Fr. John's Christmas Letter 2005

THE CHRISTMAS LETTER OF FATHER JOHN
2005

Greetings from the beautiful island of Kwajalein! A slightly delayed Merry Christmas, and wishes for a new year that are good for 365 days, whenever you read or receive them.

Christmas letters can start from the present and go backwards, or start from last year and move forward. For this world wanderer, December was a heck of a month. The overriding event was the plane crash in Nigeria in which 60 students from Loyola Jesuit College died. 60 of the best and brightest young Nigerian students lost their lives because of the greed and carelessness of the airline operators and the government officials who are supposed to supervise the industry. I knew many of the students from my visits to the school. Part of me wishes I were back there – and part is glad I am not, because I don’t know how you respond to a calamity of that size. 45 families lost children, so some suffered multiple deaths, including one family who lost all three of the children on that plane.

The school is taking this tragedy and is going to build a much-needed multi-purpose hall for the school, called Memorial Hal, with a special place for remembering those who died. The parents and the Jesuits have also vowed to make this the beginning of a nationwide campaign for improved safety and transportation. The parents have been amazing – thinking of others in the middle of their own pain. One of the girls from the school was sent to the US for a special operation to remove a brain tumor. Surgeons donated their services, but the costs of the trip were paid for with contributions from other students and families – many who helped raise the money were on that ill-fated plane. In the midst of the aftermath, one of the mothers wanted to be sure that the girl in the US had enough money. (The operation was done in Cleveland, and was a great success.)

So – although my pitch for contributions usually comes at the end of my letters, this one is right at the front. You can send money to the Jesuits in New York, and indicate that it is for Memorial Hall in Abuja. Contributions should be sent to

Fr Ray Salomone, SJ
39 E 83rd Street
New York, NY 10028

Make the checks to New York Province, Society of Jesus. It’s not just for building a hall, or remembering a group of 60 children. It’s much more about supporting a school designed to change Nigeria, about encouraging people who are determined to use their pain to make the world a better place, to confront the government and the bureaucracy and the corruption. It’s some of the best money you can spend, so if at any point during the next year you get a little ahead – win a lottery, find extra money in a sofa, decide you can live without that whatever – please remember Memorial Hall at Loyola Jesuit College in Abuja. If you forget the details, I will be glad to refresh your memory.

This has been a month of pain for me – certainly the pain from the news from Nigeria. But at the very end of November I was suffering abdominal pains and after several days of increasing discomfort, I worried that it might be the appendix, so I went in to the hospital to have it checked. They x-rayed and sonogrammed and drew blood and eventually the doctors said they could not rule out the appendix. (I think the language was crafted by a lawyer – notice they did not say that it was the appendix, merely that they could not rule it out, leaving me to make the decision about whether I wanted to wait and see if it ruptured or if they should go in and check it out. Since I did not want a rupture (and especially not when I was on some outer island, a boat and plane ride away from medical facilities) I opted for the surgery.

We have a couple of surgeons on staff and a small hospital. Good people – but you have to walk into the operating theatre. (I didn’t have to walk back – I woke up back in my room. I did have a room with an ocean view, which was very nice – although I had to keep discouraging the nurses from lowering the bed.) I was in the hospital for three days, nothing but water and ice chips – and I gained five pounds! Scarcely seems fair. Toward the end they did give me jello – and stool softener pills. Don’t laugh – you didn’t see the jello.

Well, almost a month later, I’ve had more pain from the post-op, in quality and quantity than ever I had before. The doctors keep assuring me that this is normal – and to be honest, I have to admit I have probably not been the perfect patient. In the weeks before Christmas, I have given two concerts, pretty much maintained my schedule of Masses, and led the Casual Christmas Choir in several performances, including caroling at the Tour of Homes and caroling through the streets. I was released from the hospital on Friday morning, and on Saturday I was at the Community Tree Lighting to offer the benediction, and then led the choir at the festival on the plaza afterwards, at which I also sang several songs myself. Extreme pain – but the show must go on, and on it went. So the slow healing may be (partly) my fault. Now that Christmas has passed, I am spending more time really and truly sitting, or using my hammock, and trying not to be too active. I know, this does not sound like me – but I am really tired of hurting, I would like to be able to get back to golf and riding and just sitting down without it hurting. If it continues – back to the doctors.

