Situational Starvation - Holy cow I looked good!

(Before I begin, I would like to apologize for the delay in my posts.  Its been somewhere around a few weeks and I have not posted, so I am terribly sorry.)

So you know when people say that they are starving.  I happen to do this all the time.  I say I'm starving and then I look into my cupboard (which happens to be full of food) and state the fact that I have absolutely nothing to eat (all lies).  Well, I have been in a situation where I had no food - literally!

So Utrik is super far north of the capital (about 250 miles) and because it is that far north, boats/ships/yachts don't come very often.  And that means the lagoon stays fairly empty.  And when the plane breaks down, and the food ship stays in the Majuro harbor because it keeps breaking down/people keep adding more food to it - the island will run out of food.  Just saying...

So around the month of December, food on island began running low.  Everyone was low on rice, low on flour, there was absolutely no sugar (which I guess was a good thing).  But there was still food around.  We ate this stuff (I'm forgetting the name - my bad) made out of fermented breadfruit.  Sounds gross, and it was.  yum....  So I left Utrik for midservice in Majuro (the land of dairy!!!!  AND VEGGIES!!!!).  WorldTeach required us to come in and discuss what was going well and what was not going so well on island, with our host family, and inside the classroom.  Holy cow, cheese and yogurt never tasted so good.  But alas, it was time to go back on island.  And what a surprise awaited me there...

So I get back to island, and all the food is gone.  There is no rice, no four, no fermented breadfruit, and all the local produce was out of season/not ripe.  And because Baba (host dad) was on the capital island, we had no steady supply of fish.  And fishing wasn't too good either.  Max (the other WT volunteer with me on island) said that his host dad (who is a great fisherman by the way) wasn't doing too good either.  It was like all the fish banned together and decided not to get caught (either by spear or   fish trap).  There was one neighbor who feed us.  His fish was super tiny and extremely deep-fried - like black deep fried - like I could literally eat the whole fish (bones and all) and it tasted like burnt grease fish.  Well, now that the island was out of imported/ tree based food/ sea based food, it was time to dig.

We now got to eat this stuff called muk-a-muk.  The finished product looks like a clear jello/jelly combo rolled in coconut shavings.  It tasted like magic in my mouth (okay, well, super bad magic, or maybe like fecal magic)

Here it is folks!  The main attraction! Lets give a hand for - MUK-A-MUK!!!!!

It takes some work to make the muk-a-muk.  When you dig it up, it looks like a potato.  I sure wish it tasted like a potato.  So after grinding the potato looking thing into a puke color puke texture mush (the same stuff Carbit made a penis out of - please see one of the previous posts for the reference), you grate it with water and let it sit.  The end product is this white powder/chalk looking stuff.  Well, just heat that stuff up and *bam* (pretend a magic poof just showed up), you have muk-a-muk.  So yeah, I ate this stuff for about a month for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.  At one point, I was thinking about a hunger strike until and then I realized, I already was on one (partially).

Max eating some wonderfully tasting muk-a-muk.
Don't gag it up now.

YUMMY!  YUMMY!  YUMMY!

 So when that food ship came, man, that was amazing!  I'm pretty sure I ate more calories in the one day the ship came back then the past 4 days combined.  And then we all had a shit show (literally - like massive pooping all over island because people were over eating/holy cow - fiber!!)  And so I took this picture of my situational starvation results.  I thought I looked pretty good.  Maybe that should be my new diet book that will make me famous - locational situational starvation.

I thought I looked pretty good from eating only muk-a-muk.

Sign up here for the tour.

Why hello again, its me, Beth Kopay.  And for this post, I want to write about something more upbeat and happy.  Because lets face it, the last two posts have been rather dark.  So I thought it would be a great idea to give you a tour of the island.  As mentioned before, I was on Utrik, one of the furthest northern islands in the Marshall Islands.  Over the course of the year, I learned to love the island, and everything it embodies.  The people, the place, the love, the hate, everything.  And I feel that it isn't really fair for me to just explain my feelings, for most of you have never been there before.  How can I describe a place and get equal justice from all?  It would be bias towards my opinion, my way of life, my views, and whatever else goes on inside my head.  So on my last few days on island, I took a jambo (or a walk) with my camera, and taped my process.  I started down on my end of the island, and past the school, past Max's house, past the different churches, until I got to the sea.  And now I want to take you on a tour of Utrik.  So please buckle your seat belts, and keep your hands and feet inside the moving vehicle at all times.  Sit back and enjoy the ride.

