FACT FILE
Number of Islets: 15. Population RMI Census 2021: 310 (153 males, 157 females). Land Area: 0.72 square mile.s Lagoon Area: 71.79 square miles. Ujae yacht permit fee: Check with Mayor. Ujae Mayor: Morris James Jr. Ujae Nitijela Member: Bremity Lakjohn.
Ujae Atoll is west of Kwajalein, near Lae. The atoll is famous for its ‘jobwa’ stick dance, a unique style of dancing that’s performed on only the most special of occasions. WorldTeach volunteer Peter Rudiak-Gould spent a year on Ujae Atoll in 2003-2004 and wrote a book of his adventure called Surviving Paradise: One Year on a Disappearing Island. Read a review of this wonderful tale at Amazon.
Below is a BBC interview with Peter.
Follows is a review on Goodreads: Just one month after his 21st birthday, Peter Rudiak-Gould moved to Ujae, a remote atoll in the Marshall Islands located 70 miles from the nearest telephone, car, store, or tourist, and 2,000 miles from the closest continent. He spent the next year there, living among its 450 inhabitants and teaching English to its schoolchildren. At first blush, Surviving Paradise is a thoughtful and laugh-out-loud hilarious documentation of Rudiak-Gould’s efforts to cope with daily life on Ujae as his idealistic expectations of a tropical paradise confront harsh reality. But Rudiak-Gould goes beyond the personal, interweaving his own story with fascinating political, linguistic, and ecological digressions about the Marshall Islands. Most poignant are his observations of the noticeable effect of global warming on these tiny, low-lying islands and the threat rising water levels pose to their already precarious existence. An Eat, Pray, Love as written by Paul Theroux, Surviving Paradise is a disarmingly lighthearted narrative with a substantive emotional undercurrent.
