Island Time

This is an e-mail that I wrote and, after minimal editing, decided to post as a blog. Ever since the first time I went to my island school, I have been trying (unsuccessfully) to capture its essence with words. For some reason, it just all came tumbling out yesterday.. this is rather different from my normal blog posts. Pictures were taken by my friend Dave, who accompanied me to Gohado in July.


… So, I went down to the staffroom and they just wanted to remind me (again) that I was going to Gohado (island across from my apartment with all the lights) today. I looked outside and asked if I could walk to the ferry terminal. It was a perplexing request, but I was finally granted permission. Yay.

I had to walk through the construction site that is bringing a new road through the neighbourhood by my school. It's a complete state of devastation - houses have been demolished and the hill is being torn up. I don't know if these houses belonged to anyone or if they had been standing empty. A part of me doesn't want to know either.

I got onto the searoad sidewalk, looked up at the clear blue sky, smiled at the intrepid green-suited fisherman who is always under that strange boat that is parked up on land, and started singing. I was followed by a few butterflies, and was feeling a bit like a Disney character with seabirds and sunshine whirling above me.

A Korean guy passed me and *he* was dancing to his iPod, so I figured that it wasn't just me. As I walked along, I really started to observe the place where I live. Funny how there are things here that I take completely for granted, but that I would be photographing if I were in, say, India.

I passed a fish market where women in grey and pink skirt-suits attend to the customers. I passed two old dudes next to a truck. One of them called out "How are you?" and I responded "Great! How are you?". He looked a bit confused and went back to his discussion with his friend.

I walked past a sort of depot where the fishing boats unload their stock, where men in rubber boots walk around with big steel hooks in their hands, or shovel ice over that day's catch. Through the window, I could see that there was one old guy hobbling along, but keeping in step with me (he couldn't, or didn't, see me) and I boggled at how different his life was from mine but how we could still walk together-ish along the same patch of ground.

I met up with Mr Shin, my head teacher, at the ferry terminal and we got our tickets and waited for the ferry, surrounded by the ancient generation - poor women in mismatched clothes carrying too-heavy loads. Bringing fish or fruit to and from the islands. Mr Shin began doing Tai-chi moves as we waited and you could almost feel a wave of peace come off him.

When the ferry finally arrived, 10 minutes late, we ran aboard, nearly outrun by the women bent double under boxes and bags.

Arriving at the island, I was happy to notice that there was no car waiting for us, and we would have to walk the narrow concrete pathways, snaking through the rice paddies, to reach the school.

The tide was out. Old fishing boats stood tilted and jaunty in the mud. Tiny happy crabs ran past us, and pure white cranes flew around us as we walked past dwellings that give new meaning to the term "ramshackle hut" - my favourite one has walls entirely made of multi-coloured doors that have been - or seem to have been - used as target practice for a rifle at some point in their existence. The island smells of fish and garbage and slowed down time and happiness mixed with desperation and tradition and the end of an era, once the new bridge is built to link the island to the mainland.

Words do not and can not do it justice.

We arrived at the school, through the beautiful gardens, and were greeted with smiles and waves from the three children that make up the in-school population. The vice-principal (?) and teacher sliced up pears and apples for us, after yelling at an old man in a wide-brimmed hat to bring them water to wash the fruit in... the taps weren't working today.

At this school, I teach two girls and a boy. One girl seems a bit "slow" but today she was absolutely on the ball - getting every answer right and participating like an angel. The younger girl is the daughter of the cafeteria woman at my main school and an absolute doll. The boy is the son of a fisherman (I discovered later) and spent his summer working on his dad's fishing boat. He is in Grade 5. His arms and legs are covered in small scars. I do wonder what will become of him. Of all of them.

