Day Four - A Good Catch
Day 4 – A good catch
I went fishing again on Monday afternoon. The day before Shoeless had told me to be ready at 9 but it was 2 before we left. We had to wait for a favorable tide plus they needed to practice their dance for Christmas….
I won’t go into as much detail as my previous trip other than to say I caught 5 fish out of the 9 total for our boat. Her Dad found this amusing and I’m now considered lucky. I like to think it was answered prayer. I pray more when I fish than at any other time.
I thought I would describe the use of a hand line. We didn’t use rods and reels. Instead we have a length of line coiled onto a spool. You let out a hook and lure maybe 50 feet behind the boat (they had told me 10 or 15) and hold the nylon line in your hand ignoring the pain of it cutting into the flesh of your fist because you are a tough fisherman. I imagine after time you build up calluses. If you’re lucky you’ll eventually feel a tug then you land your trophy by pulling the line in hand over hand. I found out later the fish would be for her nephew’s 1-year birthday party the next day. As I mentioned in a previous story the 1-year party is a huge deal here, almost like a wedding reception, as traditionally if the child lasted a year it was likely he would live to adulthood.
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Figure 7 The Fishermen with their catch – From left to right – Author, Shoeless, Dad, and Asheron
That night the ladies were busy in the cookhouse baking donuts, bread, and various meats for the party. While they labored I sat out with the men around a picnic table as the men drank coffee. Her brother-in-law told me he was a landowner on Roi, which means he’s probably receiving a healthy sized check from the US Army that explains his relative affluence here. He is a year older than I and can converse in English. One of the teenaged boys at the table seemed quite refined and it was starting to feel like this was not so different than home when I looked to the side and saw a group of 4 teenagers squatting around a bowl eating raw fish guts. A teenage girl picked up a fish head and started walking around, plucking pieces off of it and plopping it into her mouth much like an American girl might eat popcorn. I was beginning to feel symptoms of what I imagined was culture shock. Part of it was that people were speaking Marshallese almost exclusively around me.
Tragedy struck the island this day when a 25-year-old cousin of Belenty’s vomited up blood and died. Initially she told me it was from too much heavy drinking but has since changed her story. Later I learned that his lung had collapsed so it obviously was not related to alcohol.