Marshall Islands NOW!
Boat Safety at Jaluit High School!
2011 Volunteer Justin Behravesh and other WorldTeach volunteers plan to lead classes on boat safety throughout the Islands.
Reflections from the Field
Kathleen Coulter on RMI history, preserving culture, and the warmth of her host country
Kathleen writes, "The people here welcomed me so easily, so eagerly. Nearly everyone here is related and, from the beginning, they have included me as a member of their family. They've taught me to speak kajin Majol, which I've picked up pretty quickly, and to climb palm trees, which I have not. I've sung and danced to ukulele at birthday parties and I've paid my respects at funerals.
I cook chicken and fry fish over the fire with my host mother. With the women, I wash laundry on sunny afternoons, scrubbing my culturally appropriate dresses and skirts with a brush. I lie on the floor of our two-room house and tutor my sisters in geography, peppering my lessons with stories about places I've traveled.
The Marshallese love to learn. I see more dedication and respect for education in our five-room schoolhouse than I ever have back home. My students have real-life responsibilities, fishing to put food on the table, making copra (dried coconut meat) and handicrafts to support their families. Yet I have perfect attendance." Read the full article on Naplesnews.com.
Local Girls' Club makes Headlines!
2011 Volunteer Shaun Reid starts a 7th and 8th grade Girl's Club at Wotje Elementary School
Shaun says, "I began a Girls' Club to provide a place where girls can learn about issues affecting them today. . . My objective in creating this club is to empower the students by encouraging a support system within the club as well as encouraging them to gain leadership experience." Read the article in the Bok Melele.
Celebrate the Beard
Remembering WorldTeach volunteer James de Brueys
The parents of James de Brueys, a 2010 WorldTeach volunteer who never returned from a boating trip in the Marshall Islands, have found the best way to cope with their son's disappearance is to finish and extend what he started. The basketball court the family and others built and helped to fund in tribute to those lost at sea was completed in December. The Baton Rouge Advocate reports:
"How do you move on when your son is lost at sea on the other side of the globe? Mary and Jim de Brueys would say you don’t. Or you can’t.
What the Baton Rouge couple said they have managed to do in the year since the U.S. Coast Guard called off the 8-day search and rescue operation for their son, James de Brueys, 22, is to continue to live their lives. The lives they lead now are in part a tribute to and extension of the work their son started when he taught English to children and adults on the remote Arno Atoll in the Marshall Islands, they said. . .
That basketball court was partly how Mary and Jim de Brueys started living their life again, they said. “James wrote to us in letters that he wanted to somehow get his kids a basketball court,” Mary de Brueys. Before he died, James Brueys told his friends that if they wanted to donate money to build a court, they could send the money to his parents. After he disappeared, his parents and members of the Bayou Beard Association raised money by selling specially made T-shirts with a mustache logo and the message, “Celebrate the Beard. Come Home Soon James.” That money and other money the family raised was used for materials to build the court. Volunteers crushed ocean coral and mixed it with cement to build the court. The court is now in the middle of a jungle behind the tiny schoolhouse where James de Brueys taught. A 1,500-pound sign with the names of those lost at sea sits near the basketball court." Read the full article here.
Catch the latest Sea Breeze!
Liz Reich shares with us Kwajelein Atoll High School's latest newsletter! This month in Kwajalein and surrounding islets, residents celebrate 60 plus years of freedom on Liberation Day:
"In Ebeye, people start the ceremony with a parade in which schools and volunteers participate by going around the Island on floats. Its been 60 plus years since World War II in the Marshall Islands ended. This celebration starts every February 9th and it is important for this generation of children to know the history of the Islands; without the past, there wouldn't be any future."
Read on for tales about tails, Liberation Day festivities, an election review and much more!
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