For lunch, we all sit together, teachers, students and the boy's mother (today was her turn to prepare lunch for us), at a long table in the "kitchen house" located behind the school. One room is a kitchen, the other is for eating. For me, they prepare more vegetables and less meat than usual, and show exaggerated concern over the spiciness of the kimchi. The boys mother is gorgeous. She has impossibly long hair that has been bleached red. I thank her repeatedly for the stirfry of peppers and potatoes that she made especially for me and manage to eat most of it.

Back in the main school building, we drink coffee and chat. The two women who run this school are unusually (for Korea) proficient in English, making it easy to keep the conversation going. We talk about the typhoon and news reports from Suncheon and Beolgyo that the rice crops have been damaged, and this only a few weeks before harvest.

Coming to this school makes me feel like I am standing on a door that is trying to flip over in the middle of the ocean. On one hand, there is so much beauty in the atmosphere there. In the fact that the gardens are tended by the man in the hat (who reminds me of my Gedo - grandfather) and that this entire structure exists just to bring education to a handful of children. That you feel like time has stopped, until another plane takes off from the Mokpo airport and you realize that the door *is* going to flip, and if you haven't managed to scramble up over the edge by that time, you are going to either sink or swim. I love the fact that I am coming to that place, but also realize that I am one of the weights that is going to bring the door over.

We drink our coffees and talk until 1:45, when like clockwork, Mr Shin and I stand and walk back to the pier. We do this in total silence, except when he is telling me how to say the name of something in Korean. He lets me do silly things like stand on the edge of a pond and point to the frogs.

"Frog," I say and point. He looks in the water. Am I pointing to the pond, the bizarre lily-pad like vegetation, the tadpoles? He nods and smiles and we continue on.

"Crane," I say and point to one of three huge white birds that we have startled from their patch of rice paddy. This time, I know the Korean and say "Hak". He nods and smiles and we continue on.

We decide that, the next time I come to Gohado in October, we will walk over the hill instead of around it.... we may miss the ferry, but neither of us would care. He insists on escorting me to Gohado, even though I could make it here on my own with no problem. I think he does it for himself, so that he can breathe this piece of heaven as well.

We arrive at the crumbling concrete pier with much time to spare. While he sits down under a tree and looks at the water, I wander down to where three people (2 men, one on crutches, and a woman) are fishing. They cast their lines repeatedly into the brown water, dodging the plastic bottles and bags that are floating everywhere. This makes me sad.

A glorious old fishing boat, full of folded nets and traps and lights and ropes pulls up to the pier. A woman runs out to climb aboard, then stops and waves at me. It's the boy's mother, the woman who made lunch today. She asks me in Korean where Mr Shin is and seems to be offering a ride. I stand up and run to Mr Shin, tell him that we have a lift back to the mainland in a real fishing boat... the kind that I watch every day as they return from the seas in the afternoon, the kind that used to wake me up every morning at 5 when I first moved here. I feel like a little kid who has just been offered a balloon animal from a clown.

But then, she points over her shoulder to the ferry that is arriving 10 minutes early, smiles, clamours aboard her husband's boat. There will be no fishing boat ride for us today. Quickly, they move off and the ferry takes their place. Mr Shin and I run and jump aboard before it takes off. While he goes inside, out of the sun, I stand next to a battered blue pick-up truck (containing one little white dog with orange ears and a purple tail) and watch the city of Mokpo come closer. I can see my entire neighbourhood, including my apartment, and I feel content. Yudalsan is silhouetted strongly against the clear blue of the sky, wearing a cloak of tumbling stone houses that are surely going to be destroyed as that new road comes through, only to be replaced by anonymous apartment blocks. I can feel that floating door again and hope for a bit more time to live this old-style Korean life.

Mr Shin and I step off the ferry and the magic spell is broken. I'm no longer on island time, and neither is he. I run to catch up with him as he rushes up the sidewalk to his car, then speeds us both back to school.

From the window of my apartment, I can see most of Gohado. I can't see the pier or the school, but I know that they are there. I look at it for a bit, trying to figure out where the magic has gotten to and why I can't feel it anymore, then turn away for another month.