Flexibility 101 (Jaben Ebata)

An immediate task I inherited as High School Principal was to organize and lead a two day retreat on a small island for 90 plus junior and high school students. This event was budgeted and paid for through a Substance Abuse Prevention Team grant. I am happy to say I live to tell the story!

I am also happy to say I have a great staff! They are all team players and of course, each one brings his/her strengths to the table. They are smart, funny, and raring to go. They love kids and it’s all good. We spent many hours as a team agonizing over a schedule that met the objectives of teambuilding, substance abuse prevention, and fun for all. We shopped for the food and bought the supplies. The Cabana Boy pitched in and ran more errands for a day.

There were a couple of interesting glitches in our preparations. Our shopping included 16 five gallon bottles of drinking water. When I called the manager he was happy to oblige, selling us the water without the typical $10 deposit for each bottle. The next day (after Willard had paid for the water), however, he called and said sorry, bring in the $160 deposit. Another trip. We also ordered 27 loaves of bread from the local Wellness Center. I did this in person with the manager of the center and agreed on the price and time of pick-up. When my cohort showed up for the bread on the afternoon before our departure, he had forgotten our conversation completely. So they were up all night baking bread and Kathy made a second visit at 7 AM the next morning. No worries (that’s jaben ebata in Marshallese), we were ready to go! That is, except, we needed to make our plates.

For our plates, a lovely family donated a pick-up load of palm fronds from their property. It was delivered Wednesday after school and the students who were hanging around unloaded them. One of our Marshallese staff, Helle, got out his machete and showed us how it was done. He cut the tip off, and then split it down the middle. He then cut two pieces with an equal number of “leaves” of the frond. Then he sat “criss-cross applesauce” style on the ground and wove. When he finished the weaving, he tied the loose ends into knots. The kids then worked for the next two hours creating over a hundred bio-degradable, and very effective plates for our trip. Now we were ready!

We load the supplies (3 runs with 2 vehicles back and forth to the dock) and we are all at the dock at 8 AM ready to go. The sun is shining; all is great! There are two boats that are going to make two trips each. Will and I are in the second boat. After the captain realizes the battery is dead and gets a fresh one, we get a mile off shore and the boat overheats. Back we go. They water it up and we take off again. This time we get half way to our destination. The boat is still overheating. So as boat #1 is now on the return, it picks us up in the middle of the lagoon (we transfer 20 of us, mostly students, into another boat that is barely big enough for us, and note, there are NO life jackets on board either vessel. Also, it turns out that most Marshallese are not good swimmers.) and takes us to Eneko. We are all supposed to be on the island at 9:00 doing our scheduled activities but by the time the last group straggles in, it is 11:00 and time to prepare lunch.

Oh, at this point I need to mention there is a volleyball court on the island. It is one of the favorite pastimes of the Marshallese – they LOVE volleyball! So to kill time, they all start playing and guess who kills a ball in the first 15 minutes of the game? Yes, Mischief owes yet another family a volleyball. But I digress.

My amazing staff regroups and decides what to ditch in the way of our schedule since we have lost 2 hours. We proceed. We welcome students, go over rules, make lunch, erect a monster tent cover, put up tents, and prepare the chicken marinade for dinner. Then Beach Olympics. This about kills the ribelles because it is a HOT day and we are cooking. The sunscreen is not as effective as we’d like. But it’s fun and the kids are having a ball. Water kickball, volleyball, tug-o-war, and a fill the container w/ water relay are all going. Then we have free swim. We encourage everyone to stay hydrated and we are not concerned because we have at least ½ gallon of water per day per person. On to dinner. Well, we did forget tongs and a few other things but we barbeque 50 pounds of chicken, cook 15 pounds of rice and peel and slice 25 pounds of papaya. Time to eat, and of course, the staff eats last. One minute there is a ton of chicken on the platter and I am inwardly wondering WHY we bought so much chicken and the next minute four staff, including Willard and I, are eating a rice only dinner because the chicken and the papaya are gone. Oh well. By this time it is dark (dinner prep ran late) and we are running on a single light bulb. We also notice the drinking water is really low – we are down to 3 – five gallon bottles for our next day. One of my amazing staffers says, “no worries (jaben ebata), we’ll just take tap water and boil it, never mind that it will take an hour to get it up to boil.” Beautiful, I am happy for the solution. But oops, the tap water has run out because our teenagers have used it up on their showers (remember the catchment system?). Now I am stressed. Meanwhile the kids are oblivious. They play their ukuleles and guitars, make s’mores, and carry-on. The staff, by this time, are dying on the vine. We are dog-tired and can’t wait until 11:00 when we can put them all in their tents. But when 11:00 rolls around we realize the tents are not all up as we thought. So now we are putting up tents in the dark. Ouch. Finally, we are off to bed, all except the two who have to do their two hours of night-watch duty to make sure everyone stays put. I was happy to have the 5:00 to 7:00 shift so I could at least have 4 to 5 hours of continuous sleep. When I got up I noticed it was beginning to rain.

When I got to the shelter to make breakfast, there were a dozen bodies lying around. These were the students who slept outside without a tent and now moved to get out of the rain. Next year we’ll buy some more tents and insist they all have a tent to sleep in! We eat and get our activities going. Miss Katie has them all under the shelter and is well into her Facts About Alcohol and Tobacco presentation when Mr. Brian approaches me to let me know that it is going to POUR in about two minutes and everyone should get their personal belongings under cover NOW. So we interrupt Miss Katie’s spiel and off they go. We finally regroup and continue. We have to pause occasionally because it is raining so hard on the metal roofing, we can’t hear ourselves think. The kids are good though and they go with the flow. For one of our fun activities the Japanese teacher does her Japanese version of “Rock, Paper, Scissors.” She does an amazing job and everyone loves it. She has them play the game where the loser gets behind the winner and a train is formed. By the time the game is over the group is in one long train with one winner. Meanwhile, I am actually relieved that there is so much rain and it is much cooler because that means our low water supply is no longer a crisis. We are fine. The day continues with lots of improvising but we cover the intended content and everyone is doing well. I bring the kids in at 1:00 because the boat company has told us they will pick us up at 2:00. I harp at them to get packed up, take the tents down and pick up litter. Faster, faster! Miss Katie calls the boat company to confirm. Oops, no, they will come at 3:00. Oh well, there is volleyball to be played.

Two boats come at three but there are 16 of us who don’t fit. Oh well, there is still a volleyball on the premises, so all is good – we are still in jaben ebata mode. That is until a girl cuts her foot on a rock and is really bleeding and we realize the first aid kit is on one of the returning boats. Mr. David has his own personal supply with him which includes 1 band-aid in his wallet, some antibiotic cream, and a t-shirt he sacrifices to the cause. I am also a little concerned because the last of our water is on the boat too. I am really hoping the boat returns!

It does, and we all get back safe. Success! I have included the highlights of our odyssey but trust me there was more! All in all though, I think my staff and I have passed Flexibility 101!

 Love to all, Becky

P.S. Make sure you go to Willard's fishing story and see the pictures - they are up!