Farewell to the Village

August 19 -

Thursday was the language proficiency interview and I am happy to report that I passed, along with all the rest of my training group. I'm sure my score was pathetic, but as long as I passed I don't really care except that I am now going to have to try and use the language in earnest. My plan is to get someone in my new village to help me with practicing it until I can get a little more fluent - read that a LOT more fluent! So now it is just finishing up the next few days and then swearing in is on Wednesday morning the 23rd.

Today we said farewell to the training village in the traditional Samoan way with a "fiafia". All the villagers and the volunteers and the mucky mucks from PC staff got together and performed for each other with dances, songs, and skits. It was great fun and for a bunch of white folks we did pretty good. We got them to laugh, which in Samoa is a sure sign of success. They presented us with gifts (see the picture of the pile of baskets and lavalavas, mats, etc.) which we haven't gotten yet but are supposed to be handed out to us tomorrow.

Then we went home with our families and had our farewell with them. My family decided to have a papakiu (barbecue) of mutton flaps, sausages, and chicken. They often barbecue on the bed of an old wheelbarrow using coconut husks as briquettes, but it was raining so ours was done indoors in the fale that is normally used for building an umu to roasts pigs, etc. The barbecue sauce was soysauce, sugar, and onion and it was delicious. I ate way too much. Then I gave them gifts, some of which I brought from the states and some I got here. They cried, I cried, we all cried, and then we had a party with other members of their extended family and some of the other trainees who dropped in. It was a great evening. The next morning we all walked down to the PC training facility with my many bags - quite a bit more stuff than when I first went there 9 weeks ago. We said our farewells for the last time with promises to visit, loaded up and headed back to Apia.We will actually return to the village one more time on Wednesday the 23rd for our swearing in at which time I will officially become a Peace Corps Volunteer instead of trainee.

I will be here in Apia living in the lap of luxury in an air-conditioned hotel room with cockroaches and gazillions of mosquitoes until Thursday morning when the folks from Faleu come to whisk me away to my miniature tropical island. Then the real reason for my being here begins.

It's going to be about an hour and a half trip to the Internet Cafe, so don't expect very frequent updates, although for the first couple of weeks I will probably have to make several trips back into Apia while I am trying to get my living quarters in order. I'm trying to get pictures posted up to the current time so you can see what I've been up to.

The scenery shots are from Drop off Day coming back across the mountains. There are the most awsome tree ferns, banyon trees, and just jungle growth in general up there.

Then there are pictures of Manono that I took during my OJT visit.

There's a picture of my room from the outside (its the corner room in the back with the open fale portion in front and the ocean to the left). Eat your hearts out folks! Of course paradise comes with a few flaws. Check out the picture of my roommate - In case you can't figure that one out, it is brown and has 8 legs, and no, I don't know whether it is a boy or girl!

There is a shot of my kitchen table and fridge and another of the kitchen counter and range. The open room to the right is my "living room" also known as the family sleeping room when they come on weekends.

A picture of my room (the bath towel is hanging on the bathroom door to the right), a shot of the ocean from right
outside my bedroom window, one of the boat dock from my "living room", a reef heron behind the house, a couple of pictures of the inside of the roof on the 100 year old traditional fale showing the braided coconut twine that holds it together, a picture of the path going along the shore towards Faleu and the "butterfly patch". You walk right through this one spot along the path where these butterflies are always hanging out and it is the only place I have seen them.

Then there are pictures of the training , village, villagers, and trainees that I took the day we worked on the beautification project with the villagers. They wanted to plant flowers along both sides of the road the entire length of the village, and build new garbage receptacles. There actually is a garbage truck that comes by once a week and picks up anything left there. They have to be elevated so the dogs don't strew the goodies all over the place so the guys worked on those while us girls worked on the planting. Hopefully they will survive.