Jimjeran-Chapter 8: Poor Me, Bore Me
A week after arriving on Arno, Claire is lonely, bored, and hungry!
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“Come on, dammit!” I swore at the bucket. I couldn’t understand it. In the past eight days since arriving on Arno, I’d had a lot of practice drawing water from the well. I’d started to master the little wrist-flip required to get the coffee can to turn on its side and sink into the well water, filling quickly so I could pull it up, empty it into the five gallon bucket, and lower it down again. But that morning, the bucket kept running into rock, and it wasn’t sinking into the water. I peered down into the well, and I felt a surge of concern. There was barely enough water in the well to cover the pebbles at the bottom. What was I going to do if I ran out of water?
I had two sources of water on Arno. There was a well, and there was a catchment.
The well was at the center of our property. A wall of cement blocks built up in a square stood about three feet tall, and the well had been dug down through the coral rock that formed the atoll. Well water was brackish—slightly salty and bad tasting. Laura had clarified the distinction between my two water sources when she helped me move in. The well water was good for washing dishes and clothes, taking showers, and flushing our toilet.
The toilet was one bit of civilization I was grateful for. The locals used the sand of the lagoon beach in the mornings and the jungle the rest of the day for their bathrooms. A few people had outhouses. But when the Peace Corps had built the clinic, they dug a septic tank and installed a toilet in an outhouse structure across the yard from the clinic. With no running water, you had to pour a bucket of water into the toilet to cause it to flush. Because of the effort it took to draw water, I tended to wait through a couple of uses before flushing.
For drinking water, there was the catchment. The catchment had been dug into the ground and built with brick and mortar, and then up from the brick tank was built a wooden structure with a corrugated aluminum roof. The catchment was filled by rain. Instead of the gutters from the clinic and my apartment sending the run-off from rainstorms onto the ground, the downspout went all the way into the soil, where the pipe traveled across the yard to the catchment, spilling the fresh water into the tank. The hand pump in the clinic fed from the catchment, but I had a bucket specifically for drinking and cooking that I would fill, either by pumping water in the clinic or by drawing water through the door of the catchment. That bucket I would keep in the house, along with a different bucket of well water for doing dishes.
I continued to swear at the bucket as I lowered it, only succeeding in filling it half-way most times, which made the process that much slower.
“What’s wrong, Miss Peachay?” Maria had wandered over at the sounds of my frustrated language. I kind of hoped her English knowledge didn’t extend to the majority of the words I’d been muttering under my breath.
“I think our well is leaking,” I said. “The water level seems to be really low.”
“Ejab,” said Maria, shaking her head. “It’s not leaking; it’s the moon.”
“What?” I asked, confused. “The moon? What do you mean?”
“When the moon is full, we have king tides—highest tides of the month. When moon is new and dark, we have the lowest tides, like right now.”
“But what does that have to do with the water in the well?” I asked.
“The water in the well is fresh. It floats on top of the salt water below,” Maria explained. “So when the moon is full and close, the tide is high, and the water in the well is high; and when the moon is dark and far away, the tide is low, and the water is low. It won’t be always. In two weeks, it will be high again, then low again.”
“Huh.” I said. “What do you know! Well, at least I don’t have to worry about a leak in the well.”
“Ejab,” she said, smiling. “So you don’t need to bad word the well anymore.”
“I’m sorry,” I smiled apologetically. “How do you say that in Majel?”
“Jōlok bōd,” she said (Joe lock burrrr)
“Jōlok bōd,” I said. “Sorry for my bad language.”
“Ejelok bōd,” she said, grinning back at me kindly. I assumed that meant, “It’s okay.”
“Does the moon affect anything else?” I asked her, curious now.
“Oh, alab…all things,” she responded. “The full moon is when the pigs and people make babies. And womans bleed.”
“What?”
“Bōtōktōk,” she said, indicated her private area generally with her hand. “I think the English word is period?”
“The moon makes women have their period?” I asked, wrinkling my forehead.
“Ayet,” Maria nodded confidently.
“Really?” I asked skeptically.
“You will see,” she answered, shrugging her shoulders. “See if you change and start to bleed with the moon.”
“That seems very strange to me,” I said.
Maria smiled at me patronizingly. “Uh. You are ri-pālle.” She shrugged again and headed off back to her house.
Well, I thought, as I watched her depart. Nice to know that Jamie’s name for me not only means selfish white person; it also means stupid white person.
I had felt like a stupid white person that afternoon as I stood in front of a group of island women to talk to them about health. I was grateful Sharbella was translating for me, and I had a feeling she was adding information to make me seem more intelligent, because I would talk for only a little while, and then she would talk for the next two minutes.
When I considered what topic I should address for my first community health meeting, I felt like it was important to encourage cleanliness and nutrition. But the responses I got from people reminded me I was not in the states anymore. Sure, they should bathe more frequently, but water was limited. They ran out of soap quickly, and it cost money.
