Island Happenings

September 5 -
Time to get you caught up with events in my world (of which there really aren’t many). This week has been Teuila (a flower) Festival and a lot of the villagers are in Apia for the festivities so I haven’t even tried very hard to get any PC work done. I did however clean my room and scoured the range so I can feel OK about using it.

Last Friday morning I was hanging out in my PJ’s and having a cup of coffee when M, one of the pulenuu’s sons who volunteers up at the school, showed up and asked me if I was ready to go to the school. Not knowing anything about this and feeling particularly stubborn that morning, I said no I couldn’t go. He, however, didn’t leave. He just kept sitting there and I was at a total loss what to do next. With my limited Samoan and his limited English we just weren’t managing to communicate when fortunately his mother showed up. She was able to explain to me that the school children had prepared a fiafia for me and it was time to go. A fiafia, by the way, can be either a fond farewell celebration as was the case when we left Vaie’e, or it can be a warm welcome as was the case here. Very much chagrined over my boorish behavior, I asked her to wait a moment so I could dress then we were off. It was really very sweet. They danced and sang and did a couple of skits and had even made a big banner sign that said “Welcome Dear Lili”. Talk about the colossal faux pas of all time if I had not gone!! I don’t even want to think about that.

A, the pulenuu’s wife, told me that Saturday morning at 6:00 or 7:00am they were going to pick up lapisi (rubbish) which seemed like a worthwhile task since there is so much of it, so I offered to help. We started at about 6:45am and I grabbed a trash basket, made from coconut leaves, and headed out. Obviously their idea of rubbish and mine are not the same. There I was scouring the area for chip bags, Styrofoam, cans, bottles, plastic grocery bags filled with treasures, etc. when I realized that everyone else was picking up leaves. We ran into this in Vaie’e as well when we did the village beautification project. One man’s compost is another’s rubbish apparently, so I switched gears and started picking up leaves too, wondering why 50 people turned out at that time of the morning to pick up leaves in other peoples yards. It turns out it was a fund raiser for the church. I guess, as we came by you donated money and then we picked up your leaves, at least that is as close as I came to figuring it out. At any rate, I later got a can of pisupo (corned beef) given to me as thanks for helping.

I decided since I was up and it was still early and fairly cool I would walk around the island and stop in Salua to see another volunteer, so off I went. It was a nice walk past some really nice beaches, through the banana plantations and on over to the other side of the island. By the time I got to Salua the sun was beating down, there was not much shade on the path anymore, and the gal I was going to stop and see wasn’t home so I continued on my way, vowing to remember my hat next time.

Yesterday and today there have been really low tides and the village women and kids have been scouring the exposed areas for fish trapped in the tidal pools and for sea cucumbers of which there are two kinds. One is shaped like a small cucumber. That one they scrape off the outside, cut it open and clean out the insides, then eat the “skin” raw. That one is found in abundance just lying around on the sand. The other one is more of a delicacy and harder to find. It looks like a gelatinous blob on the sides and underside of the rocks. That one they have to pry off with a knife, then they cut it open and harvest the internal organs which they again eat raw. Yucky! I’m afraid my cultural integration will just have to wait a bit there.

That pretty well brings us current – oh, except that I killed my roommate. He was bringing home friends and I figured I’d had enough. I hope there are no Hindus among you.

September 13 -
Another week gone and I still haven't saved the world! I did have some progress on my village survey though and I'm putting all the data into Access which is keeping me off the streets. Oh, come to think of it there aren't any streets. Oh well you get the picture.

I am now getting to the part of the village where the "poor" people live. Some of the living conditions are dreadful. This is the part of the "Tropical South Seas Paradise" that the travel agencies don't want you to see. Huge families of up to 30 people live in a cluster of old traditional open air fales with a wood pole floor or maybe stones they picked up on the beach. They throw down some of their mats and that's it. When company comes they round up a clean mat and put it on top of the old dirty worn one. They have a separate cooking fale and any water they need is hauled from the water tank in buckets. No one has flush toilets or showers. The facilities consist of a water seal toilet over a pit next to the ocean or it may drain into a septic tank but it is primitive either way. Some of the more affluent families, all things being relative, will have one larger usually concrete or cement block fale that serves as a community "living" room and it will have vinyl flooring in it.

Monday I was in my room when I heard a loud commotion outside - banging of "drums" (empty paint cans) and singing so I went to look. Some of the village women and a lot of kids were parading down the path with two large woven mats, maybe 10 x 15 feet, attached to poles and raised in the air like banners as they marched along. Then they went back the way they came until they got to the Komiti house where they stopped, took down and folded up the mats and had a fiafia. They love a good party and will have a fiafia at the drop of the hat for any reason. It turns out one of the women's groups was showing off their fine handiwork to the other group of women and figured a parade was a good way to do it.

The power went off last night so the pulenu'u sent down a light for me. It was a coke bottle with a rag in it filled with kerosene. Isn't that how you make a molotov cocktail? Anyway it gave off a lot of light but you have to be sure to put it close to a window because it is terribly smokey. I think I'll buy a for-real lamp. That thing is scary.