The concerts I mentioned were in honor of my birthday. Father Jon’s Birthday Bash took place here on Kwaj on the 12th of December. I sang – I surprised the audience with the Casual Christmas Choir, and Neil Dye, a well-known DJ here sang with me in the second act, and a very talented high school senior played piano for some of the songs. We did an audience participation 12 days of Christmas, and a multi-lingual Silent Night. (You’ve never lived until you’ve heard the audience version of Silent Night in pig Latin.) Great stuff – but by the end of the concert, I had no energy left. I don’t work as hard at singing as I should but I had such an amazing teacher – anyone who knows me has heard me talk about Mr. Reading – that I can almost always pull out a decent performance even when I probably don’t deserve it.

A week later I repeated much of the concert on Roi, the other island about a 25-minute plane ride away. Neil wasn’t able to come because of a mission that was scheduled, but the piano player and I did about an hour that was very well received. God bless’em, they not only applauded nicely but they bought every CD I had brought up with me. Smaller group but one that was a good audience, because on Roi, they are an independent breed and won’t be polite if you don’t deserve it.

Visitors
One day I got a phone call from a very good friend of mine in the UK – she and her husband were thinking about coming out to visit. I had visited their home in the southern part of England when I was on my way out of Nigeria, and I had said at that point that I looked forward to being able to reciprocate. Of course, when I said that, I wasn’t expecting to be in any one place for long for at least a year; I was still thinking I would be having a sabbatical. (See what happens when you say these things? People take you up on them – in this case, thank heaven.) Both Kemi and Mark have British passports, so no US visa is needed, so the security clearance was easy. And out they came, for just over a week – long way to travel but they stopped in the US on the way out (playing in New York, where they also got me some Zabar’s coffee as a present) and on the way back (when they visited Kemi’s brother in Texas). Mark is a diver – twelve years in the British Navy all over the world – so we went fishing and snorkeling and diving and up to Roi, visited the Marshallese on Ennubir where I go to say Mass – and everywhere they went they made friends and met people, even appeared on the local radio show the morning they left. Great fun. In Nigeria, I only had guests once, just before I left. Here – less than a year. It’s a fair distance away – six hours beyond Hawaii. Ah but once you get here, those who have come say it’s worth it. Mark and Kemi are talking about their next trip.

Moving
Those who have kept up with life and adventure on Kwajalein remember that last year the company tore down the trailer and made me move. I went into a nice hard housing unit, settled in, learned to enjoy neighbors. This past year, I got a note from my supervisor, warning me that I was going to have to be moving soon. The company line was that I didn’t have to move right that moment (why would I have to move at all? Policy. And although I questioned it, there was no chance I could go back to the same place I had left. I had left a two-bedroom trailer which was replaced with a two-bedroom dome house. But apparently the policy is I am not eligible for a dome. Sideline – there is a tremendous amount of empty housing, and the company policy is to hire unaccompanied over people with families. I’m waiting to see which company bigwig gets that location.) The reason they were “suggesting” it was that there was a nice trailer available. But if a moment came when I had to move, I would have to take whatever housing was available, and there would be no guarantee anything as good would be ready as this trailer.

Now I don’t have a lot of experience with corporate whatsis – although I have to say, if the Apprentice is a sampling of the best the United States has to offer, we are in serious trouble. Most of those folks wouldn’t last very long in the real world I know. But I do know that this is not the kind of situation one guy (that would be me) is going to win. So I made the best of a lousy situation and packed and moved and unpacked. How much lost time and energy was spent that could have been better focused is beyond calculation.

So I’m settled. As trailers go, it’s not bad. There is an extension on the front of the trailer, which gives me an extra room although it is not as large as the extension that was on the original trailer. No view, but empty lots on either side, so I am not intimately adjacent to a neighbor. There is a covered porch, which is nice. Not much storage – it feels a little like living in a space capsule. (There are pictures at the blog site, in case you are reading this other than on the blog – if you are, take a look around, the pix are here somewhere.) It is teaching me to clean up something as soon as I use it, especially in the kitchen, because there is NO room for things sitting around waiting to be dealt with. These trailers were originally brought in to be “temporary housing”; in mine, there is a schematic in the closet in the guest room, worn and faded but you can make out the date on the drawings – 1962.

Now, those of you who worry about me being lonely, I suppose I should tell you that I am not living alone. I saw a factoid a couple of weeks ago that said that for every human being on the earth, there are one million ants. Well, I have mine – and they’re all right here with me. Everywhere I go, I kill ants. I kill a couple of hundred ants a day – and trust me, I am not exaggerating. I have poison traps out – I have laid down lines of poison (which the ants simply walk around) – if you leave food out for five minutes you have created a convention. I continue to be grateful I am not a Buddhist – I do enjoy killing things.

