Interview with Writer and Budding Anthropologist Peter Rudiak-Gould
The Mindful Tourist is thrilled to have been able to sit down (virtually) with Peter Rudiak-Gould, author of Surviving Paradise, a memoir we recently reviewed right here on this site. We talked with Peter about his new book, his experiences on Ujae, and his travels.
Mindful Tourist: As I mentioned in my review of your book, as I read it, I was continually surprised at the way you were able to write this account with such maturity, truth, and objectivity only a few years after experiencing it. So, my question is: isn’t it true that you are a 57 year old man who experienced this many years ago and took seven whole years to write the book?
Peter Rudiak-Gould: You caught me! But seriously – although I did write the first draft almost immediately after returning from the Marshall Islands at the age of 22, it took about four years of on-and-off revision to fix that first draft into something readable. Also, I studied anthropology after coming back from the Marshall Islands, so that helped me make more sense of the experience. And I have the strange habit of reflecting on “past” events while they are still happening – anticipatory nostalgia, you could call it. I was looking back at my experience on Ujae while I was still living there. But I never dreamed I’d write a book about the experience until I came back to the States.
MT: Do you expect your Ujae friends to read this book? What do you think they will think about it and about you if they do read it?
PRG: Unfortunately, most of them won’t be able to read it because they don’t speak English very well. But I put a short acknowledgments section in the Marshallese language, thanking the people who helped me on Ujae, so they should see that, and I sent a copy to Ujae’s chief. To be honest, the book is so much about what it is like for a Westerner to live in the Marshall Islands that Marshallese people might find the book quite foreign, despite it being set in their country. However, from the conversations I’ve had, they don’t seem to mind this – they accept that the book is intended for foreigners and they’re pleased that people outside of the Marshall Islands will learn about their culture.
MT: You never reconciled your disdain for the educational system, including the de-emphasis on education by adults, in Ujae, but you mentioned in your epilogue that it seemed it was getting better. What do you think the future holds for the educational system in Ujae and the Marshall Islands in general?
PRG: One thing to keep in mind is that the educational system on Ujae is one of the worst in the Marshall Islands, rather than the average. Education isn’t quite so bad elsewhere in the country, and a few schools are actually very good. So the situation is not hopeless. The big question is whether a good educational system—or any other development goal of the country—will be achieved before the country gets devastated by climate change. Some would take this to mean that they might as well not invest in things like this, because their country is doomed. But I disagree. Education, unlike physical infrastructure, can be taken with you even if the country becomes a ghost town. It’s not a lost investment. And, as a climate change activist friend of mine in the Marshall Islands has pointed out, education is a “no regrets” strategy for adapting to climate change. A giant seawall could be worse than the thing it’s trying to prevent, but more education about the problem is never a bad thing.
MT: You are clearly a Writer, with a capital W. Right now you’re a PhD candidate in cultural anthropology at Oxford University. Do you plan to continue your non-academic writing in addition to your other career pursuits?
PRG: Absolutely! I want to write for both an academic and a popular audience. My hunch is that good writing breaks down the boundary between those two audiences anyway. Darwin’s On the Origin of Species was written for a general audience, but no one complains that it’s low-brow. I’m also lucky enough to have a topic—climate change—which is in vogue both in academia and outside of it. I would love to be a popularizer of anthropology. There is no reason at all that anthropology should not be of interest to people, since it is, after all, about people.
MT: The one thing I wished was in the book that wasn’t were photos. Any thought to include them?
PRG: I would have loved to include some photos. There was some talk of having an insert in the book, but it didn’t happen in the end. The reasoning was that, in this day and age, it makes more economic sense to have photos online – so I’ll put them on my website (www.peterrg.com) shortly!
MT: Can you tell Mindful Tourist readers a little more about your dissertation topic, climate change leading to the possibility that these islands will cease to exist sooner rather than later? What have you found that Ujae Islanders think about this?
PRG: I read a lot of stories in the news about how islanders are already being devastated by sea level rise, and are terrified for their future. The truth is more subtle and more insidious. There is some visible environmental change in the Marshall Islands, but for the most part life goes on as it did before anyone had heard of climate change. So the question I’m trying to answer is not ‘What happens when your country is destroyed?’ but rather ‘What happens when scientists come and tell you that your country will be destroyed?’ Many Marshall Islanders wholeheartedly believe in this doomsday prophecy. People already talk frequently about how life is getting worse, so the idea of climate change is easy to believe. On the other hand, not everyone is convinced by it. People don’t always trust scientists, either because of their association with the country’s history of nuclear testing, or because science is seen to contradict Biblical teaching. There is a passage in the Bible in which God promises never to flood the earth again, and this is used to challenge the scientific predictions. One finding that surprised me was that Marshall Islanders don’t usually blame the industrialized countries for climate change, but prefer to blame all people everywhere, including themselves in quite a serious way. This is my “elevator speech” version of my research, but stay tuned for more details.
