Assault on Enniburr
Assault on Enniburr (or how I spent a year on Enniburr one Sunday morning)
originally published on June 13, 2002
As I have already spoken of in my chapter on Adopt a Beach, I have spent many a night staring across the lagoon at the 3 visible lights on Enniburr, pondering what it was like there and what goes on at night. Enniburr, often referred to by Americans as Third Island, is the nearest island where the Marshallese live. There are about 900 people on that island which is smaller than Roi-Namur. I have walked from the lagoon side to the ocean side of the island in less than 5 minutes, and that included stopping at a friend’s house for a quick hello. But for the longest time I had never traveled there. What intrigues me about the place is that there is no public electricity or running water. Some people have generators for their personal use. All the drinking water comes over on the LCM (a converted landing craft used as a ferry). So when one of the cleaning ladies at work invited me to her church I jumped at the opportunity to visit Enniburr….
When Sunday morning arrived I took some pre-emperatory imodium in the hopes of not needing to evacuate my bowels on an island with limited toilet facilities, then climbed on my bike and rode to the marina. The ferry schedule is rather limited, especially on Sundays, so I had to take the 7:30 LCM. It is about a 15-minute ride from our island to theirs. The LCM has a large water tank mounted forward. Behind it are rows of benches that are covered with a canvas canopy. I was the only American making the voyage. I was armed with my permit allowing me to travel to Enniburr.
When I arrived on the other side my cleaning lady friend was nowhere in site. There were just a few stragglers hanging about the pier and some workers getting ready to head over to Roi, mostly people who work in our chow hall. I saw on guy I kind of knew and explained I was looking for Tina. He found some young guys to take me over to her house. It was a short stroll over but we discovered there was no one awake yet at that early hour. I walked back and waited on a porch close to the pier where I tried to start a chat with some local boys. They smiled at me but apparently could not understand English very well. Eventually after about a half hour Tina showed up, apologizing for not meeting me. Tina is an older lady who is now in charge of all the cleaning folks. Her husband died recently and now lives with her daughters and teenage son and their children. We walked back to her house and she let me into their garden. The house were slightly nicer than I expected, having been to the Philippines and seen some very destitute places. The principle material of construction was plywood. The main building was about 30 feet long and maybe 15 feet or more wide. It had a slanted roof and gutter pipes suspended by ropes from the eaves. The terminal of these gutters seemed to be some sort of bucket, which I presumed to be used to collect water. There was a plywood fence and several out buildings that I never quite discovered their use. Well, one shelter had an open oven where they did their cooking outside. A plywood fence surrounded the compound. I guess whenever we have surplus wood or tear down a building the Marshallese are happy to use the materials in their homes. I had to step over a couple of bundles covered in blankets as I walked through the yard. Tina and one of her daughters dragged out their only chair and gave it to me to sit on. She disappeared in the house. Various young ladies appeared from time to time on household missions. One seemed to be busily policing the yard to clean up any trash lying around. Her grandchildren would stare shyly at me from behind the door or a tree. They would smile or laugh at me then hide again. Eventually one little boy probably about 2 adopted me but that was not until later when I had been discovered to be harmless. Eventually the two lumps that had been hidden under the blankets turned into teenage boys,Tina’s son and his buddy who spent the night not unlike American teenagers do. We walked over to what might pass as a store. In actually it was a home with a counter. Tina asked for some rolls then signed something. I presume that was her tab and that they don’t pay money all the time.
Back again to my new chair, Tina sat down on the ground by me and told me of her family. She refused to take the chair when I offered it to her less you think I am an uncultured bum who would not offer his chair to a lady. Her husband had died several months ago. She has a son living in Oregon where he had gone to college. I think she said all her daughters were married. I met them and their children were there but I never saw their husbands. Her only unmarried child was her sixteen-year-old son.
After having some Nescafe coffee and my roll she took me over to the church to meet the pastor. On the way I saw a family of pigs playing. One of the pigs was trying to play leapfrog with another pig. I found that rather comical because it looked too fat to leap over his friend and I did not know pigs played games. There were some curs roaming around too. The church was a short walk away located close to the ocean. The main building was quite nice. Next to it was an open shelter where pastor Antonio was seated. Pastor Antonio was a large man with a larger smile that was somewhat marred by the absence of teeth. He had one tooth left on the upper deck and some below but the upper one was quite lonely. Antonio was quite friendly and I sat and had a long talk with him while Tina left to go back to her home. He is from another island and came to Enniburr to start an Assembly of God church. There is one other church on the island, a larger church with a bell tower that is simply referred to as the Protestant church (later I learned there was also a Catholic Church). The Protestant church dominates the skyline of Enniburr. The Protestant church is actually a Congregational church. The Congregationalists were the first to spread the light of Christianity to the Marshall Islands. The early missionaries came over from New England (see Kaiser Wilhelm II and the Indigenous Peoples of the Marshall Islands) and Hawaii (see Hawaii by that guy that writes all those books about places). Antonio has 4 children, two boys and two girls but he had to give up his youngest daughter to his sister, a common practice here. He explained to me that his sister was not able to have any children but he had 4 so she asked him to give her one of his. Following the great Marshallese tradition of giving away things to relatives he let her adopt his youngest daughter. He told me his wife objected saying “I love my daughter and don’t want to give her up: but he told her they had plenty and his sister did not have any so they should let her have her. I tend to side with his wife in this case. But he did make his sister promise to take the girl to church and raise her in a Christian manner even though she and her husband aren’t actually Christians themselves.
