Catching Up

Good morning. It’s 7:20 on Sat. morning and I’m sitting in bed (my only other option is an armless plastic chair) enjoying the view of a calm lagoon, with lots of clouds building on the horizon. I’m enjoying a cup of coffee, which is actually an individually packaged product called Trio. It’s instant coffee, creamer and sugar. Not healthy but tasty. I’m also enjoying a masi popo that I just bought from my family’s faleoloa. Masi popo looks like a thick, square cracker but tastes more like a sugar cookie with half the sugar and a smidge of coconut cream. I’m hoping for rain, although it’s the dry season and unlikely. Yesterday we didn’t see rain but as I walked to the store in the late afternoon there was a beautiful rainbow.

I owe you a post about Independence Day and promise that will come soon. I’ve been busy getting back into the swing of school, since the new term started last week. To be honest, I’ve mostly been busy getting myself back into the swing of village life after almost 3 weeks in Apia. I’m getting used to no air conditioning again. I’m already used to being back to cold showers and no food that I don’t prepare myself. I’m getting back into Samoan-instead-of-English. My Samoan is so poor that after three weeks of almost straight English, I lost my already dull edge. Yesterday I followed a complete five minute conversation with the teachers, so it’s coming back. Of course, I felt like my brain was melting after that much intense concentration, but I’m getting there.

Here is some stuff about my week:
• A professor and group of undergrad/grad students are visiting from Emory University. The professor has been bringing students here every year for 8 or 9 years. He and one of the male students showed up at the school on Monday. It was interval and I was in a teachers’ meeting. Someone saw them and told me Peace Corps was here for me. Since I expected someone dropping off materials for me I wasn’t surprised. I was surprised when I didn’t recognize the car or either man.

People just assume if someone is white and young he’s Peace Corps. I was at the store with Samoan friends one day and they asked why I didn’t like that Peace Corps guy. “Why are you ignoring him?” “I don’t know him.” “You must, he’s Peace Corps.” “No, he’s not. I know all the Peace Corps and he’s not.” “You should make up with him.” “Really, I don’t know him.”

I finally dragged over the confused tourist from Germany who was nice enough to explain that he did not belong to Peace Corps and he didn’t know me.

But I digress. The professor explained he’d done research at the school in previous years and wanted to do it again this year. He’s doing cross-cultural research about views about race in the US and South Pacific. It involved observing some Year 1 and 2 kids doing some “games”. They were at the school every morning for the week, except Thursday, when we had a teachers’ meeting in the district.

On Wednesday evening, the Professor took his assistant and I out to dinner at the local resort. He also invited Warren Joplin who is known by everyone in Savaii. Warren is an Australian geologist who has lived in Savaii for 29 years. He’s lived all over the world and is a really interesting guy. He gives tours of the island, focusing on geology and culture. Did I mention he’s 82? Dinner was great, with excellent food and interesting conversation.

The Professor invited me to join the group this afternoon. Warren is taking them to see a demonstration of how to make tapa cloth. Should be interesting.

• One of my Year 7 boys was coloring in a book. He showed me and it made sense. We’re used to blank coloring books. Just outlines of drawings. This one, which I assume was from China, since that’s where most products here come from, had the outlines of drawings but had something else. On the facing page, it had the exact same drawing, but colored in. No imagination needed. Color it just like this. And my student had followed the guidelines exactly. I’ve found that kids here are given very few opportunities to use their imaginations and find it frustrating and almost scary when I ask them to do something without giving very explicit directions.

For example, if I say “Draw a house” they want to know what kind of house, what does the house look like, what color is the house, etc. They don’t want to get it “wrong”. They’re just starting to believe me when I tell them that sometimes there is no right or wrong answer.

• The morning of the teachers’ meeting, I woke up to no electricity or running water. Annoying but a good reminder of how lucky I am to have both on a regular basis. I went to the faleaoga to wait for my ride at 7:20. Pick up was to be at 7:30. Two people were going by and they agreed I’d go with the first one to get to me. At 7:55 a group of other teachers noticed me and picked me up. The meeting was scheduled to start at 8:00. One of the people who was to pick me up arrived at 9:20.

