Early Service Conference

February 17 -
I just got back from my Early Service Conference - one week at some beach fales down the road from here. It was a really beautiful spot and the weather was decent most of the time. It rained hard sometimes and the sun was blistering down sometimes, but a lot of the week it was overcast or just raining lightly which makes it a lot cooler. There is a really nice breeze and that helps too. For the surfers in the crowd there are some really good waves there. They will be holding the surfing competition for the South Pacific Games there this summer. Well, summer is not really the right word I guess. Technically it will be the dry/cold season. Anyway they start in August.

Tomorrow I’m off to Apia to get my last hepatitis vaccination and to see the doctor again about my asthma. The climate here is wonderful for my arthritis and my dry skin but bad for the asthma. I had no symptoms and no treatment for more than five years when I left the states but two weeks into my stay in Samoa it started kicking up again. I have an inhaler that I used occasionally at first, then regularly every night at bedtime. Lately I have had to use it 2 or 3 times a day so I have to go see about getting some oral meds to go with it. I don’t know if it’s allergies, humidity, smoke from cooking fires, mosquito coils/bug spray or a combination thereof but it is definitely getting worse.

Bugs, Church, and Computers

February 9 -
I have a gross out story for you! Night before last I was sitting at the table playing computer games when I noticed a creepy crawly 1/2 inch long wormy looking thing crawling across my screen. I brushed it away and smashed it. A bit later there was one on my arm. I smashed it. Then there was one on the mouse pad, etc. After a while of this I decided something had hatched out in my thatched roof and they were crawling around and dropping down from my ceiling which creeped me out so I got out my trusty Mortein bug spray and sprayed the roof/ceiling. Well, they kept falling down, but now at least they were dead. However every other bug, fly, moth, beetle etc. that was up there died and fell down too. It was totally disgusting. There were dead bugs everywhere except in my bed and that's because the top of the mosquito net caught them. What can I say? It seemed like a good idea at the time!

February 11 -
Sunday again. Off to church in a bit but I'm not worried about being late. It's the "Samoan way" to show up when you feel like it for anything, including church. It's supposed to begin at 8:30 and there are maybe 100 people there by then plus all the Sunday School kids. Just before the first hymn about 20-30 more people wander in. These are mostly choir members. Then there is an extended prayer and another hymn, then another 20-30 people take their seats. Then just before the sermon the last shift arrives. These people have been accumulating in the church foyer waiting for the appropriate time to enter the sanctuary. By the way the Methodist church here is an offshoot of the Anglican church and they stand for all songs, and kneel on the floor (in their white clothes) to pray. I understand from my PCV friend Ray that is the way Anglicans do it. I'm not Anglican so I don't!

Church is a bit different from what I am used to., Families are not seated together. Kids are with the SS group, boys on one side of the church, girls on the other side. Adults sit in the middle two sections, men on one side and women on the other. A couple of cranky old crones keep an eye on the kids and if they get out of line they get up and go smack them, either with their hand or their fan. Little kids get up and go wandering around to other family members whenever they want. During prayers (remember everyone is kneeling?) people look around to see what everyone else is doing, chat with their neighbor, play with their little ones, etc. Periodically they close their eyes and may murmur "thank you" in response to a "thank you Jesus" portion of the minister's prayer. In this village church attendance is mandatory but of the 1150 population only 200-300 are actually in church at one time and there is only one church. Today there was a rugby game on TV. The men's section was surprisingly empty.

About the Computer Center. It's a pretty nice setup actually. Four Pentium IV computers plus a server, all in a nice air-conditioned area. The government is on a big push to make computers available to everyone so they have been running around the country setting up these centers. Never mind that no one knows how to work them or maintain them. One computer won't boot at all - one long beep code for you geeks out there, The server has the same problem off and on. The internet doesn't work so I decided to find out why. Some bozo installed a 19.2K modem. It actually has a 56K modem so I uninstalled the wrong one and installed the right one. Now the computer knows the modem is there but still no internet connection. I checked the phone line and guess what - it's dead. I found an old September phone bill lying around that was overdue and threatening cutoff so I guess we know why the phone line is dead. There is a printer/fax machine that needs a toner cartridge, and a printer/scanner/copy machine that needs new print cartridges. Oh yes, the typing tutor program I was counting on for classes was a trial version and has expired! Aargh!!

Yesterday we had another PC Committee meeting to make a final decision about what project we will work on. They kept trying to get me to decide. I kept telling them that was their job. I presented the information I had collected about potential funding for various projects at which time the matai decided to drop their request for a fishing boat because it would require a 35% contribution from them and they don't have it. So we will be trying to build a new Aualuma house with a health center and room for a daycare or classrooms. They really do need a Health Center because it is 1 1/2 hours to the nearest medical facility.

I bought the shelf unit Friday and spent that night and Saturday morning putting it together and then putting things in it. It has 3 shelves divided into 2 sections each. The 3 sections on the right side have doors and the ones on the left are open. So I put my food, dishes, and pans in the ones with doors and books and papers in the open shelves. I got rid of two boxes and now there is a lot more room on my table. It's great.

Settling in --

January 30 -
I am settling in to my new surroundings and beginning to get going on getting some work done. My housing situation is fine although a bit interesting. Try going to bed every night on damp sheets and pillow! The sun has not been out enough to dry things out during the day. That doesn't mean it's not hot. It's just so humid (95%) that heat has no effect except to make it steamy. My mosquito net has mildew growing on the top, I think because I had it tied up high above the walls and it wasn't getting the breeze circulating over it, so I lowered it down to see if that helps.

