Filed at 7:54 pm under Travel by glennstu
Last night I watched the movie Letters from Iwo Jima which I quite enjoyed. By coincidence today my mother sent me some letters I had written to my family when I worked in Riyadh back in 1991. Though far removed from Roi-Namur I thought it might be interesting to see where this Roi Rat had worked in other over seas assignments. It is not unusual for Roi Rats to work in various places over seas. I’d say we were an adventurous lot. So this following letter was written on July 11, 1991. It was a predecessor to letters I would eventually write from Roi.
Dear Family and Friends,
Sorry for writing a group letter but I had intended to write individual letters and have never got around to it. Besides, I’d probably just write the same thing to everyone anyways.
On my way over here I came through Amsterdam, and enjoyed myself quite a bit. I found the Dutch to be a good humored people, though I haven’t figured out why they would laugh every time I spoke Nederlandes (Dutch) to them. My command of the language helped me to make friends. A few times it didn’t help, like when I would get on a Dutch plane I’d greet the flight attendant in Dutch. She would see my obvious Dutch features and see my Dutch name on my boarding past and would make the false assumption I was Dutch and then proceeded to rattle off a bunch of Nederlandes in reply. Although I speak Nederlandes, I barely understand a word of it. I assumed she was telling me where my seat was, though she could have been telling me I looked like a drowned rat[Foreshadowing of my future on Roi where I did look like a drowned rat at times] . When I went to England 4 years ago I felt like I was visiting somebody’s grandmother’s house. You know, old and stuffy with a bunch of antiques. Visiting the Netherlands seemed more like a Studevant reunion. The people looked like Studevants, they acted like Studevants, they drank beer like Studevants. What I enjoyed the most was visiting fishing villages on the Zuider Zee (South Sea), and a boat tour on the canals in Amsterdam. I found a picture of one of our ancestors that I’ll show you if you come to Seattle but I did not find any living Studevants. So much for the Netherlands. Read more »
Filed at 7:50 pm under Travel by glennstu
Aloha,
Today I watched the Pro Bowl in Hawaii and sighted a Kwaj. sign in the stands. I can recall guys going there for the Pro Bowl as the closest professional football game to Kwajalein atoll. I enjoy watching any sport called football, while my favorite is what I refer to as “real football” or what my country men usually refer to as soccer (short for association football), I grew up cheering for the Cleveland Browns and have always loved American rules football (where ironically you rarely use your feet and the guys that do are not respected by their teammates). So knowing I am about to enter a dead time in American football viewing I enjoyed the game itself but I also quite enjoy the shots of Hawaiian scenery and some of the unrelated stories about activities to do there. One sport that I was ignorant of before today is the ancient Hawaiian sport of paddle surfing. Read more »
Filed at 11:02 pm under Travel and Diving by glennstu
One of the best things about working on Roi-Namur was that once a year I got to take a one-month vacation. Typically I would stop in Honolulu for a couple of days to get use to civilization again. It is quite an adjustment to go from an island of about one hundred people where nothing moves faster than maybe 20 mph to a bustling city the size of Honolulu. I would see more people in one city block than Kwaj and Roi put together. I would always stay at the Ohana on Lewers St. (spelling?). It was close to the beach and there always seemed to be a lot of activity going on. There was also a breakfast place I like to go to close by. They had pancakes with cocoanut syrup on it that was very delicious. The rest of the time I would usually spend in Seattle with my children. I was always careful to return to the Marshall Islands in enough time so that I would not have to pay US income taxes. That was another benefit to living there.