I also have something in my walls. Could be lizards, could be crabs – could be ghosts. My bet, however, is rats and I have asked for traps to be set around and under the trailer.

Snakes in the Garden
Many of you, when you have heard about where I am and what doing, have talked about how perfect it all sounds. And it can. At the same time, it is my first experience dealing with a major corporation, and according to many people who have been here for a long time, the current company that has the contract to run this place is running it straight into the ground. Certainly morale is at a disastrous low. The company lived for a while off the inventory the prior company left, and is simply not spending money on maintenance or replacing stores. Across the board, the story is the same no matter whom I talk to – attention is not being paid. Technicians spend a whole day literally in the dump, trying to scavenge material to keep large radar units running. Fire suppression systems are not having the materials replaced to keep them active. All departments have been warned that when their vehicles are no longer able to be repaired, they will not be replaced; there have been days the fire department cannot send out men to do inspections because there are no vehicles. When I was discharged from the hospital, the doctor wrote a note that said (quite accurately) that I could not ride a bike or walk more than six blocks. The theory is that I should be provided with a golf cart until my wound healed. Good theory – but the official policy was that there were no carts available. Eight days after I was discharged I got an official note from one of the USAKA staff approving the letter, but saying that I should not apply to them for a vehicle, and when I got one (where did they think I was going to get one) I did not have permission to park it overnight at my trailer. I can’t walk – but I can’t put the vehicle near where I live. Fortunately the Protestant Pastor did some juggling and “traded” our chapel van to someone who has access to a golf cart and so I used his cart for four days (not the ten the doctors had indicated) while he used our van. After four days I went back to the bike- little choice there.

The list goes on and on. The radio station is being held together with spit and prayers, the tv system is disintegrating before our eyes, the weather radar was out for almost a month for “maintenance,” and now it has been down for over a week without anyone even trying to come up with a reason. A new public internet system crashed before it was fully operational, and a recent note said that they would no longer sell or service tv antennas until they solve the problem of maintenance. Now these are the antenna that are optional but if you buy one (for $180) you can’t sell it, and if you move, you can’t take it with you to the next house. Yes, even if you move on the island. So if you bought one, they won’t do the maintenance on it and you still can’t sell it. Sigh.

There is a local “newspaper,” more a small magazine, that is published twice a week. Technically it is a function of the military but historically it has served the role of a community newspaper, and featured local stories and cartoons about life on the island. Shortly after I came they appointed a new editor, who has killed the cartoons, and filled the pages with canned articles from military sources that have little or no bearing. All is policy and less and less concerns people on the island. They refuse to call me “Father” – I am “Rev. John Sheehan, Roman Catholic priest.” Even when a photo caption refers to me, same formula. The last four articles or letters I submitted were not published, so I have rather written them off. When I was advertising my last concert (Father John’s Birthday Bash) someone asked me if I had sent a notice in to the Hourglass (the local journal). I said no – they would probably feel they had to advertise as Rev. John’s (Roman Catholic Priest) Birthday Bash, and that would just be confusing. At one point I made a suggestion about something in the paper, and one of the management wrote me to say that the newspaper was an organ of the military, who paid for it, and if anyone wanted freedom of the press, they were welcome to go back to the mainland where they could find it. Love it or leave it was an earlier formula I remember from my younger days, but it says something about corporate arrogance.

The really depressing thing is that there are people here who are good people who want to do a good job – and the “corporate policy” is hard at work discouraging them. Someone said it is as though there is someone whose job is to find ways to make it more and more difficult for the rest of us to do our jobs – and he (or she) should get a bonus, ‘cause he (or she) is doing a great job. Latest moment – the parent company has put together a special task force to find out why the retention rate is so low. People who have been here for ten and fifteen years are leaving, because the standard of living, the reasons they came and stayed, are disappearing. The company has even refused to sponsor the Boy Scouts and Cub Scouts. The troops in the field (civilian as well as official military) could answer that question without a task force – but the company has consistently indicated they don’t want to hear the answer, so we are all fairly sure that the task force will come up a politically correct, corporately acceptable reason why people are not staying. A reason that will bear little resemblance to the situation actually on the ground.

