Surviving Paradise

I enjoy reading. I do. But my chronic problem is that I start way more books than I actually finish. My shelves are littered with books that have dog-earred pages somewhere, oh, around page 87. So when I actually make it through a book these days, it's time to celebrate. Kill the fattened calf! Throw a parade! Write a blog post!

Surviving Paradise by Peter Rudiak-Gould is one of the kind of books I like. Regular person, far-off or exotic locale, extreme adventures. In Rudiak-Gould's case, in chapter 1 he finds himself standing on a tropical runway ahead of a year-long stint teaching English on the island of Ujae, one of the Marshalls. What follows is 18 chapters of cross-cultural misunderstandings, surprising self-discovery and one person's experience of the complexity of global interrelations. Several remember-worthy things for me from the book:

1. Expectations are tricky things. Peter arrives at Ujae expecting, well, paradise. From there it's paradise lost. Then found. Then lost again. Then regained. Eventually, it's paradise redefined. Throughout, the message is this: beware what you expect. I get that. Often in my life I find myself at odds with my own expectations.

2. Adventures are first internal. He's there for the thrill, sure, but Peter is also there to serve, to teach, to better a people who (in his mind) badly need it. His is a posture of an instructor (bordering on "Great White Hope"). To his surprise, then, he quickly becomes the learner. He can't catch fish. He doesn't know the language. The culture is crazy. All of this (and more) sends him on an internal journey. Along the way, he discovers, through dissonance, who he really is. I've seen it time and again on missions trips. We come in seeking to lead, serve and provide. We leave having been led, served and provided for. It's a beautiful thing.

3. America leaves a mark. Part of the geography of the Marshalls is Bikini Atoll, "inspiration" for that certain style of swimwear, notorious for being an American nuclear proving ground. How does one calculate the impact of America in a far-flung country such as the Marshalls? In the end, Peter's answer would simply be, "yes." For good or for ill, either way, America leaves its mark. Here's a quote on the topic: "it had been...surreal to live here, with a people who were in equal parts hunter-gatherers and yuppies, in a place exactly halfway between jungle camp and New York City--a place where a man might spear fish for subsistence in the morning and play half-court basketball in the evening, a place where the same person who shared with you the ancient meaning of the colored lines on the back of a crab could also recite Snoop Dogg lyrics." Progress and regress, all wrapped up into one.

Put me down for two thumbs up for Surviving Paradise, or two coconuts up, if you like.