Something I could have done was to visit San Carlos, Mexico on my vacation time but I didn’t. Instead I went there last weekend with my company’s dive club. Read more »
Filed at 12:19 am under Island Life and Travel and Diving by glennstu
I got involved in some hunting last weekend. There is no large game in the jungles of Kwajalein atoll so the sportsman must seek his game in and around the water for the most part. Sunday I awoke to a gloriously splendid day. The skies were blue and the air was warm as usual. It was my day to go diving. The week prior my friend Jeff had lost his dive knife on the wreck of a Japanese cargo ship that had been sunk during the battle here. He asked if we could go back to it to try to find it so we did. But we didn’t have any luck finding the knife. For our second dive we chose a coral head off of Third Island. It was beautiful there as usual. We saw the usual assortment of fish, coral, and sharks…. Read more »
Filed at 12:25 pm under Sailing and Travel by glennstu
Several weekends ago while taking my friend’s 36-foot Catamaran Georgina on a shake out cruise we came up with the idea of sailing up to Bigeg to go camping. We chose Bigeg because my friend Eric’s girlfriend Cathner owns the southern half of the island. Bigeg is a fairly large island north of Ebeye and is part of the same atoll as Roi-Namor and Kwajalein. Eric keeps Georgina in Kwajalein for now though he has plans to sail her up to Roi eventually…. Read more »
Filed at 4:39 pm under Travel by glennstu
Wildlife Flora and Fauna - originally published on January 31st, 2002
I am not exactly sure what fauna is but it seems to go hand in hand with flora in literature. The most common plant noticeable to a layman such as myself would be the coconut tree. I’ve mistakenly called these palm trees before when I was in the Philippines but one of the natives there corrected me and told me those were coconut trees and not palm trees. The difference seems to be that there are coconuts growing on them…. Read more »
Filed at 5:30 pm under Travel by glennstu
My First Trip to Roi-Namur
I had an interesting last several weeks in the USA with all the traveling I had to do. Well, maybe it wasn’t interesting but it was exciting in a bad sort of way for the most part. It all started when I drove up to Seattle to let my children have my car while I was gone. I had to drive through LA which was a pleasure because there are probably a million drivers in LA who drive exactly like I do…. Read more »
Filed at 10:45 pm under Travel by glennstu
Day 8 – Return to Kwajalein
As much as I loved it there in Airok I was eager to return to the relative conveniences of Roi-Namur. Most of all I kept thinking about the food I would soon be eating and also resolved to sing the National anthem the next time I enjoyed an indoor flush toilet. The thought of a hot shower was most welcome as well. I greatly feared that I would somehow miss the plane or that it would not come for some crazy reason (I’d heard that that happens sometimes). Belenty had assured me the night before that the plane would leave at 9. So at 7 in the morning I was trying to clear the cobwebs in my brain from a night’s sleep and to get out of bed when Asheran showed up to tell me it was time to go to the airport. I jumped out of bed and rushed to get my stuff together for the trip home. Belenty’s father and Shoeless were waiting for me to carry my suitcase to the airport on his bike. I soon learned however that the original estimate of take-off time was accurate so I had time to eat some food and relax a bit before leaving (well, not too accurate, it was about 10:30 before I actually took off).
Figure 14 Airok Airport passenger lounge with terminal building
Eventually it was time to walk to the airport. … Read more »
Filed at 11:34 pm under Travel and Cultural by glennstu
Day 7 – Christmas Morning
I slept relatively late this morning and had a breakfast of homemade bread and cereal bars. I never did figure out how they made the bread here. I did not see any ovens. I asked once and was simply told they baked them in a Marshallese oven but received no description of said oven. Church would start at 10. I kept most of my clothes at the main house and only took my carry on bag down to my house each night. Belenty told me I couldn’t wear a tank top past the church that was between the two homes. Nor could I wear my bathing suit. It would not have been proper by their standards. So I added a pair of shorts over top and a T-shirt as well. … Read more »
Filed at 10:38 pm under Travel and Fishing by glennstu
Day 6 – Christmas Eve
Shoeless stopped by early this morning to tell me we would not be going fishing. Asheran came by about an hour later to say we would go. I walked down to the other house to get ready to go but her father told me it was too windy. I started to formulate a plan to go snorkeling. I did not want to go close to the village because many of the people still use the lagoon as a toilet and a garbage can. In fact about every night her sisters would stop by my house on their way to the lagoon for their evening constitutional. But my snorkeling plans were interrupted when they told me it was time to go fish…. Read more »