It was getting close to time for church to start so I felt I ought to let Antonio get on with whatever pastors do before church so I excused myself and walked back to Tina’s house. I found the ladies sitting on the floor making flower leis. They weren’t making them out of plastic like the ones you get in the states but were forced to make them from real flowers since plastic is not as readily available on the island. I would have to say I prefer the real flower ones. These were being made to be given away in church later. Tina explained to me that the church would ring the bell 3 times. The third time would mean it was time to go. I had seen the bell earlier; it looked like a tank that we would use to fill helium balloons. One of the deacons strikes it with a hammer to call the faithful. I figured I’d wait for the 3rd bell but when the 2nd one struck Tina shooed me out the door so I got to church about 15 minutes before the 10:30 start time. I sat and listened to the music team prepare. Her son was in the music team. He looked quite handsome with a white shirt and tie. Most of the men there had ties on. The pastors all had sport coats. Did I mention that it was in the 80s and there is not air conditioning on Enniburr? Having been warned ahead of time that they dress up for church I showed up in slacks and a dress shirt but a tie was a little too much to ask of me. I don’t even own one here. 10:30 arrived and the church was still rather empty. In fact the main pastor hadn’t showed up yet. The music team got started in earnest though. The church has a generator so they have a full sound system with Marshall amps (what else would they have here?). There were guitars, drums, and keyboards. They were pretty good if you like the style they play (I can’t say I’m overly fond of it). It was pretty similar to music in American churches except the language was Marshallese. Now I don’t know how much you know about the Assembly of God church but they are what are known in Christian circles as a Charismatic or Pentecostal denomination. For those of you not up on these things, it means they are about a half a step up from Catholics and liberals on the Baptist scale of measurement. OK, seriously they believe the entire gospel and bible and include a special emphasis on speaking in tongues. I never quite figured out if they got around to speaking in tongues because the whole service was in Marshallese. So, I never knew if and when they spoke in another tongue other than a brief foray in to English. A guy in a sport coat started talking who I figured must have been one of Antonio’s assistants. He talked then they sang and then he talked then they sang then he talked, well you get the idea. They stopped singing and he gave what I guessed was the sermon but I was puzzled because Antonio had talked to me a little about the sermon that he was going to give having mentioned it would be from Psalm 91. I regret that I cannot tell you what this man’ sermon was about because it was all in Marshallese. This went on for about an hour and I was beginning to wonder why Antonio hadn’t got up yet. He had finally showed up around 11. Sometime in the mist of the sermons and singing Tina and a friend got up and distributed the leis. They gave them to the pastors, the music team, select men in the church who I guessed to be leaders and to me. Oh, there was one other white guy that showed up. He was one of the cops and has a girlfriend on Enniburr. He obviously hasn’t read my article on why you shouldn’t marry a Marshallese woman but perhaps he is not serious about this woman. I hope not, he seems like a nice guy. I was quite happy with my lei and wore if for several days afterwards. I keep it in my refrigerator because I entertained the illusion that would make it last longer. It is still there but has turned brown. There was some more singing then bedlam broke out as the people started circulating around the church greeting everyone else. They all came over to my pew and shook hands with me and welcomed me to their church and island. At long last at about 11:45 Antonio climbed aboard the podium and commenced his sermon. His sermon was in Marshallese like the rest of the service. Listening to it sounded kind of like this: “mmmmm uga muga buga mmmmmmm Jesus mmmm uga mmmm Mathew 9:12 mm.” “Wait a minute”, I asked myself “what is he doing in Mathew I thought it was suppose to be Psalm 91? ” This went on for a near eternity then I was alarmed to hear “mmmm Jesus mmmmm Colossians mmmm”. Now I knew something was wrong because he was headed the wrong way in his bible. The church was conveniently, for me, located next to the ocean so I stared out the windows and watched the surf while Antonio waxed elegantly in Marshallese. Just when my mind was the furthest out the window I had a spark of recognition and realized he had switched to English and made a polite reference to me. I collected myself and seemed to nod at the appropriated time because he continued on in Marshallese. Another interesting thing, to me, was that all the pastors came equipped with small towels that they used to wipe the inevitable sweat that covered their brows in this heat and humidity. Losing my concentration on the sermon I found myself making figure eights with the heel of my shoe on the beautiful tile floor. When I noticed I was leaving a mark I stopped and tried to wipe it off before someone would notice. Mercifully, around 12:45 Antonio fished his sermon but this only led to more music and the eventual alter call. A young girl outside who never did make it into the church answered it. She would hang around a window and smile coyly at me, then disappear for a while only to return. But much to my joy the service finally concluded and Tina took me back to her house for Sunday dinner.
The people here are quite poor so you can’t expect much in the way of food and their dinner lived up to expectations. She asked me if I preferred tuna or spam. I said whatever but was glad to get spam. They served it with white rice. While they were preparing it I saw a large rat on a barrow outside the house. One of the girls got up and tossed a rock at it but it didn’t seem perturbed by this. I brought over some sparkling cider for them as a present. I could tell she was nervous about it because it looked like wine but after assuring her it was non-alcoholic she tried it. First they poured some for me into a jar (she didn’t have any glasses). The rest of the tribe passed around the bottle to drink out of. I also brought cookies for them and they seemed happy to eat them. We dined inside their home. It was sparsely furnished. There was the one chair that was brought back inside and a few shelves on one side of the room and a mattress on the floor of the other side. I sat on the chair and they brought a low table with a cloth spread on it for me to eat off of. They all sat on the other side of the room close together. The one exception was her grandson who I mentioned earlier who adopted me and would come over and sit on my lap. The others kept their distance. The dinner concluded without incident and all to soon it was time for me to return to the comforts of Roi-Namur. Her son led me back to the LCM and I said my good-byes.
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