Now in fairness, it may be that there is a directive from the government, or from some higher corporate authority, directing those in charge to start the process of closing it down, dismantling the services and community that have made this a special place for the last number of years. That is certainly what is going on – if it is part of a plan, I think most people would at least like to be dealt with honestly. The place is beautiful, the people are good – but certainly in the sixteen months I have been here I have seen morale plummet, and not in any one level of employment or any department – it is across the board. People who have been here for many years say it is the worst they have ever seen – and as I write this I know of at least six people in good jobs who are packing it in and leaving. They love their work, they love the location – but they have decided that it is simply not worth putting up with the company.

It’s a toss-up. It’s like America – but we have no access to a lot of the computer world. In Lagos I could listen to the Metropolitan Opera – can’t do it here. We have the limitations of a military base and few of the perks. The stores sell things at high mark-ups – shirts that here are $37 you can buy at Wal-Mart for $7.89. But because we are an APO, there are some things that cannot be shipped. High security items like a pepper mill or a golf ball retriever. They don’t sell them here – but if you try to order one on-line, you discover companies won’t ship these items. The company has an ordering system so if I want to buy something for the chapel, like new altar linens, I can order it through the company and it comes out of my budget. But it takes six months and longer for it to arrive. (One altar cloth I ordered last March has yet to appear.) The paschal calendar had better be ordered in October and last year it only made it by two weeks. If I need it sooner – like materials for catechism classes – I have to pay for it out of the collection money, so there is less that goes to the Outer Island Fund for the work of the Jesuits. One suspects the company doesn’t work very hard at getting things on schedule, because they then save the money. Or am I being cynical?

Music
As you know I sang the two concerts in December, and created and conducted the Casual Christmas Choir. I sang for the 4th of July gathering on the beach, and a couple of songs for the post Christmas tree lighting. During the summer I had a weekly informal singing group, the Summer Singing Session. And of course last May I had my first concert on Kwaj, cleverly titled The First Kwaj Concert of Father John.

Just last week I finally got out the violin and have started to get more disciplined about going back to the piano. Over the recent years the field of rep-recorded accompaniment has blossomed and there are thousands of tapes and cd’s. Some call it karaoke, but the result is that here is a huge repertoire of music one can sing and play with.

Miscellaneous Stuff

Weight Loss – There is less of me to love since I arrived on this little island. In fact, since I came I have lost 45 pounds. Since the surgery I have been able to do practically nothing in the area of exercise – but I made it through the Christmas season without adding anything. Holding the line is a pretty good accomplishment. Once we figure out what’s going on I can get back to golf several times a week and work on the remaining 30 pounds I would like to leave along the way.

Santa for the Marshallese Christmas party – One of the things I did do during the Christmas season was to be Santa for the Marshallese Christmas party. I did this year, and I said at the time the reason they had asked me was that their Santa suit didn’t have a beard. This year I knew it was coming, so at Halloween I had stashed away a couple of cans of white hair coloring, so my grey and white would be the Santa white. The event has a jepta (chapter) from Ebeye over to dance and sing as is the Marshallese tradition. And the local USAKA jepta also performs – and at the end of the evening Santa comes in to help throw candy. This year the gym was packed, and the jepta from Ebeye was around 65 people, all dancing hard and singing. The air conditioning in the gym doesn’t work well at its best and with all those people – it was getting really hot. Any time anyone complained, I sort of thought to myself, “Hmmph – you ought to be inside a Santa Suit.” Complete with pillow padding and white wig and hat and carrying a heavy bag full of candy canes. And the pain from the surgery still with me. It’s a fun event, and the Marshallese kids who know me are completely able to simultaneously know that I am Father John and at the same time accept me as Santa. (Maybe they think Santa is my part-time job?)

Third Island and the arrival of the MSC priests. Jesuits have been in Micronesia since the war, from the Marshall Islands through to Yap. At the moment, not counting me (since Kwajalein is technically under the jurisdiction of the Military Vicariate rather than the local prelate, like a bishop) there are only two Jesuits in the Marshalls – the Apostolic Prefect (like a bishop) and the pastor of the church on Majuro. There is also a brother, who is usually at the Majuro church, but he’s away at the moment doing his tertianship. The New York Province has said they can’t provide any more men, and requests for help from other Provinces, like Indonesia and the Philippines, did not produce any help either. There are no indigenous Marshallese priests, either diocesan or Jesuit or any other order. Obviously we need more men.

So the MSC (Missionaires des Sacres Coeurs – Missionaries of the Sacred Heart) have expressed an interest in moving into the Marshall Islands – but at the same time, they have also made it clear that they do not want to work with the Jesuits. (No, I don’t know why.) So what has happened is that three priests from the MSC have come to Ebeye. They will learn the language and start to work with the people for a period of around 18 months, at which point Rome will review the situation and see what the way forward looks like.