(Okay, so my video was too large to post on this site, but its up on youtube.  So here is the link! But in order to keep you company for now, here is a video of my host sister, Bajin (with the colorful bands in her hair), and her friend, Tine (with the flowers) dancing.  Its super cute!)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xFaynVReKs

My boyfriend aka the dude I watched movies with

So I am afraid to say that I had a Marshallese boyfriend on island.  Yep.  But it wasn't the typical "boyfriend".  The only thing we ever did was watch movies together.  Yep.  So exciting, really, I can't contain it anymore.  Well, I actually regret the whole situation.  It ended pretty grim and full of guilt.  But before I get to the end, I probably should start at the beginning.

It all started when I was helping to make dinner for the Christmas dancing practice.  I was at a neighbor's house, flipping pancakes I believe (or maybe I was mashing pandanus, not quite sure), and just minding my own business.  Carbit (see right) or the dude who I would soon be watching movies with, came to the house and started to scrap out a coconut.  Well, I thought he was kind of cute.  And that's where the trouble all started.

So the next day, I tell my mama that the guy who came over for the coconut scraping was cute.  I asked her what his name was, and if he was married.  At the time he was single.  Well, that was the last time I am going to tell any parent that I think a dude is cute.  Okay, so flash forward until after mid-service and I come back to Utrik.  And next thing I know, Carbit is over ALL the time.  And now the new rumor is that he is my boyfriend.  Yeah, I'm not quite sure when this happened, but next thing you know, random dudes keep coming to my house and asking where he is.  And now everyone thinks that we are having mad passionate love banging sessions out in the jungle.  Oh coconuts (include a knee slap)- that's not happening.

So up until this point, I was under the impression that Carbit did not speak English.  Haha, I was wrong.  The one night the entire family was making muk-a-muk (our island ran out of food - no joke- and look forward to this topic in a future post) and Carbit and some of his friends were over helping.  Well, we were done for the night and just playing with the left over gunk. I was going through winter withdrawal and made a snowman.  Carbit, on the other hand, made me a penis.  He also told me IN PERFECT ENGLISH  that I should hold on to it and I could cherish it forever.  Yep.  He made me a penis.  And that was how I found out he could speak English.  I was actually in a more of a state of shock that he spoke English than what he actually made me.

Alright, so things go pretty smoothly.  We watch movies.  And more movies.  And more movies.  That was honestly the only form of entertainment on island.  And with Mama, we would go on these late night walks to get movies from other houses.  I hated these walks - because I was either reading, or writing a letter, or watching another movie.  These walks become very important later on this in post.

Well, the food ship comes (YAY!!!!) and now Mama and Brenita (she was pregnant and because she was young (like 15 years old) Mama wanted her to have the baby in Majuro) leave to go to Majuro and Baba comes back.  So at one point, I was living with just Mama and the kids, and now its just Baba and the kids.  Carbit keeps coming over to watch movies, and drink.  I didn't realize just how much of an alcoholic he was until we started talking.  Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure I haven't spoken to him when he was sober... ever.  Okay, so things are still smooth.

Well well well, the rumors start flying not that Mama is gone.  So apparently Carbit was having sex with Mama (not true, at least I don't think its true), and Carbit was escorting Mama to different other guys to have sex with them (not true, or at least I don't think it was true) - and this is where the late night walks come into play.  Yeah, Baba just keeps asking me if this is true, and of course its not.  And Baba keeps telling me that everyone on island is talking Mama and Carbit.  (And another rumor is that Mama and Carbit were having passionate love banging sessions in my room.  HAHA  Yeah, the only thing happening in my room was me sleeping.  No one was getting any action - whatsoever.)

And now Baba can't handle the rumors anymore, and decides to take matters into his own hands, and a hammer.  Baba beats Carbit up with a hammer.  A FREAKING HAMMER!  Yep - its sounds too stupid to make up and sounds too stupid to be real.  So that is how Carbit and I stopped watching movies together.  And then Baba turned into a drunk.  Yeah, so from then on, I got to watch movies by myself.  Sigh, oh well...