Stories by Christopher Leonard
Photographs by Benjamin Krain

Impoverished islands are caught between the need for jobs and the loss of culture.Two men who live on opposite sides of the Pacific Ocean share one concern. They fear their Marshallese culture is slowly disappearing.

Mackphie Elisha works for Tyson Foods in Springdale. He doesn’t make a fortune but has achieved his goal of sending his two children to public school. Elisha looks forlorn when he talks about his homeland. He misses it. But he says he will not return until his children have earned their diplomas. He thinks an education will give them opportunities he never had, but he worries that they will lose their Marshallese culture along the way.
Benny Luke lives on Majuro, capital of the Marshall Islands and some 6,000 miles from Springdale. He has not left his homeland, and when told of Elisha’s dilemma, he simply smiles. “That’s our problem over here, too,” Luke said, sitting in the courtyard of his family home. Baby chickens trot by and his daughter fans the flames under a kettle cooking dinner. “We worry these Marshallese kids will lose their identity because of all these influences from without.”
The Marshall Islands are known as an easygoing place, where people live by “island time” and let the days pass luxuriously slowly. But the culture is changing rapidly. Ancient traditions are eroding with the arrivals of barges carrying consumer goods, building materials and automobiles.
The origin of the Marshallese is unknown, although their language resembles those of Southeast Asia. Before Europeans arrived, the Marshallese language was oral only. There are no written clues about the islanders’ early culture.
The Marshallese way of life was first interrupted in the 1520s, when Spanish explorers arrived. The islands remained under varying degrees of Spanish control for several centuries but were named for the British captain William Marshall, who visited in 1788. The British, though, never established a colony on the islands.
Germany bought the islands from Spain in 1885 and was the first foreign power to turn a profit from the meager resources available. The Germans organized a network of trading posts to collect copra, dried coconut meat that is crushed to make coconut oil. Producing copra remains the dominant industry on remote outer islands that have little infrastructure.
The Marshall Islands consist of dozens of atolls, widespread chains of slender islands and islets that surround shallow lagoons.
Over the years the Europeans built churches and sent missionaries who converted many islanders to Christianity. The religion took root. On the urban islands of Ebeye and Majuro, the churches are full on Sundays, and singing reverberates in the streets. In Springdale, there are at least 11 Marshallese congregations. Most are Protestant, often Assembly of God. The minority of islanders in the city who are Roman Catholic say they attend local churches with congregations of mixed backgrounds.
Japan took over the islands during World War I and ruled them as a colony for the next 30 years. As the Marshallese hopscotched from the rule of one power to another, their way of life gradually transformed. The remote location of the islands, the great distances between them and their scant economic value kept the pace of modernization slow.
No country changed the islands as much, or as quickly, as did the United States. U.S. soldiers wrested the islands from Japan in World War II. The U.S. government took control and administered the islands as a trust territory on behalf of the United Nations. American taxpayers have pumped more than $1 billion into the islands since 1986, according to The World Factbook compiled by the Central Intelligence Agency. The flow of money began after World War II.
Perhaps the most publicized effect of the U.S. presence has been the fallout from testing nuclear bombs on islands in the northwest corner of the nation. Former residents of those islands still live in exile. The Bikini atoll remains uninhabited, and nearby Rongelap atoll is nearly so. The atolls’ soil is contaminated with radiation.
But the nuclear testing tends to overshadow the larger force of change at work in the Marshall Islands, said Robert Kiste, an anthropologist who has studied the islands for 40 years. Dollars from the U.S. Treasury have done more to change the people and their culture than the radiation from U.S. bombs, Kiste said. “The people affected by the radiation are in the minority,” Kiste said. “The communities that are affected are smaller places.”
In contrast, money spent by the U.S. government on densely populated islands like Ebeye and Majuro has affected every island in the nation. The course of these changes could be drawn as a path on a map. At one end of the path is Mackphie Elisha in Springdale. In the middle is Benny Luke’s crowded neighborhood and others like it on Majuro. Finally, the path ends at remote atolls like Arno.