Living in my little faleo'o is a lot like camping without closing the rain flaps on your tent windows. No problem if there is no wind but since that seldom happens I bought a tarp and my host family supplied another one and we put them up on the outside so I can drop them down if it gets too bad. Since that's a bit of a chore, when it's just a bit breezy I just close the curtains and then tuck the bottoms of them into the wall where the wood meets the screen wire to keep them from blowing out into the room. It's a bit primitive but it works. Of course the traditional solution BT (before tarps) is woven shutters that they let down and that is what they have on the two big fale'o's that the family uses.

Since I got my little refrigerator I am no longer eating breakfast and lunch with the family so I have a little more freedom of schedule and diet. It's great! I still eat the evening meal with them - necessary for cultural integration you know, plus it gives me more exposure to the language. The biggest problem is that they don't eat until 8:00 at night and I get hungry and I have had to re-adapt my sleep cycle to staying up later and getting up later in the morning.

I've made a few trips to Salelologa (the village where the ferry dock is) and it is so much easier to do than it was to get from Faleu to Apia. The buses run by here about every half hour and then it's a 40 minute trip into town. Of course you can't count on them coming when you think they will. There are inumerable things that will cause them to change their schedule and you won't know about it until they just don't show up. One cardinal rule is supposed to be that there will be a bus to take people to catch the ferry which is every two hours, but even that is apparently not sacred because yesterday my bus was late getting here (it had gone to the plantation) then on the way to town it detoured to the bus barn to drop off the coconuts it had picked up. It missed the ferry!

"Town" is a quaint little place. It has the open air "maketi" of course where you can buy everything from vegetables to deoderant, but there is also a business district that has a variety of offices and stores where you can get most things. There just isn't much variety. There is a shelving unit in one of them that I am lusting for. It would be so nice to get my books and papers off the floor and table. I could also use it for the dishes and pans that are currently in a box on the floor. We'll see. Maybe after the 1st.

Sunday I finally got to meet with the pastor although it was not a nice quiet little chat as I had envisioned. I met with the whole young people's group and explained to them about the computer and sewing classes I thought we could have. I plan to have two classes back to back, twice a week. Twelve of them decided to sign up for computer classes and I asked them to meet me Monday evening to discuss when we should have the classes and to try to divide the group into skill levels for the two classes. The meeting was supposed to be at 5:30pm but of course no one was there when I arrived. One man showed up shortly and I talked to him for a bit then two of the women came, then another man came. That was it by the time I left at 6:15p. I have decided that, Samoa time be damned, I will wait 30 minutes from now on, and if people aren't there I will go home. So now I am working on my lesson plans. Fortunately one of the volunteers in Apia is a computer instructor at a private school and has shared his curriculum with us so I don't need to put a huge amount of work into it. I'll just follow his.

The lady who lives next door came over the other day to see my house. I met her previously on the day I went with M to the garden, but I didn't know she was our neighbor. Anyway it turns out she speaks pretty good English so we had a nice chat. She is going to have her mother make me a broom. She also suggested that she could take me around the village so I could make a map and learn where everything is and where all the important people live. I am going to take her up on that, although I still refuse to walk 20 miles to the other end of the village. She did mention that maybe we could get a car for that.

Yesterday when I was in town I called Digicel to complain about the lack of phone coverage in Gataivai. There has never been a decent signal here since they went live with the GSM service in November and apparently the villagers must think that's just the way it is supposed to be because the guy told me I am the only one who has ever called to complain about it! To tell the truth I can believe it. Samoans tend to just accept things as they are. If it works, it works. If it doesn't, it doesn't. I think I'll start a "call Digicel" campaign! I can get one bar in my house if I put the phone on top of the wall at the head of my bed. If I move it lower down or towards the other end of the house I lose the signal so I have to use it standing up. Of course I can't afford long phone calls anyway so maybe it helps keep the expense down.

My Peace Corps Committee returned for a second meeting with the projects they think would benefit the village. We discussed them and managed to condense 7 ideas into 3 by combining projects. Since we can only work on one at a time we will have another meeting to decide which one. In the meantime I have been investigating potential funding sources and talking with group members to get a better idea of what their project entails. They want a fishing boat, a new Aualuma house which will contain a health center, sleeping room and classrooms (the village telephone is located in the house so it is manned 24/7), and assistance with obtaining equipment for weed and pest control in the plantation. It is up to them to decide what we will work on so we'll see what they come up with.

February 2
Yesterday I went for a 2 hour bike ride with my friend J who is a volunteer in a village about 5 miles away. Well, actually it was about an hour of riding and an hour of pushing the bike but considering that it has been years since I rode at all it was quite an accomplishment. We pushed the bikes for an hour because we decided to investigate an old overgrown side road that should have taken us to the ocean (but didn't). J could have ridden on it but I tried and ended up in the bushes. I'm a bit too wobbly for riding in a tire track through the weeds so we strolled along in the rain enjoying the solitude. Anyway we had a great time but I gotta get me one of those padded tractor seats to put on the bike! Man that thing kills me!

About my computer class curriculum. Computer classes are always conducted in English because that is the language the software is written in but I thought it would be nice if the students had a list of basic terms with Samoan equivalents to help get them started so I decided to make one up. Now that was interesting! There are no Samoan words for a lot of the terms so I had to try to think of something similar and use the Samoan word for that instead so monitor became screen, keyboard became typewriter, recycle bin became rubbish, log off became go away, backspace became return to the one behind, etc.

I have decided that Samoa is not made of lava rocks. It is made of ants. It is two giant anthills in the middle of the ocean. They are mostly little tiny things, not as big as the good old American sugar ants. I don't know where they hide but just leave a speck of any kind of food anywhere and they are swarming all over it in a minute or less. Leave it there long enough and they will have called in re-inforcements from home and you will see a solid black ring of ants around it. And, they are small enough to get through the mosquito net so guess who doesn't eat in bed!
Off to town today. I think I'm going to get that shelf unit.