The meeting started with a welcome speech, then the introduction of a minister. That’s normal, since we start every meeting/school day with prayer and hymns. After a long prayer there were two hymns. They were in four part harmony. It doesn’t matter which church you go to, everyone knows these hymns because they’re taught in every school, to every generation. Then the minister gave us a sermon. For 50 minutes. In Samoan. The business meeting actually began at 9:35. We then took a half hour break for tea at 10:15. Tea cost us each $10 and included a toasted corn beef sandwich, a mackerel sandwich, ½ an egg salad sandwich, a piece of coconut, a piece of papaya, a raw hot dog and 2 cracker and butter sandwiches. Washed down with milky/sugary instant coffee or Koko Samoa. I had ½ a mackerel sandwich, ½ an egg salad sandwich and papaya.

At the end of the meeting, the teachers gave the person giving the workshop $150. He’s their boss. He, in turn, gave the minister $200. Money changing hands like this is very fa’a Samoa. When Samoan Peace Corps staff comes to the school for a meeting, they are typically given money at the end of the meeting as a way of thanking them for coming.

• During morning interval (recess) at school, the kids eat snacks that their parents bring or that they buy at the canteen. Teachers have ramen, purchased at my family’s faleoloa and prepared by one of the Year 6 girls. Every other week, I take food for the teachers. This week I took two boxes of crackers and a large jar of Goober. My friend Nan sent it to me. It’s the peanut butter/jelly combo. The teachers were initially suspect, but I explained it was tasty and just like putting jelly and peanut butter on separately. I left the room for a minute and when I came back, they had carefully mixed the contents of the jar. Whatever, they enjoyed it and said I was a “good girl” for bringing food. 8 teachers ate all the crackers and jar of peanut butter/jelly.

On Friday, the professor brought Koko Samoa, sugar (for preparing the Koko), butter and six loaves of bread as a thank you to the staff for letting him use the school. The teachers were complaining when I went into the break room that there was bread, but nothing to put on it but butter and you don’t eat that. Crackers and butter, yes. But plain bread and butter? No. I ran home and got the other big jar of peanut butter that Nan sent. The teachers polished off all the bread and the full jar of peanut butter. It would have lasted two months for me. Once again, I was a “good girl”.

• My SRO, who is my age and becoming a friend, stopped by the other night to drop off some mangoes. About 20 of them! They were small and green and she said I could just keep them in the freezer until I needed them. Hmmmm. I didn’t think it was mango season and questioned freezing 20 green mangos. I tried one and although it didn’t look or feel ripe it was. It was delicious. It was a different variety than we get in Florida and than I’d seen here when we arrived last year. Very sweet and juicy and best eaten leaning over the kitchen sink. This weekend, I’ll be making some mango jam. No need for the freezer.

By the way, several people have been astonished when I tell them my plans for both mangoes and pineapple while they’re in season. I like to make a variety of fruit salsas to go with fish. Both pineapple and mango are tasty when added to rice. I also like to cook both with chicken. Samoans do NOT cook fruit and don’t understand that it can be used in savory dishes. I plan to do some food demo. Their reactions should be interesting.

• Late yesterday afternoon I took a 3 mile (round trip) walk to the store to buy a can of corn. I actually just wanted to go for a walk and prefer to have a goal. I ran into my host brother who was on his way to play voli but decided to keep me company instead. Late afternoon is the time to be out on the street. It’s cooler and people come out to weed their yards, play voli, soccer or rugby and just stroll and socialize. According to Warren, there used to be even more people out in the evening but now they’re inside, watching tv.