Definitely, they should eat more fruit and vegetables, but not much grew naturally on the islands, and some crops were seasonal. You’d get a gigantic bunch of bananas, and you’d eat banana bread and banana pancakes, and just plain bananas. But that amount of bananas, Sharbella explained to me, blushing, could end up causing severe constipation. There might be an occasional papaya, or a few limes, but in general, the local diet consisted of fish, coconut, refined flour, and white rice, with a healthy dose of Crisco, which was the frying oil of choice.
Once the bucket was full, I tromped across the yard, weighed down by the forty pound bucket, water sloshing out with every step. I put it in the shower, and brought the empty shower bucket back to the well to fill to have in the house. I preferred to do my water-drawing all at once, because no matter how careful I was, I always got wet, whether in the process of drawing the water or in carrying the unwieldy bucket to wherever I needed it.
The day was particularly humid, and it was extra work to draw the water, so by the time I was finished filling my second bucket, I felt like I was damp all over.
I kept on thinking about food. It had only been a little more than a week that I’d been on the island, but I felt like I was starving for a massaged kale salad. Avocadoes on toast. Roasted Brussels sprouts. Carrot sticks, cucumbers, a green juice or smoothie. Just thinking about food made me salivate. Burritos, Broccoli beef stir fry, Vietnamese pho soup, Thai pad see ew noodles, Indian curry.
But then I entered my apartment. On the shelves of my pantry were canned corn, canned peas, canned green beans, canned peaches, applesauce, canned pears. There was pasta; I had flour and pancake mix. I had cans of tuna.
“I don’t want any of this crap,” I whined to myself. I wanted Whole Foods. I wanted a super market. I wanted something fresh. I wanted to go a restaurant. I just wanted to be somewhere else.
In no way did I feel like a 27-year-old woman. I felt like a grumpy six-year-old. I was lonely, bored out of my mind, and incredibly unsatisfied. I wanted to stomp my feet, cry, throw things, and take a nap. And my period had just finished, so I couldn’t blame PMS.
Then, there was a knock on my door. I patted my cheeks to get them as pink as my red eyes, then went to open the door. Jamie and Rupert were standing there, and they held out a plastic grocery bag to me.
At the question in my eyes, Rupert said, “Why, it’s mail day, lass, ye ken. Here’s yer mail.”
“Thanks,” I said, with a brief smile. It was hard to choke out the word over the lump in my throat, and I tried to not look too eager to slam the door with them outside, particularly since they were both beaming at me cheerfully. I cleared my throat. “Really, thanks. I needed something today.”
Rupert had turned to go, but Jamie kept his eyes on me, his face radiating caring compassion. He raised his eyebrows as if to ask me if I was okay. I nodded, and headed inside.
It felt like Christmas, as I sat on my bed and opened the grocery bag, gently untying the knot instead of ripping it open. There was a small box—that was from Frank. There were several envelopes, and a couple of post cards as well.
I opened the package from Frank. Inside there were three envelopes. They said “Open today!” “Open Thursday!” and “Open Saturday!” And underneath the three envelopes, there was three bags of m&ms. Chocolate! I started crying, ripped open one of the bags of m&ms and popped one in my mouth as I opened the first envelope and flopped on my stomach to read the letter from Frank.
Dear Claire,
You probably arrived in Arno today as I write this. It was amazing to hear your voice yesterday from Majuro. You sounded nervous and excited at the same time. What’s it like? How has your first week of work gone?
Joe called the other day, wanting to know your contact address. He says they’re going to miss you at the clinic, but the new hire seems to be a good fit, and she is grateful for the opportunity to work for such a great group.
I’ve started jogging in the mornings. With my different schedule, I do find I’m doing more things that would have seemed selfish to me in the past. I’m going to bed earlier and waking up earlier, so some morning exercise feels good.
The trees look amazing. I’ve enclosed a few leaves for you to remember New England by. This was always one of your favorite times of year. Sorry you’re missing it!
Well, I can’t say I’m not a man of many words, but this doctoral thesis is really monopolizing my thoughts right now, so this will be it for this letter.
Love,
Frank
The rest of the cards and letters shared news from home, and I could hear familiar voices as I read. My sister Amy enclosed a picture of her kids on their first day of school, all four of them staring off into space in different directions, the little goobers; though she did get one of them all smiling for “Auntie Claire.”
Mom said they’d had a tropical storm on Guam, but that nothing really got hurt, except for their avocado tree, which lost three of the largest branches, already loaded with fruit.
“It doesn’t really matter, though,” she said. “Your dad and I always gain five pounds when the avocados are ripe, so it’s probably best that there will be fewer this season.”
Seth filled me in on his latest adventures in his senior year of college. He still hadn’t found a wife, he kidded, but considering that I was 27 and hadn’t yet married, he wasn’t too worried for himself.
And little Shelly, currently a sophomore at UOG, tattled on Seth—that he was dating way too many different girls, and it was like he was trying to experience a ethnicity sampler. The last four had been Korean, Japanese, Filipino and Chamorro. She couldn’t decide which young lady she liked the most, and apparently, neither could Seth.