MT: Your descriptions of feeling lonely while at the same time being constantly watched and sometimes smothered with attention were almost painful. Much of that seems to be at the beginning before you learned the language and could communicate in a meaningful way. Later, you talk about how being a white man who speaks Marshallese opened doors for you and seemed to encourage more accepting behavior from Marshall Islanders. Is language truly the way we form bonds and commonalities with one other?
PRG: I think it’s only the way that we communicate those commonalities. You and I could speak the same language yet have nothing else in common and so never bond. That’s what happened in the Marshall Islands. It’s true that speaking the language opened many doors for me (not just because it allowed me to communicate with people, but also because it proved to people that I had a serious interest in their culture). But the more formidable barrier—the cultural one—remained, and never really went away. Even when doing anthropological fieldwork, it remained. I would probably be able to relate to a Westerner in the Marshallese language more easily than a Marshallese person in English.
MT: What are some things Western cultures could learn from the Marshallese culture?
PRG: A certain humility about what one can accomplish. A more relaxed pace of life. Inclusiveness – on Ujae, no child is an outcast, and a person with a disability is just another member of the family and the village. The life of the shy person is definitely far, far easier in the Marshall Islands than in the West. But all of these wonderful qualities have downsides, too. For instance, the inclusiveness—the desire to appease everyone and offend no one—might make it difficult to pursue solutions that require confrontation. What makes Marshallese culture wonderful is probably also what makes it flawed, and the same is true of Western culture. So we can learn a lot by seeing the different way of life of Marshallese people, but we would have to think long and hard about whether we could import any of their values and whether we would want to.
MT: Why don’t we Westerners have etetal momonana and what can we do to get it?
PRG: Etetal momonana literally means “walking around, eating again and again” – it’s a Marshallese proverb describing how people should be able to walk around a village and be fed by everyone. To a large extent, people live up to this ideal in the Marshall Islands. If we Westerners don’t follow it, I think it has less to do with being stingy and more to do with being busy. Marshall Islanders are not just doling out food when a guest arrives, but sitting down with that guest and having a long chat. If we wanted to adopt etetal momonana, we would have to give up some of our busyness. And since we often choose that busyness freely, out of ambition or enthusiasm, we would have to be prepared to make a few sacrifices if we wanted to do as the Marshallese do.
MT: What you did was clearly not tourism, not even what people are now calling “voluntourism.” Are there eco-friendly and socially conscious ways to be a tourist in the Marshall Islands? What would attract tourists there?
PRG: The only ethical problem I see with traveling to the Marshall Islands is that it’s a long flight there, so the carbon footprint is large. You can carbon offset it – a lot of people criticize the idea of carbon offsetting, but I think that it’s at least better than nothing. Once you’re there, you won’t do any damage. The country is not overtouristed by any stretch of the imagination – you will not be disturbing a fragile ecosystem or a “pristine” culture. People will be happy that you came. Just dress modestly (if you’re a woman), be friendly to people, and ask permission to go to islands other than the capital city. The scenery is lovely and the coral reefs are beyond lovely. There are impressive Japanese war relics on some atolls. Although it’s hard to get out there, if you can manage to reach Bikini Atoll, you can scuba dive around an aircraft carrier that was sunk intentionally during the nuclear testing. (Don’t worry, it’s perfectly safe to visit, even at ground zero.) For longer trips, you could volunteer with WorldTeach (www.worldteach.org), which is what I did. There are other jobs available, too, and American citizens can live and work in the Marshall Islands for as long as they want with no questions asked.
MT: After spending so much time in another culture as a volunteer and now in your fieldwork, do you have time to travel for pleasure? If so, where do you like to go or where would you like to go and why?
PRG: I feel like I’m traveling every day, in that I’m surrounded by intriguingly different things. I’m an American living in England, and in one of its stranger and lovelier cities to boot. I’m also in academia, which can be considered an exotic travel destination in itself, full of strange customs and values. I’ve gotten to do some research in the Norwegian Arctic, and go to conferences in Ireland and New Zealand, so I definitely feel travel-fulfilled. I would love to explore more of the Pacific, especially the Melanesian countries, and I’ve become a serious Europaphile as well.
Peter Rudiak-Gould, photo courtesy of Oxford University
Thanks, Peter, for your time. You can learn more about Peter Rudiak-Gould, his new book, Surviving Paradise, and his current work in the Marshall Islands, at his website.
Fascinating interview! I love “Etetal momonana”-may we all seek to have that in our lives.