Tiny-Island Tellers

By Daniel A. Kelin, II

A few years ago, the author first visited Iban Edwin and Jia Hisaiah, two storytellers in the Marshall Islands, to listen to and collect their stories.

Oh, yokwe, Dan!” That’s how Jia and Iban greet me. Jia Hisaiah and Iban Edwin live on a tiny island called Namdrik in the Marshall Islands, and are alab, or elders. Jia and Iban remember and tell bwebwenato, or stories. Yokwe is their way to welcome me to their island, to their house, and into their hearts. I’m very lucky to have been welcomed many times to the Marshall Islands to collect stories from Jia and Iban.

Located in the Pacific Ocean just north of the equator, the Marshall Islands are made up of more than one thousand separate islands. Spread over almost 800,000 square miles of water, the islands look as if someone scattered tiny dots of earth across the ocean. If they were put together, the islands wouldn’t fill half of Rhode Island.

Storyteller Iban Edwin

Around 3,000 years ago, people first sailed to these tiny islands in outrigger canoes. Were they lost? Did they sail there on purpose? No one really knows, but a distinct culture developed with its own stories, songs, and dances.

I work for a theater company in Hawai’i that celebrates the cultures of the Pacific Ocean by creating plays using their stories, songs, and dances.

When I visited the Marshall Islands, mostly the island of Namdrik, I collected stories to create a play about the life and culture there. Namdrik is like most of the other Marshall Islands—it has no electricity, no plumbing, and no cars. Islanders walk or ride bicycles. Namdrik is only half a mile wide at most and five miles long.

Jia and Iban were very nice to me when I arrived on Namdrik the first time, but they seemed unsure about sharing stories with me. The first story they told me was very short. When I asked about it, Iban told me that the ending could not be told to people from outside of Namdrik. And then they said they were done. Was I going to hear only one small piece of a story? I was unhappy.

When I gave them gifts to thank them for sharing some of their stories, everything changed. I didn’t know it, but I had broken a local custom. Sharing gifts is important on Namdrik, and I hadn’t offered any when I first arrived. In giving gifts to Iban and Jia, I became like a Marshallese, observing custom.

	The author’s students perform a story from the Marshall Islands.

After receiving the gifts, Jia and Iban had fun sharing stories with me. They would also bring me fish they had just caught or slices of fried breadfruit, their version of potato chips. One day Iban brought me a small container full of snails. I had a hard time concentrating on his story because I liked eating the snails so much.

Watching Jia and Iban tell stories was great fun. Jia used his hands a lot to point out parts of the island where the stories happened. Iban acted out the characters in his stories. In a story that gave me chills, his voice sounded like a creaky old door.

I got good at figuring out the stories from their gestures and the sound of their voices. I had to because I didn’t speak their language. Luckily, though, I had a friend who translated the stories for me after they were told.

Storytelling was best at night. Jia and Iban would bring a lantern, stretch out on the floor, and tell stories while their shadows danced on the cement walls of my small house. My favorite stories were about Letao, the funny trickster of the Marshall Islands. When Jia told about Letao’s antics, I don’t know if Iban or I laughed more.

Late one night Jia and Iban brought a ukulele player and four dancers. As the female ukulele player sang, the male dancers stamped and weaved in and out of each other, raising dust and bringing all the kids of the island running to see what the celebrating was about.

From left, Iban Edwin, Daniel Kelin, Jia Hisaiah, and educator Darlene Keju-Johnson, on Namdrik. Today, Iban lives on the capital island of Majuro. Jia has passed away since this article was written.

Jia and Iban were afraid, however, that the island’s young people wouldn’t be interested in the stories anymore. No one listened much to the stories, and some of them had already been forgotten.

I did create a play using the Namdrik stories. When Jia and Iban saw it, they said they hoped people would enjoy the stories as much as they had when they first heard them. They also hoped the play would help keep the stories alive. They told me that I’m like Letao, spreading laughter over the world. Whenever Jia and Iban saw me after that, they always called out, “Yokwe, Letao!”

Read Reef Eyes, a tale from the Marshall Islands.