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Marshallese brothers each take life in the states in different strides.
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By Ginny Monk
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SPRINGDALE—The brothers won’t be able to bury their grandmother in her homeland. She won’t rest forever next to her husband in a grassy field.
He died on Sept. 11, 2000 in a car accident on the way home from his daughter’s birthday party and Chris Balos was reflecting on his grandfather’s death a year later while he watched a plane plow into the south tower of the World Trade Center.
Thousands of miles away, in the Marshall Islands, his brother Luther Balos, the brother who stayed behind in the islands, saw his American teacher crying and a few days later, the islanders gathered in parks in front of projectors for services to honor the Americans killed in the attacks.
Chris doesn’t want to bury his grandmother next to his grandfather on Majuro next to the grave shrouded in brown, opaque tiles because, as the planet heats up, water levels rise, the islands shrink and graves are being uprooted—torn from the ground and often swallowed by the frothy Pacific Ocean. The beaches are disappearing. The one in front of his grandmother’s house, where he and his family played bokur—a Marshallese version of football played with a coconut—as children is gone.
The Balos family left the Marshall Islands 26 years ago to get medical help for Chris in the United States. Then two years old, he couldn’t walk while he watched his younger brother was successfully toddling around the house. His grandmother’s house, a place the boys frequented as children, was surrounded by flowers. She was well-known on the islands for her gardening and planted many flowers that were not native to the Marshall Islands, Chris said. The boys’ mother had a handful and, when the third was born just before their move, she decided that her sister should raise him.
That left Luther to be raised by his auntie while his parents and brothers moved to Hawaii, starting the brothers on the path that would eventually lead to three drastically different views on how to preserve their Marshallese heritage as they live in a different world, and even if that culture is worth preserving.
Over the next few years, Chris went through therapy and surgeries in Hawaii. He stayed nights and weekends in the hospital and wore a black, metal halo around his head that forced his spine to straighten while his bones healed. Many nights, he would wake up from the tingling pain that shot down the length of his back. When he woke up, he would sing to himself. “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” and the Barney & Friends theme song.
“I think those are the stuff I remember because I was coming to a new culture, and you know it was different,” he said. He would walk with a cane for the first time three and a half years later.
They moved around a lot, looking for a better life. Hawaii. Washington. California. Guam. They finally settled in Springdale, along with thousands of other Marshallese people.
The Encyclopedia of Arkansas suggests that there are now about 4,300 Marshallese in Northwest Arkansas. The 2010 U.S. Census Bureau showed that there were 22,434 people who identified themselves as Marshallese living in the United States. This makes Arkansas home to the largest portion of the Marshallese population in the continental United States. Arkansas is second only to Hawaii, the second island the Balos family learned to call home.
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FIGHTING FOR HOME
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After about six years of living in Hawaii, Chris, now 28, still walks with a limp, although the physical ailment does not keep him from his work and passion—helping his people as more Marshallese move into Northwest Arkansas.
He went to college briefly attending a junior college in Sacramento, and dropped out when his family moved once again, this time to Northwest Arkansas. Despite the occasional nagging thought that he should go back and finish his degree, Chris stays busy working at the pharmaceutical branch of Walmart and with his political activism. He attends political rallies such as one in Russellville protesting the Diamond Pipeline that is scheduled be installed in Oklahoma, lobbies with legislators and talks to high school classes.
Chris works at Walmart, an outlier to the majority of Marshallese in Springdale who work mostly in the poultry industry. About three out of four Marshallese surveyed in a University of Arkansas 2012 study reported working for Tyson Foods, George’s Inc. or Butterball.
Although he does not work for the company, he spends his Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday nights there teaching English to workers. Tyson officials wanted to bring a literary program into the plant for their workers and reached out to one of the organizations Chris is involved with—the Ozark Literacy Council.
“It’s still a learning process for me,” he said.
He generally has between seven and 12 students each night. They sit together late into the night, speaking a mixture of English and Marshallese. Classes begin at 8 p.m. and end at 10, Chris said.
This blend of language is reminiscent of Chris’ upbringing. He grew up speaking Marshallese with his family but spoke English outside of the house. He said his mother is fluent in English.
Chris spoke with a low, careful voice, each word passed between his lips as if it had been meticulously selected for a moment like this.
“There’s a reason why our kids are saying ‘I’m not me anymore,’” he said.
Chris believes that preserving his culture will be impossible with no home to point back to, which is why he focuses much of his time and energy on raising awareness about global warming.
“We won’t have a culture without a homeland,” he said.
Although he is thankful for the opportunities moving to the United States has provided him, Chris said he wants to see Washington politicians do more to fight against the rising tide that threatens his islands. He spent time in Washington D.C. in June and met with representatives from Senator Tom Cotton and Steve Womack’s offices. He and other advocates also met with Senator John Boozman face-to-face.
“I felt good that they were able to talk to us,” he said.
Chris wants legislators to pass regulations to limit carbon emissions in the United States, because as one of the largest countries in the world, its residents produce millions of metric tons of greenhouse gases each year.
