EVERETT — One-year-old Abigail Edward’s first birthday party on Jan. 10 may have been the only one she’ll ever have.
Dozens of immigrants from the Marshall Islands gathered at Floral Hall in Forest Park for a huge celebration to commemorate Abigail’s kemem, or first birthday. It’s one of the most important events in Marshallese culture.
For Marshall Islanders, time doesn’t have the same significance as in Western cultures. Few of them mark birthdays other than the first one. Most don’t even know how old they are.
"Fifty-four," Conrad Anni said when asked his age.
Anni paused.
"No, I was born in 1959. Forty-four."
This different view of time is one of the many cultural clashes that are part of everyday life for more than 150 people who have immigrated to Snohomish County over the past two decades from the Marshall Islands, which lie about halfway between Hawaii and Australia.
Kemem parties such as the one at Floral Hall are a chance for the immigrants to catch up with old friends and preserve island traditions. Those traditions hearken back to a time when island life was so hard that many children died at a very early age, said Holly Barker, senior adviser to Banny de Brum, Marshall Islands ambassador to the United States.
"The kemem is a way the community gets together and celebrates the life of the child," she said. "They didn’t want to celebrate prematurely, because they didn’t know if the child would survive."
Organizers of the party earlier this month tried as hard as they could to re-create the atmosphere of a traditional celebration on the tropical Pacific Ocean islands. There was coconut-infused food, festive music and hip-swaying dancing. But most of the dancers wore wool sweaters or jackets, and the Douglas fir beams that jutted across the ceiling of Floral Hall were a stark contrast to the palm trees of home.
Four folding tables brimmed with traditional Marshallese dishes, the scent of coconut rising from the foil pans. There were bobos (coconut and rice balls), taro bathed in coconut milk and a pan-baked coconut cake called kesaba.
A breadfruit delicacy, wrapped in plastic instead of the breadfruit leaves of the islands, helped remind Anni of home.
But there was no escaping the chill of a damp January night in Everett.
"Oh man it’s cold," Anni said as he buttoned his gray suit jacket and pulled his crossed arms close to his body, looking enviously at others inside Floral Hall who were wearing coats. "It’s probably 80 degrees back home right now."
Abigail, the birthday girl, was bundled in a white dress and white winter coat. As upbeat Marshallese music played over the speakers, Abigail’s grandmother, who had flown in from the Marshall Islands the week before, swooped the girl up and glided across the maple-wood floor, holding Abigail on her shoulder and smiling widely. The crowd cheered and clapped.
Several minutes later, more than a dozen women emerged to dance to a traditional Marshallese fishing song. They placed their hands above their eyes and tilted their heads upward as if searching for birds that circle above schools of fish. The dancers then motioned as if they were reeling in fish with a line.
"It feels so good to be here," said Thompson Rakin, 32, who was wearing a marmar, a necklace of seashells and coconut leaves that Abigail’s relatives had passed out as gifts to the party guests. "It reminds us of back home and the things we used to do back home," he said. "But at home, there’d be even more people and more food."
Back home, the unemployment rate is 30 percent, and tourism and the exportation of dried coconut meat and fish are the biggest industries. That’s why more than 10,000 Marshallese have come to the United States in the past two decades, out of a population of about 60,000 people.
Years ago, most Marshallese had little idea of what life was like in America. Now, with television in many homes and the stories that Marshallese immigrants bring back, more and more islanders talk of emigrating from the former U.S. trust territory.
The Marshall Islands are perhaps best known for the nuclear testing that the United States conducted there from 1946 to 1958, when the islands were a U.S. protectorate. The testing was on Bikini and Enewetak islands, but thousands of people on other islands became sick with cancer, thyroid disorders, cataracts and other diseases as a result of the radiation. There is still a large U.S. missile-testing range there.
The island nation became independent in 1986. The country maintains a close relationship with the United States, and Marshallese can legally work in the United States and receive federal grants to attend college, which is why so many have come here to live.
Wintha Joran first came to the United States in 1978 as a community college student in Nevada, and has been living in Snohomish County since 1996. The 45-year-old Everett man stays here primarily because he sees few opportunities for his three children in the Marshall Islands.
"My kids’ education is the main priority for me, and the schools here are so much better than on the Marshall Islands," Joran said. "And there are no good jobs there. I’m worried, though, because my children don’t know our traditional way of living. They’re more American than Marshallese."
Joran still yearns for home. He misses being able to catch dinner by simply walking into the shallow water off the shore of the tiny island where he grew up and spearing fish.
And he remembers how much more relaxed life was when he and his family told time from the position of the sun, not the hands of a watch.
"Here, everything is so fast, and you have to be on time for everything," Joran said. "The attitude there is you don’t have to worry about anything — everything will be all right. If I say I’ll be there at 7 and show up at 8, it’s no big deal, because the other person will probably be late, too."
Korab Nemra said he has not quite adjusted to the faster pace of life here even though he’s lived in Snohomish County for almost 18 years. But he’s grudgingly gotten used to the cool, rainy climate. In the Marshall Islands, rain typically comes in quick torrential downpours.
"Over there when it rains, you stay inside and take a nap," Nemra said. "When I first got here, I thought, ‘Man, how long am I going to have to stay inside relaxing?’"
He let go a hearty laugh.
Nemra and another Marshallese man moved here within weeks of each another in 1986, purely by coincidence. They were the first Marshallese immigrants known to have settled in Snohomish County. Nemra met a Lynnwood woman in Hawaii in 1981, and later they moved to Marysville to be closer to her family.
Nemra believes that the United States is a wealthier country than the Marshall Islands largely because people here worry more — they worry about time, about work, about making enough money to buy fancy cars and big houses.
Living in the United States provides Marshallese with more money and better schools and jobs for their children. But the Marshallese lose something when they leave the islands, Nemra said. They have to start looking at their watches all the time and face long workdays that often leave little time for family and friends. Nemra spends more than two hours in traffic each day commuting to his job in Seattle. The stress wears at their laid-back island attitude.
Nemra can’t get more than a week off work at a time, so he’s only been back to the Marshall Islands three times in 18 years. But each time, he noticed how happy everyone seemed.
"It’s just so mellow there," he said. "People smile a lot more than here. Sometimes I think, ‘Man, what am I doing here?’"
Reporter David Olson: 425-339-3452 or dolson@heraldnet.com.
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