This is an I-Heart podcast.

About 20 years ago, maybe 30, a circus fitted to Marjoro, the largest island on the

Maduro atoll in the capital city of the Marshall Islands.

They came to Marjoro as almost everything that isn't breadfruit, pandanus or fish does on

a boat. After performing, they couldn't find a boat to take them to the next destination.

And so the residents of this tiny island, which at times is no wider than the single road

which travels its whole length, decided that they'd have to share the food that they

themselves had imported a great cost.

And they set about gathering apples, bananas, and anything else that they thought an elephant

might like to eat, while it waited for a way off an island, that barely has enough room

for its own people, let alone the largest land animal on earth.

The people of the Marshall Islands, for whom hospitality is as natural as a titherto

sea,

greet each other the same way they do strangers, by saying Yolkwe.

The word has several meanings, but I'll let David Kabuah explain them.

He's the president of the Republic of the Marshall Islands, so he seems like he'd be a good source.

I would say the word Yakuay,. Ya'pa is our greeting word.

Ya'we has several meanings.

And you can say, when you meet someone first time, you say Yahweh.

When you create someone.

And when you also say goodbye, instead of say goodbye, you also say, yapa.

So you can use that also.

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