In 2014, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency recorded that the country emitted 6,870 million metric tons of greenhouse gases, about a 1 percent increase from 2013. The agency attributes this increase to weather changes and more cars driving on the roads.
Although the Marshall Islands’ emissions are “negligible in the global context,” its government has set a goal to cut emissions nearly in half by 2030. These emissions represent less than 0.00001 percent of the world’s greenhouse gases.
Despite being one of the world’s countries that contributes the least to pollution of the ozone layer, these islands are paying a hefty price.
“That’s why I’m doing this now because I’m pissed off now,” he said.
Chris is a member of the Citizens’ Climate Lobby, a grassroots advocacy organization that works to build on existing education about climate change and urges legislators to pass laws that would require fees for carbon emissions, according to the lobby’s website.
He works toward the education part of that goal by going and speaking to majority-Marshallese high school classes in Springdale about climate change and the impending consequences that face their homeland.
Chris attributes his passion for the Marshallese culture to his close relationship with his grandmother. He said he would have an attitude more akin to his brother’s if it weren’t for her influence.
He said he feels guilty for not having educated his brother Roderick Anidreb more about the Marshallese culture—the dancing, the language and the mentality.
“I should have done better,” he said, glancing across the McDonald’s table at his younger brother.
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Photos by Emma Schock
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EMBRACING A NEW CULTURE
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Roderick considers himself an American through-and-through, and while he supports Chris’ advocacy work, he thinks preserving the Marshallese culture in a foreign country is a near-impossible task. He moved out of his family home when graduated high school, breaking Marshallese tradition in the process.
He is the fourth brother in his family. His older brother Kucho Balos, who came to the states with his mother, now lives in California. Kucho and Chris moved to the United States as young children, leaving Luther behind. Roderick was born in the United States.
Roderick’s first memories are with his family in Hawaii, and he was educated entirely in the United States. His mother worked three jobs when the brothers were children to keep the family afloat. Roderick walked to school every morning by himself as a sixth grader.
His English is clear, although his mother spoke Marshallese to him when he was growing up. He has passed his mother’s native language on to his two children, although he said the words fall off his tongue in “broken Marshallese.”
Although he wants his children to be able to understand his home language, he said he does not want them to speak Marshallese at school.
“Just do what everybody does,” he said.
He sees the United States as a land of opportunity for his kids, especially compared to the Marshall Islands where the unemployment rate was at about 40 percent as of 1999, according to a study from the University of Michigan.
“The rich get richer and the poor get poorer,” he said. “The only people with money are the politicians.”
Many people live off the land in the islands and that level of poverty makes transitioning into the United States’ standards of living difficult, because people are happy with the lots bestowed on them, Roderick said.
“We don’t have that rush,” he said, punching the air. “We don’t have that thrive.”
This pursuit of the American dream has made connecting with his brothers on conversations about heritage and culture difficult.
His voice is louder than either of his brothers, rolling over their low, gentle tones.
“I’m trying to think how they think sometimes and it’s hard… I think what they’re preserving is faith,” he said, dipping his voice down to a softer volume.
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ADJUSTING TO THE STATES
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Luther, 24, grew up on the Marshall Islands, almost 7,000 miles away from his birth family. He joined them three years ago when he came over as an escort for his grandmother, meeting his brother Roderick for the first time in person after a lifetime of a relationship subsisting on phone calls.
His adoptive father died from diabetes when he was 14 and six months later, his adoptive mother was diagnosed with cervical cancer. After his father’s death, he started getting in contact with his family in America. His mother did not want to go through chemotherapy treatments and was never quite the same after her husband died, Luther said, casting his eyes down toward his hands.
“At the morgue, I was just looking at her and she was like a child,” he said.
She died not long after her diagnosis and Luther moved in with his grandmother. His birth mother came to the funeral and both Luther and his birth mother took photos, posing next to her body. These photos, stacked on top of each other, show that the two have the same round face, the same brown eyes. He finished high school and started college in the islands before coming the United States.
He was studying anthropology and archeology in the Marshall Islands and needed 27 more credits to get his associate’s degree, but since moving to the United States., he has not returned to school. He wanted to use his degree to travel the world.
“Egypt, Africa, Rome, England—anywhere historical … I want to travel mainly because of history,” he said. “I want to see the Leaning Tower of Pisa. I want to see the Eiffel Tower.”
Before college, he studied a Seventh-Day Adventist school where students were fined 25 cents if they spoke Marshallese. In high school, when the standards changed and Luther had grown used to speaking English at school, he was an outcast because the other students thought he should have been speaking Marshallese.
Because his elementary school didn’t teach Marshallese, Luther didn’t learn the alphabet until he was in high school.
Luther said the chronic poverty in the Marshall Islands makes it difficult to live there, especially in the face of a recent drought, which makes buying clean water expensive.
“People may make $2 a month,” he said.
Many of the islanders collect rainwater to drink by putting gutters on their houses that guide the drops to a container that may be 15 feet tall and between 5 and 7 feet in diameter. Collecting rainwater to drink is illegal in Arkansas, a reality that surprised Luther when he moved to Northwest Arkansas.