LILIES AND ALAPS
Arno actually gets dark after nightfall. There are no streetlights, no lighted signs, no rushing cars to keep the darkness at bay. A couple of hours after sunset, it is difficult to see a few feet down the road as teenagers and others take their nightly walks called “jambos.” People emerge in the glow of a flashlight beam and then disappear into the night.
Arno has no power plant, no sewer system and no paved streets. The principal road on the main island, also called Arno, is a pitted strip of bare earth baked gray by the sun. It meanders through a lush green jungle where towering breadfruit trees and coconut palms keep the air cool in their shade. After a rainy morning in September, a large mother pig wallows in a fresh puddle in the middle of the road while half a dozen piglets vie to suckle from her.
Islands like this are the last bastion of Marshallese culture.
The 2,000 or so residents of Arno atoll live on traditional family properties called “wetos.” A weto is a strip of land that runs from one side of the narrow island to the other. Families living on a weto have the right to build homes and collect fruit, but they do not own the land. All land is owned by the “iroij,” the equivalent of a tribal king or chief.
Between the commoners and the chief there is a man like Biti Lake, who is an “alap.” The alap is a middle manager, someone who takes complaints and requests from the people while enforcing the edicts of the iroij.
Lake was born in 1938 and received the title of alap through inheritance. He said most of his work involves property disputes that he must settle for the iroij. When it comes to border fights, Lake has seen it all.
The property lines of a weto are often demarcated with rows of white lilies. Lake has seen old men dig the lilies up at night and replant them elsewhere, usually changing the border to include a well on their land. But it’s tough to fool the alap. Lake said a dead giveaway is a row of young plants placed where lilies used to be.
An alap doesn’t usually work the land. But Lake recently used a machete to clear away underbrush on his family’s plot. With a white towel wrapped around his forehead to keep sweat from his eyes, Lake wandered over the property and collected coconuts, throwing them into a pile to be husked.
He seemed to enjoy the labor, but Lake wasn’t doing it for fun. Over the past few decades, Arno’s population has dwindled as residents left for Majuro or Arkansas, he said.
“It’s been good for those people, but it’s been bad for the land,” he said. “Thirty years ago, there were a lot of people. There were more crops, more plantings, more people helping each other.” To an American visitor, it might seem perplexing that people would leave the green jungles, pristine white beaches and sparkling blue lagoon of Arno.
The Marshallese generally agree that there are two forces motivating residents to leave the outer islands. The forces work in concert as a sort of “carrot and stick.” The carrot is the lure of the modern world — cold drinks, television shows and automobiles on Majuro or in the United States. The stick is the hardship and boredom that can accompany life on outer islands, where populations once were kept in check by limited food instead of by migration.
Both forces are at play in the home of Fredly Relvho. He lives just off the main road in Arno with his wife and five children. They share a single room, roughly 12 feet square, with a concrete floor and cinder-block walls. They sleep on mats of woven leaves no thicker than a denim jacket.
Relvho said his father and sister live in Springdale. Many of his neighbors have moved there, as well. For him, that means there are fewer people left to help him with the chores. “My father told me: ‘You must stay here and take care of the land,’” Relvho said. “It’s really hard for me. They leave, and I don’t have anything.”
To earn cash, Relvho makes copra, a laborious job that requires collecting coconuts in the jungle and then husking, splitting, cooking and bagging them. It can take two days to make a bag of copra that’s worth $10 to $12.
At the end of a hard day’s work, Relvho and his family can sit back, relax and watch how the rest of the world lives. In a corner of their home a small television and VCR sit on a wobbly wooden table, next to a box of videocassettes. The devices are hooked up to a gasoline-powered generator.
One to three nights a week, Relvho said, his family gathers around as he fires up the generator. One gallon of diesel will run the television for two hours. Among his favorite movies are the Martin Lawrence action flick Bad Boys and the shark thriller Jaws II.

