No One's Drowning, Baby

Backstories: Reporting in the Marshall Islands and Arkansas.

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“The Exodus” in Süddeutsche Zeitung

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Mona Jetnil and her family, on their way to visit friends for a game of volleyball, walk along Majuro atoll's one road. When she has raw materials, Mona weaves handicrafts to sell in the local markets. 

"We'll see when we get there," she said of plans to migrate from the low-lying atoll to Arkansas, home to the largest Marshallese diaspora in the mainland US. Thousands of Marshallese have migrated for educational opportunities and employment in the poultry industry.

Original post here.

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Huge thanks to Süddeutsche Zeitung’s weekend print edition for publishing our story on Runit Dome, a leaking US nuclear waste site in the Marshall Islands that is increasingly vulnerable to sea level rise and other consequences of climate change. Watch the video and read the story online.

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Our story was published in the Guardian’s weekend magazine! Here's the digital version. 

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“People of the world should know: There's this great big cement dome at sea level filled with plutonium out here in the Pacific, that in the near future will be underwater.” - Jack Niedenthal, Bikini Atoll Trust Liaison 

From 1946-1958, the US detonated 67 nuclear bombs on the Pacific nation of the Marshall Islands. The explosive yield was the equivalent of 1.6 Hiroshima bombs detonated every day over the course of 12 years. In Enewetak, the US tried to clean up the islands by mixing the top layer of contaminated soil with radioactive debris, dumping it into a crater on one of the islands, and covering it up with an 18-inch thick concrete cap, known as Runit Dome. Locals call it The Tomb.

Watch the video and read the story in the Guardian and Süddeutsche Zeitung, drumbeat pieces to our multimedia series in the fall. 

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Dear Matafele Peinam, I want to tell you about that lagoon that lucid, sleepy lagoon lounging against the sunrise men say that one day that lagoon will devour you ...they say you, your daughter and your granddaughter, too will wander rootless with only a passport to call home

...no one’s drowning, baby no one’s moving no one’s losing their homeland no one’s gonna become a climate change refugee - Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner (@iepjeltok), excerpt from the poem “Dear Matafele Peinem”, performed at the 2014 UN Climate Summit Photograph by @coleenjose in @everydayclimatechange | One afternoon in February, children swam in the lagoon side of Majuro, the capital of the Marshall Islands. Because of climate change, the low-lying atoll nation could become uninhabitable before a significant rise in sea level submerges the land—intensifying and more frequent typhoons, drought and salinization of plants is putting pressure on the growing population to migrate outside of the country. On #WorldRefugeeDay, we shared stories from the Marshall Islands. 

With The @GroundTruth Project,@kiimwall, @jh_hinzel and I are reporting a multimedia series on climate change, migration and the legacy of US nuclear testing from the Marshall Islands to Arkansas. 

All Rights Reserved Copyright Coleen Jose 2015

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Meet the longest road in Micronesia

Getting around Majuro is easy: there’s only one road. Directions to cab drivers is either towards the airport or away from it (to ”Laura” or ”Rita” as locals know it); with destinations either on the ocean-side or the lagoon-side. For 30 miles, the road bends slightly to form the half-circle that is the Marshall Islands’ capital atoll. Most of the time, you can see water on both sides of it. Within the constraints of the 30 miles-per-hour speed restrictions, we journeyed up and down this road several times a day to meet sources and new friends.

Looking back at our almost two months on the islands now, it seems we spent a lot of our stay in taxis. Most of our journeys were by the islanders’ preferred mode of transportation – a communal hop-on-hop-off cab system, scented by Wunderbaums, soundtracked by tropical tunes. Each ride cost about 75 cents within the central area, 2 dollars from the airport to downtown (or vice versa). After a while, we started to recognize our drivers.

To capture the experience, we attached a GoPro to our friend’s car (with duct tape, of course) and drove from the western-most end of Rita – residential, densely populated --  to tropical, rural Laura. To the tune of Sweet Home Marshall Islands, a rendition of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Sweet Home Alabama, meet the longest road in Micronesia.

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Photo by Coleen Jose via Everyday Climate Change

Increasingly intense and frequent inundation events are destroying seawalls and homes on strips of land between the ocean and lagoon. “I think with sea level rising, the water will devastate this place,” Ujelang Jorlang said from his home in Majuro, the capital of the Marshall Islands. Jorlang, a landowner and deacon in the local church, has lost more than 100 feet of land to erosion and the sea. He added a second level to his house to protect his family from the next big wave.

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Our reporting featured in the self-proclaimed “worst newspaper in the world” (aka Marshall Islands Journal)

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Copyright Coleen Jose 2015

Repost via Everyday Climate Change on Instagram. A child swims behind a broken seawall in Majuro, the capital of the Marshall Islands. Increasingly intense and frequent inundation events are destroying the barriers that protect homes situated on strips of land between the ocean and lagoon. But unlike other low-lying nations, the Marshall Islands will likely become uninhabitable before a significant rise in sea level. 