Because their culture and history is passed from generation to generation orally, Luther said he is doubtful that the civilization can be preserved without some sort of organized program. While he said he is supportive of Chris’ efforts to lobby for further climate control regulations, he said the struggle will be a difficult one.
“You’re going to have to be ready because this fight is going to take you down,” he said.
During his three years in the United States, he said he has experienced first-hand the struggle of keeping in touch with island culture when he more than 6,000 miles away, in landlocked Arkansas.
Luther speaks quietly, the words running out of his mouth in a cautious ebb and flow.
“I think even it’s how we’re raised,” he said. “I’m adopting a different culture just to survive.”
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WHAT’S AT STAKE
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Passed from generation to generation orally, the Marshallese culture is based on principles of kindness, integrity and loyalty.
“Our culture is taking care of each other,” Luther said. “You prosper by being kind.”
Roderick agreed with the idea, swinging his arm around to gesture to the entire restaurant where patrons were munching on hamburgers and crumpled napkins cluttered the brown tiled floor.
“Like, if a Marshallese walked in here, we would ask them to come sit with us, even if we didn’t know them,” he said.
The common phrase that expresses this is Jouj eo mour eo, which means “The more kind you are, the more prosperous you are.”
A prosperous life is also what is wished on babies at their kemems, the celebration of a first birthday. A kemem is one of the biggest celebrations of life the Marshallese have, Luther said. Oct. 29 marked what he estimated was his 10th kemem in Arkansas.
A long line of plastic tables was heavy with food. Family members, who wore blue floral shirts, served up fish, rice, doughnuts and an entire roasted pig on large, rectangular tin plates.
Some people ate, children chased each other around tables and a long line formed around the room as Luther stood to join the party-goers who got up to go wish the baby, Mathias, a happy birthday.
He sat at the front of the room, cooing in his mother’s lap. People dropped dollar bills on the blanket around him and said jeramon, the greeting used to mean happy birthday, but for the Marshallese, it has a deeper meaning. Jeramon is a wish for someone to “have a prosperous life,” Luther said.
About 200 people attended the kemem Saturday night, which Luther said was small compared to some he had attended in the Marshall islands, where families spend thousands of dollars and more than 800 people come.
“It’s not like a thing where you need an invitation,” Chris said. “The more the merrier.”
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Photos by Emma Schock
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WHAT’S BEEN LOST
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Situated about halfway between Hawaii and Australia, the Marshall Islands sit at an average of just 7 feet above sea level, a tiny string of pearls barely visible on a world map. High tide on the islands rushes in close to civilization, foamy white tongues of water lapping at the feet of children playing and the tires of trucks.
Estimates of water level rise show a global average of 3.1 millimeters per year from 1993 to 2009, about an 82 percent increase from the average from 1950 to 2009, which was 1.7 millimeters, according to data from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
By 2100, as much as 98 percent of the land in Rita Village, a section of Majuro, the atoll where the brothers are from, could be unlivable because of sea level rises in Rita Village. In the best-case scenario, at least 70 percent of the land would be underwater, according to projections from a 2014 study by Donna Davis.
The study stated that the ever-rising ocean could increase the stream of Marshallese migration to the United States that has been in place for years.
During World War II, migration was limited but the Balos’ grandmother had her first interaction with American people during that time, when the Japanese occupied the islands. Her father and his brothers gathered in midnight to swim out into the ocean, trying to escape the island and reach American ships lagooned nearby. They tied bags intended for storing coconuts to the top of sticks, put the Balos’ grandmother in the bags, held the sticks above the water and swam. Two of her sisters drowned in that escape attempt, Luther said, eyes darting over to the bedroom door behind which his grandmother was resting. A string of white seashells hung on the wall next to the door.
Daily air raids and starvation drove the Japanese out of the Marshall Islands, but the islands became a test zone for nuclear warfare. The United States dropped 67 nuclear bombs on the Bikini and Enewatak atolls. The wind carried ash and radioactive material across the islands when the largest bomb, “Bravo Shot,” dropped in 1954. Islanders who used to call Bikini and Enewatak home still cannot return. The Balos’ father’s family came from the Bikini Atoll. He moved with the family to Hawaii but he and their mother got divorced, and he returned to the islands when Luther was in high school.
In 1986, U.S. and island officials signed an agreement in Majuro called the Compact of Free Association that establishes a close relationship between the states and Republic of the Marshall Islands. The agreement keeps the islands as their own entity but promises that the United States will provide economic assistance, defense and give the Marshallese people to emigrate to the United States but not have to deal with the paperwork and limited rights that come with immigrant status.
This makes the United States a popular destination for the islanders, and Davis’ study predicts that it will become even more commonplace as the ocean displaces people from their homes. The brothers worry that as more people come to the United States, cultural preservation will be impossible without intervention from the government or an advocacy group.
“We need some kind of program,” Luther said. “There’s just nothing right now.”
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