Lots of kids and a few adults yelled and waved as we walked by. A few kids joined us and walked along toward the store. Some made fun of my “brother”, asking if he had a Peace Corps girl friend. He’s 17, by the way. A few cars honked as they passed and I waved, never knowing if it was someone waving at me or at my brother. In one case, I didn’t realize until after the car had passed that it was Robin, the Charges de Affaires for the US Embassy. We later saw her car at the resort, so I assume she was on the island for a meeting of some type.

In addition to getting a can of corn at the store (which I’ll use with black beans, dried cilantro, hot red chiles that grow in front of my house, mango and onion to make a salad), they had cabbage and tomatoes so I bought those. Instead of paying $4 and taking 2 hours on the bus to the market to buy veggies this morning, my weekly shopping was uma (done.)

• The big news is that I have both water and electricity again. The electricity was out due to a general blackout. I have no idea why. It happens occasionally, but usually doesn’t last long. The water was out because my family had turned it off. Seems there was a crack in the pipe to my house. They spent all day Friday laying new pipe to correct the problem. The very exciting news is that as part of the project, they’ve moved their shower from next to my house to the other side of their house. They take showers at all hours and sometimes they keep each other company while they shower so it can get noisy. There are currently 15 people using that shower. It will make my nights much quieter to have it moved.

• My soap disappeared. It was the last of a bar of Burt’s Bees soap that I’d been treasuring. When I was in Apia I let a couple of other volunteers use it and they were equally thrilled. It was Peppermint and Rosemary and smelled wonderful. I woke up the other morning and found my soap dish on the floor and the soap gone. I thought I was losing my mind. I checked the locks to see if someone could have creeped in during the night to steal the soap. Unlikely since it was nice, but just soap. And only a sliver was left. A mystery. The next morning, my soap dish was again on the floor but the new bar of local soap (which is called Protex and actually quite nice) was on the floor.

I thought perhaps I was knocking it off the shelf when I dried off after my nightly shower. I checked it the next night before I went to bed. It was firmly set back on the shelf. The next morning, it was on the floor again. What the hell? I talked with my brother about it. He said it was a rat. A rat? That’s going after my soap but not touching my food? He explained that his soap had been missing recently and he found a stockpile of it that a rat had moved into a nest.

This morning my soap was on the floor again. I checked and there appear to be teeth marks. Something also peed on the toilet tank. It looked like way too much for the lizard who generally just poops on the tank. I’ll be buying some rat traps and my brother is going to have the family’s cats hang out around my house.

• I’m old enough to remember home milk delivery. It’s even better in Samoa. Yesterday I was in my fale chatting with my brother. Yes, the 17 year old is my best friend, since he speaks excellent English and likes to practice. As we chatted, a man walked by, looking in inquiringly. He was carrying a bag. I asked what it was. Ula. Lobster. He wanted $20 for 2. I offered $10 for one, which he politely refused. After some rapid Samoan between my brother and the man, I was told I could have both for $10 which was way below market price. I refused but did take one for $10.

I asked if he could get tui tui (sea urchin), alili (a shellfish that tastes like conch) or vaisua (giant clams). Yes, he can provide all of those. I asked him to stop by anytime he had some to sell. He was excited about having a new customer and I’m thrilled to look forward to having a supply of seafood. All of those items, by the way, are relatively expensive here compared to chicken legs, but I can still afford them and compared to prices for the same thing in the US, they’re dirt cheap. I plan to eat enough sea urchin to last me a lifetime while I’m here.

After he left, we talked about the small shellfish that my neighbors were digging for the other evening. Sounds like they’re similar to mussels and available on the dead coral just off the beach. They’ll teach me to gather my own. They eat them raw and since I love raw oysters and clams I’m up for it.

The lobster was delicious, by the way. Local lobsters have no claws but a large tail of sweet meat. I enjoyed it with melted butter, coleslaw and garlic bread. Food here does not suck.

That’s an overly long drone on the trivia of the life of a PVC in Samoa. It was a good week. Some frustrations as I got back into the village routine but overall a good week. I’m happy to be back with the kids every day, still enjoying the ocean and glad to have some different fruit and seafood in my diet. What more could I ask for?