DEUCES WILD
Most Marshallese go to Majuro or Ebeye when they leave the outer islands, joining family members who already have jobs. On Ebeye, houses get so crowded that there’s not enough floor space to accommodate everyone at night. Some families sleep in shifts.
Although living conditions are far different from those on Arno, many aspects of Marshallese culture remain. Ebeye and Majuro are still divided into wetos, which are still run by alaps and iroij.
On Ebeye, the iroij still have the power to evict residents from the land, making the kings more powerful in many ways than the municipal government. The iroij who own Ebeye require that women on the island wear long dresses instead of pants or skirts, hewing to Marshallese tradition.
But the shifting culture can be seen in groups of children who roam the alleyways of Ebeye at night. When hailed by an outsider with the Marshallese greeting of “yokwe,” the children usually respond eagerly in English, crying, “Hello” or “What’s up, man?”
Many of the children essentially raise themselves while their parents work long hours, said Rose Bobo, director of mental health services at the Ebeye hospital.
“It’s hard for them growing up here. They are trying hard to change as we expect them to, but at the same time we are trying to keep them Marshallese,” Bobo said. “Kids go through a lot of changes these days. We expect a lot of them: to go to school, to get a job. And their grandparents aren’t there to give them advice.”
Late one Sunday night, some teenage boys sat along a sidewalk on Ebeye, suspiciously eyeing pedestrians on the street. A few feet away, one of their friends stood at a corner with a stick in his hand, anxiously gazing down a dark alleyway. The boys were on the lookout for rival gang members, said their friend, 20-year-old Linber Anej.
The “gangs” on Ebeye are not organized around illegal activity or drug dealing in the way many U.S. gangs are. They are more like neighborhood groups that kids join to gain a sense of identity, Anej said.
“If they see a movie that’s like gangsters, they’ll do that,” Anej said. “They want to be a hero.” He said a favorite movie on Ebeye is Deuces Wild, which features big gangs fighting with sticks and chains. Scenes like that give kids on Ebeye a sense of excitement and purpose, Anej said. Teenage gang members occasionally break into fights using rocks and boards as weapons, according to Anej and others. Guns are banned on Ebeye.
Thelma Jack wanted something different for her son Nikko, so they moved from Ebeye to the United States with her husband, an American who had been employed at the Army base on Kwajalein. Nikko Jack now is 22 and lives in Springdale. He works at factory jobs and plays music at a Marshallese
nightclub in Springdale.
Like most Marshallese in Arkansas, he says it’s unlikely he will move back to the islands. But he hasn’t abandoned his culture altogether. He still speaks Marshallese at home and loves Springdale because he can be among other Marshallese.
The nightclub where he plays is a former Hispanic bar that until recently had advertisements in Spanish painted on the window. On a typical night, 150 Marshallese visit the club and dance to music from their homeland. Like their peers on Ebeye, many wear trendy American clothes. Nikko Jack seemed puzzled when asked if the alaps and iroij had any power in Springdale, where tribal land rights have been replaced with leases and mortgages. He recommended asking an “old” person about the matter.
“I don’t really know about the system,” he said.
Marshallese parents in Springdale say it’s tough to raise their kids according to their native custom amid theAmerican influence. But it’s obvious they are trying. Ninety-eight percent of the Marshallese in Arkansas speak their native language at home — the same proportion as families on the islands, according to a U.S. Census survey.
Families keep other trappings of their culture alive, as well.
In early December, Marshallese church groups began practicing for the coming Christmas celebration. Just like their relatives back on Majuro, they gathered every night to practice dances and songs that were to be performed at big church gatherings on Christmas Day.
On a bone-chilling night in mid-December, a few minivans were parked in front of a house on Parker Avenue in downtown Springdale. Inside, the front living room was virtually bare, except for couches pushed against the walls. As the evening progressed, Marshallese neighbors and friends arrived to practice for the Christmas performance. By 9 p.m., there were 12 dancers standing in three rows in the middle of the room, moving to the rapid beat of a synthesizer keyboard.
The group practiced an old dance from the islands as the men sang a song about a crab that steals food from a campsite. The dancers got down on all fours, planting their arms on the carpet and kicking their legs around like skittering crabs. Two old men laughed as they sang along.
The children practiced a new dance, this one about their new homeland. They held their arms out and bobbed as if they were riding horses. Then they turned and formed six-shooters with their hands, firing right, then left. Finally they wheeled their arms over their heads as if they held lassos, and cried: “Yeehaw, Yeehaw,” in time with the music.
This new song is “The Cowboy.”
Many of these youngsters may never see the islands. Adult islanders like Nikko Jack often are evasive about returning home. “Time will tell,” he says. “You don’t know when you’re going to go back.”

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