please feel free to leave comments. By the way, I missed some points on the last question of that trivia game to finish with less than a perfect game but I didn’t even care.
kiitos or komol tata,
Glenn
Technorati Tags: Anrohasa, jail, prison break, Bob Marley, beer, Majuro, Ebeye, Marshall Islands, Kwajalein, Roi, Roi-Namur, Micronesia, travel, trivia
5 Responses to “Crime and Punishment”
 Comment by glennstu January 18th, 2008 at 12:30 am |
Anrohasa was perhaps the finest hotel on Ebeye but it was a pit. The water only was turned on for about 2 hours in the morning and 2 hours at night. The furniture was quite stressed to put it as politely as I can. There is a bar downstairs with a live Marshallese band. Despite all that it is a very fun place to visit, especially for a lonely bachelor from Roi. |
 Comment by jacob July 27th, 2008 at 5:28 pm |
Whats up just wondering when you were there on the island i was born there and was wondering who you knew and stuff on the island |
 Comment by nane February 3rd, 2009 at 8:36 am |
Hey, i missed running outside of tat hotel… |
 Comment by Jim Blake February 9th, 2009 at 2:06 pm |
Not a lot of crime on Roi while I was there (early 80s), perhaps a bit more on Kwaj. Someone might borrow your bicycle but that was about it. Tragically, one of the natives from 3rd Island was killed in the bar one night. He got into what I heard was a one punch fight with one of the younger off-duty security guards. He went down and fatally hit his head. The guard was sent off island asap. |
|
Comment by glennstu April 21st, 2009 at 4:59 pm |
On Roi itself the only crime I was aware of was “borrowed bikes” as you mentioned and petty theft. I felt safer there than anywhere else I’ve ever lived of visited. I’m not counting attacks by cocoanut crabs or other fauna. |