Peter Rudiak-Gould Interview
Author of 'Surviving Paradise - One Year on a Disappearing Island'
Who are some of your influences as a writer?
I admire writers who can craft extremely clean, beautifully wrought prose, where every word is impeccably chosen and not a single word is wasted. (The previous sentence would not be a particularly good example of this.) Alain de Botton manages to do this, and I love his books. I was influenced by some of his essays in The Art of Travel, especially the one about his trip to Barbados – he shows how the expectation and the recollection of travel are idealized, while the second-to-second reality of being abroad is hardly different from existing anywhere else.
A few people have said that my writing reminds them of Paul Theroux, and although that pleases me, I have to admit that I only started reading his books after writing mine. But I’ve learned a lot from him. One is that a talented writer can make even boredom interesting. Another is that it is okay to be a grumpy travel writer as long as you are lucidly grumpy. I’m not a misanthrope like him, but I do spend a lot of time and energy deconstructing various romantic myths of life in paradise, so there’s something in common there. The epigraph of my book (“The very name of the Pacific is a misnomer”) is Theroux’s, from The Happy Isles of Oceania.
How much planning was needed and what made you choose the Marshall Islands for this adventure?
I wish I could give some detailed reason why the Marshall Islands (as opposed to Bhutan, or Chad, or the Federated States of Micronesia) was exactly the one place that I yearned to visit more than any other, but the truth is that it just sort of happened. I knew I wanted to go somewhere thrillingly remote where I could test myself to the breaking point, and perhaps find some sort of Shangri-la. (I didn’t admit to myself that I hoped for that, but I did.) Then I found out about a program that seemed to offer that exact opportunity, in a country in the Pacific that I had scarcely heard of. (The fact that I had scarcely heard of the Marshall Islands didn’t deter me; I think it encouraged me.) After that, the planning was straightforward. The volunteer organization, WorldTeach, did most of the hard work. All I had to do was tell them how much I wanted to be placed on the remotest possible island, and then pack what I thought I needed. No visa requirement, even, because the Marshall Islands and the United States have an agreement whereby citizens from either country can live, study, and work in the other country as long as they want. So the logistics were easy; the experience once I got there was not.
What was your most memorable experience?
Here’s one that I’ll never forget. In December, the people of Ujae were gearing up for Gospel Day, a Marshallese holiday commemorating the arrival of the first missionaries in their country in 1857. The people had constructed a large model of the Morning Star, the ship that brought these proselytizers, and decorated the model with things like a bible, a book of matches, and sails made with dollar bills – representing some of the things that these foreigners had introduced. Just one thing was missing in that list: a white person. Luckily, there was one white person on the island: me. So when they pulled this model ship into the church during the festivities, they had a real live Caucasian in it, carrying a bible. This was more than a little ironic, though, because I was the only non-Christian on the island.
You ate some strange things on Ujae, but what would you say was the strangest?
Various appendages and organs of a seaturtle. They catch them whenever they can—which is not very often nowadays, since seaturtle numbers are dwindling—and bring them back live to the island. There is so much food on a single one of the beasts that the lucky hunters share the food with everyone rather than just within their families. They eat almost every part that you can think of. The greatest delicacy is the wiwi, or fat; but there seems to be a rule that the greater the delicacy in one culture, the more revolting it is to people from other cultures. At a feast, I was fed seaturtle flippers, intestines, meat, eggs, and fat. I enjoyed each as a cultural experience, but not as a culinary one.
How did you feel when your parents visited your new remote atoll home?
Well, there’s the obvious joy of seeing familiar faces after so long (and the book is dedicated to my parents partly for that reason), but it was so much more complicated than that. One of the appeals of seeing someone from your old world is a somewhat self-centered pleasure: it reminds you of just how much you have progressed. Compared to those newbies (who are just like you when you first arrived), you are a veteran of the culture; compared to these outsiders, you are an insider. I wrote in my book: “As my real parents struggled to open a coconut, my Marshallese parents watched with the same amused fascination with which we would watch a Kalahari bushman struggling to open a Coke can.” And I joined them in that amused fascination. It’s easy to forget, during the day-to-day difficulties of living in a foreign culture, that you really have achieved some level of adjustment.
How different was Ujae when you visited the second time?
My first impression was that it was outrageously indistinguishable; it was as if no time had passed at all. And indeed, there’s a natural solipsism that makes it hard to imagine that places continue existing after one has left them.
Then I noticed some alterations. There were more things around – DVD players, electric lights. If you multiple that three-year change by ten, you can see that in a generation Ujae could be a very different place – materially, if not psychologically. It struck me that modernity isn’t something people choose all at once; they don’t sit down one day and say “This ‘modernity’ thing seems better than what we’ve got now; let’s try it out” and then bring in modernity as a package. Rather, individuals make small everyday decisions, and these small decisions, collected over time, create modernity. Someone says “I’d rather be able to wash my hands without going outside”, so they install running water. Someone says “I’d love to see that new movie”, so they buy a VCR or DVD player. Then they need money to afford these things, so they get jobs, join the cash economy, and things change. It’s only later that you start to ask the question of whether it was worth it.
Also, my second time on Ujae, there seemed to be more coastal erosion than three years before, although it’s hard to know if that’s really the result of global warming. Like modernity, climate change is a process that creeps up slowly over time, and which no one chooses, but rather happens as a result of many small everyday decisions.
What advice would give to someone wanting to follow in your footsteps and experience such an isolated culture?
I sincerely hope that you have a wonderful time, that you love the people, the climate, the food, and the music. But if you don’t—and there’s a possibility you won’t—don’t jump to the conclusion that it’s a personal failing. Some manuals on cross-cultural adjustment make it sound like only arrogant, ethnocentric losers fail to adore the culture they’re visiting. I’m not so sure about that. A culture is like a person: some aspects will delight you, others will irk you, and a few will disturb you. Some of the irksome or disturbing bits you will eventually learn to appreciate; some of them you never will. And, like people, you will find it far easier to get along with some cultures than others. For instance, some Americans have nothing but good times in the Marshall Islands; I wasn’t one of them. Some Americans are driven batty by British culture; I love it. Just as you wouldn’t reproach yourself for not wanting to befriend every single person in the world, don’t reproach yourself for not adoring spending time in a particular foreign culture, if you have made good efforts to understand it. Respect and enjoyment are not the same thing; that’s the most fundamental point I’m trying to make here.
Peter Rudiak-Gould's 'Surviving Paradise - One Year on a Disappearing Island' is released in the UK on 7th January 2010
Passionate about travel?
For the latest things to do and sights to see around the world,
follow Travel Titbits on Twitter, click here
Print