Finally, there was a postcard from Joe, telling me I was missed, but that they were going to be fine in my absence. “Remember,” he signed off, “No half-life.”
Joe was one of the reasons I had even decided to do this thing. We finished our undergrad degrees at different times, but we had traveled through the practitioner program together, and had become good friends in the process. Joe had told me that it seemed like I’d been only half alive lately, and when I talked about joining the Peace Corps, that was the first time he had seen me sparkle in a long time.
When I’d read all the letters, I sprawled on my back on the bed, surrounded by the pieces of paper, like tiny hugs all around me, and I cried.
Through the evening, as I ate my intensely boring dinner, read my boring book, did some boring yoga, and got dressed in my boring pajamas (in the dark), I grabbed different letters and read them again, laughing as I imagined those familiar faces, heard those familiar voices in my head.
But when I turned the lights off, I felt devastatingly alone.
“Hey, Claire?” The husky voice spoke quietly from outside my window.
“Jamie. It’s your night?” I asked. I sat up, turned on my lamp, and swept the curtain to the side. The gentle glow of the lamp lit his face slightly and illuminated the highlights of his hair.
“Ye seemed off this afternoon,” he said. “Is everything all right? Did mail help?”
“I just feel dumb,” I said. “I’m telling the locals that they need to eat better and wash themselves better, and they already know that. It’s not like I have some great wisdom they don’t have. They just don’t have the wealth to vary their diets. They have to buy what’s economical, and that’s white rice and white flour! They can’t afford soap all the time.”
I could see Jamie’s head bobbing as he listened to me. He waited an extra long time, like he was waiting to make sure I’d finished my thought.
“They really are just subsistence farmers, most of them,” he said. “Some of the men can make a little by harvesting and smoking coconut for copra. And the women can make a little money by creating handicrafts. But most of them dinna have a career or any real source of income. Sometimes they send family members to work in Majuro and send them money just so they can live out here. So what else was bothering you?”
“I don’t want to whine,” I said. “I’m just so bored and lonely and tired of canned food. Of not knowing the language. Of having three patients in a day and not feeling like I’m making a difference here at all. I’m missing home, and though I was so excited to get mail today, now I just miss everyone more.”
I heard a little laugh, which for a second made me mad. “For not wanting to whine, yer pretty skilled at it,” Jamie chuckled. Then his tone changed. “I’m sorry, though, Ripālle. I ken it can be lonely, at first. Ye miss everything that was familiar. But it will become more comfortable with time.”
“I want to believe you,” I said. “But right now, I’m so lonely, it aches. I don’t know if I’m going to be able to fall asleep tonight, my mind is whirling with all the voices and faces I remembered all afternoon.”
“I have an idea,” he said. “Can I bore ye to sleep?”
“What in the world do you mean?” I asked him.
“I can tell ye about Scottish history,” he said. “And since yer American, and reasonably self-focused, ye’ll get so bored that ye’ll fall asleep, and I can head off once I hear ye snoring.”
“I don’t snore,” I insisted.
“Angus says ye do,” he responded. “He was on last night.”
I sighed, exasperated. “Sure, Jamie. Bore me.”
I heard the noise of something being dragged underneath my window, and then a faint thunk, which I guessed was Jamie setting down a section of log for himself to sit on.
Then he blazed into a rambling description of early farmers, the Picts, Roman and Viking invaders, leaders like Duncan and MacBeth, who apparently was not the villain of the Shakespeare play. Occasionally I would ask him questions, but as his deep voice rambled on, sure enough I found myself missing parts of stories, until I finally told Jamie, through a gigantic yawn, that he really had succeeded, and I was so bored, sleeping was going to be no trouble at all.
“Iiokwe yuk, Ripālle,” I thought I heard him whisper as he left. I love you? I wondered sleepily. And then I knew nothing more.
Chapter Notes:
My husband and I were dating when I was on Arno. He was the most consistent letter writer I’ve ever known, probably the reason we made it through several years of long-distance relationship. There’d be one letter from other people, but three or four from him. He’s the nurse (I’m the teacher), so he was in nursing school at the time. He’d write his letters on pads of paper that medical reps give to hospitals and clinics, so I’d have a sweet letter from him written on a pad of paper that said something like “Incontinencia—Saving the world one bladder at a time.”
I do think it might be a challenge for Jamie to bore someone to sleep, but I think it could happen. As long as he tried to not be too animated a storyteller…and if he wasn’t in bed with you.
On to Chapter 9 : Stitch Removal The fabric of Claire’s life is unraveling; but that may not be a bad thing.
Random Boring Bits of Scottish History from: http://www.localhistories.org/scotland.html
Honestly, it’s killing me to be researching Arno these days. This article came out today. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/australiaandthepacific/marshallislands/8102112/Low-lying-Pacific-nation-planning-wall-to-keep-sea-out.html
And, finally, I’ve started a Patreon page. Because I really love writing, and you really love reading it, but I’m supposed to be working on my home business... . .https://www.patreon.com/betweensceneswriter