Now Jesuits, while we believe in community, are ready and willing to go out as single missionaries when needed. We go where the need is greatest. Here I am – and the others are doing their things as singles as well. The MSC don’t – so the three priests insist on remaining as a community. It’s good for their mutual support, but it does limit their apostolic effectiveness. We went over as a parish the week after they arrived, and had a celebration to welcome them here. Two of them are from the Philippines and one from Indonesia. One of them did go to Santo (Third Island, also known as Ennubir) for the Christmas celebration – but while I am spared the Sunday evening Mass on Ebeye (which, while it was certainly extra work, I did enjoy) I still go and say Marshallese Mass.

The Marshallese are torn. They are certainly glad to have the new priests – and they hope that in time they will branch out and be more active in the community. Their first job, of course, is to learn the language. But the Marshallese also hope the Jesuits will stay. We are willing to do whatever is best for the church. We are concerned about funding – certainly the parishes and schools are not self-sufficient, and our guys have had a long history of bringing money in to the region from a variety of sources, but mostly based in the US. Will the new priests be able to provide that kind of money? We also worry about schools – education has been the primary thrust of the work of the Jesuits and we hope the new priests will have the same interest and dedication to the work of education. Too early to tell – but the situation made the front page of the Marshall Island News, the major newspaper in Majuro.

Meanwhile, the Parish Council of our community has decided that they would like to help the church by renovating (re-building in reality) the church. We’re in the process of trying to get a stronger sense from the community of what they want (Ah, Father, whatever you decide will be good. Very flattering but doesn’t seem to involve the community very much.) Then we need to coordinate with the MSC priests, and raise money, and go through the logistics and red tape of actually getting the material here and then building. It won’t be an easy or quick process, but hopefully at the end of it there will be a new church with a living space for a priest and maybe a couple of classroom or meeting rooms as part of the building or compound. Brick rather than wood, since the salt and wind here take out wood pretty quickly. There are some pictures of the chapel on the blog site, some focusing on why the renovation is needed. Warps in the roof, soft wood underfoot, old and decaying wood throughout. One more little projectfor those odd moments.

Western Africa Province creation. One year to the day from when I left Nigeria, the Nigeria-Ghana Region became an independent Province in the Society of Jesus, the Northwest African Province. I was invited to come for the erection of the new Province, but between finance and schedule that wasn’t possible. They are on their way – what so many people have worked for for so many years is now in place.

COMING TO AN END
Not me, hopefully, but this letter. Reading back on it, it’s not all peaches and cream, sunshine and flowers, tickety and boo. I am in the second year of a two-year assignment here, so at some point during the year I will have to make a recommendation to my superiors as to whether I should stay or move on for that overdue sabbatical and an eventual assignment somewhere else. It is sometimes interesting – and sometimes I wonder if I am doing any good. It is sometimes frustrating and challenging, rewarding and whatever the opposite of rewarding is. I wonder at what point I stop being silent about corporate injustice and start preaching on the larger issues of justice on our own island and within our own system and how the company (and the Army) treat the Marshallese population. From a purely selfish point of view, I would like to stay longer – there are things I would like to do, both personally and apostolically, that are still in the to do pile, and a nagging suspicion that I have not yet learned all that I am here to learn.

I can receive mail through the regular US postal system – at PO Box 1711, APO AP 96555. I have a Yahoo email (johnrsheehan@Yahoo.com) which is reliable. Email to john.sheehan2@us.army.mil goes straight to my desk – when I am at my desk. We have a phone link to the U.S. via California (805 355-2116 at the office, 805 355-4535 at my trailer. There are answering machines in both places.) If I call you, your caller ID will tell you that someone is calling from Huntsville, Alabama, because that’s where our tie-line to the U.S. goes through outbound.

And if you got this in print, or as an email message, there is also a blog site – www.frjohnsj.blogspot.com. You’ll find this there, and pictures and who knows what other wonders and bits of life out here in the middle of the Pacific.

One of the items for this year is to get my diving certification – but only once the internal problems have been diagnosed and solved. And cut some significant strokes off the golf game. And continue with the weight loss. To take some serious time off, a real vacation. Write more, play more, do more serious singing. And relax more, enjoying people and this place.

Not a bad set of resolutions. We’ll see how well I do. I’d like to get serious about learning more Marshallese, but I suspect time will work against that one.

You and your loved ones are regularly in my prayers and Masses.