For more photo backstories, check out our Instagram accounts!

Kim Wall, Coleen Jose, Hendrik Hinzel

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we’re unofficially sponsored by duct tape

1. a DIY underwater selfie stick (monopod + camera + tape)

2. a secured drone gimbal

3. the Magic Bag (home of cables, lens cleaners, adaptors & Duct Tape) fixed 

4. hyperlapse device #1

5. hyperlapse device #2

6. LAV mic (sorry/thanks Kenny!)

7. mosquito net installation 

(ps. hey Duct Tape Inc, we’re also open to official sponsorships!)

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Bin Laden of Enewetak // the Remoteness of the Outer Atolls

So the outer atolls are isolated, alright. A teenager from Enewetak illustrates it best -- dialogue between midwife and expat friend (according to her account):

Friend: So, your son’s name is Bin Laden.

Midwife: Yes.

Friend: ... How did you come up with that?

Midwife: He was born on 9/11.

Friend: But your son was born in April. 9/11 was in September.

It turns out that the kid was born the day the news of the terror attacks reached Enewetak. Unlike the wildfire of information that go viral on Twitter, breaking news are often not so new when they reach the atoll.

To put it further into perspective and to justify our social media silence: during our stay, we shared the island’s only modes of communication -- one landline (no cell phones) and a modem, turned into the world’s slowest wifi hotspot -- with some 600 people. Hence, a little break from the updates.

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7 things to know about Enewetak

1. Enewetak is the world’s second largest atoll (that is, a sunken ancient volcano forming an oval or circular chain of islands)

2. After being passed on from Japan to the United States during WW2, Enewetak became the site for 43 atmospheric bomb testings between 1948 and 1958.

3. Due to lingering radioactive fallout, only 3 out of 40 islands are currently inhabitable -- though virtually everyone (some 600 people) lives on main island Enewetak. Another two islands were completely vaporized by detonations. 

Copyright Coleen Jose 2015

4. Unique local sights include a stranded German (supposedly) ship; a Japanese WW2 bunker; a sci-fi-esque American radiation lab; nuclear waste site the Cactus Dome (or as locals call it, The Tomb). 

5. After the nuclear testings, clean-up workers (Marshallese and American) scraped the radioactive -- and unfortunately, fertile -- top soil layer of select islands (the 3 inhabitable ones), disposing some of it in the Cactus Dome but dumping even more in the lagoon. 

Copyright Coleen Jose 2015

6. With arable land contaminated and traditional fishing grounds off-limits, the islanders’ subsistence lifestyle (a diet of mainly fish, coconuts, breadfruit and pandanus) collapsed, replaced by a US supplemental food program (canned goods: spam, tuna, corned beef and more spam). As we arrived, people had starved for two weeks due to Lady E’s delays.

7. After a spectacular island welcome, we spent about 2 weeks here, reporting & taking our drone and Geiger counters for long walks on the beach. 

The team (+mayor) arriving on Enewetak after 3 long days & nights on the Lady E, amidst a tropical greeting of coconuts, calypso, leis & the island’s police force.

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We’re still here! 

Back in Majuro after being stranded on Enewetak atoll due to more boat delays (engine problems!) and typhoon Bavi.

In the meantime, we developed a new obsession: DRONE SELFIES!

More soon.

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Copyright Coleen Jose 2015

Elevation: sea level. Prior to departure on the Lady E, we're looking back on our first day on February 19, a quiet moment after a king tide in Majuro. High tides are becoming more powerful, frequent and unpredictable because of global warming. As a result, people are building higher sea walls as crops become inundated with saltwater. Poet and activist Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner spoke about the islands' resilience during last year's opening ceremony of the UN Climate Summit in New York City: http://bit.ly/1ogtymQ

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Lady E -- and us -- still here

Yesterday we left! We got all the way to the end of the lagoon. Then our engine "started making a knocking sound" (excuse #5). We turned around. Back on land. Again.

(Copyright Coleen Jose 2015)

Meanwhile, the yacht of Larry Page (yes, Google) watched us from afar.

Today we'll try again. Fun fact: if you die onboard, you will be put in a freezer on deck (thankfully, the Lady just received a brand new Chinese-made body-size freeze box)

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Excuses offered for Lady E still not sailing (a not-yet-complete list)

1. TUESDAY: Lady E "isn't ready yet". Departure Day postponed without specifics.

2. FRIDAY (D-day!): The ship's engineer resigned (no known reason). Departure postponed until Saturday.

3. SATURDAY (D-day, again!): As a new engineer was flown in, a spare compressor went missing (with speculations in corruption and neglected safety precautions now floating around). Departure postponed until Sunday, passengers spent their first night onboard.

4. SUNDAY (D-day, this time for real!): Spare compressor located, but a new generator is suddenly needed and the hardware store is closed. Departure postponed until Monday (maybe).

(Before this, the Lady was already delayed for two weeks due to engine reparations with vague estimates for expected departure.)

Packing, unpacking, packing again; we'll continue to sleep onboard / update this list!