Fa Soifua, Samoa! Hello, world…

Afega blowholes, south cost of Savai’i.

I’ve been putting off writing this post, though I’ve thought of it often, at least in part because I keep waiting for the magical moment where I ‘process’ everything. As if, at the end of my time here, the camera of my brain will suddenly zoom out to the big picture and I’ll be able to confidently and intelligently (humorously even, maybe!) articulate a worthy summation of four months spent in Samoa. With less than 24 hours left in the country, I may be forced to conclude that this is just not going to happen. Processing this experience, it seems, will happen long after I’ve left these steamy shores (literally–the rainy-sunny combo is back) and probably continue well into my return to the States. Still, I can’t leave without writing something for both you, my loyal readers (hi dad!), and me to reflect on the unpredictable journey of the last few months.

So, here it is. Samoa in bite-sized chunks.

1. Things I will miss.
2. Things I will not miss.
3. 4-month abstinence.
4. Low point.
5. High point.
6. Conclusion?

Ia Manuia le Iupeli Auro o le Malo o Samoa!

A hearty congratulations to Samoa–50 years ago, they became the first nation in the South Pacific to gain independence. And let me tell you, they are damn proud of it! (As they should be.) The ‘Golden Jubilee’ celebrations over the last few days have definitely put to shame any 4th of July that I’ve ever seen. It started with a ‘march past’ parade for government officials (translation: 6 hours of standing/sitting in the sun, enduring a 1+ hour prayer, watching schoolchildren pass out, and almost getting into a group rumble after SPBD decided to cut in line) that it seemed like almost the entire country participated in, included a UB40 concert that brought visitors in by the hundreds from American Samoa, ended in a dramatic fautasi race (long boat with like 60 men rowing) and generally swelled Apia’s population to a size that caused me, at times, to feel like I was in the middle of Times Square. A very small Times Square, to be sure, but still. Things I have learned over this 5-day national holiday/celebration:

• ‘Island time’ holds fast even during official events. You will be expected to show up early to ‘get a good seat’, but they are not expected to start until at least an hour after the designated start time. This applied to waiting 1.5 hours for a fa’afafine pageant to start (Samoan drag show), showing up at 4am to meet my coworkers for the parade….while no one else got there until 5am, ‘lining up’ for a parade at 6 and not marching until 11:30, watching the 10pm fireworks at 11pm………..the list could go on.
• FINALLY, how to properly wear a lavalava. Of course, the theory of it is easier than in practice….
• Samoan pastors/government officials may be the most long-winded beings alive. Not even swooning schoolchildren can put them off their epic prayers/pronouncements.
• The public arena is fair game for a ‘pants off dance off.’
• How ‘ava (kava) tastes. Which, by the way, is EXACTLY how it looks. Like muddy water.
• I love my country, but I have never experienced the pure pride and wholehearted joyfulness that I’ve seen in Samoans as they celebrate Samoa’s birth.

This will be a short entry because, of course, these are my last days in Samoa, so I will have a longer farewell post for you later this week. In the meantime, I will let pictures serve as the thousands of words that the Samoan independence celebration truly deserves.

Scrumdown in the South Pacific

Apia Park Stadium

Alright, let’s talk sports.

Except, when I say that, I don’t mean catching up on the latest baseball stats or discussing the Kings’ chance at the Stanley Cup. A self-proclaimed sports nerd, when I really get going it’s not about “Tim Tebow: Savant or Flop” but sport as a sociological lens. What I love is discussing sports as an expression of gender, body politics, group identity, capitalism, and oh-so-much more.

So, sports in Samoa. In spite of their reputation for being rather hefty people, Samoans are also known as great sportsmen. In the United States, this can be seen in the disproportionate number of Samoan football players—these Samoan Americans are usually from American Samoan families (take a minute to think that through), and seem to possess an uncanny athleticism despite, or perhaps in addition to, their large frames. While Samoa doesn’t share the passion for football that is evident in their eastern cousins, they do have a passion for just about every other sport. Cricket and volleyball are played in the evenings in almost every village across the country. Soccer and netball are widely embraced by schoolchildren; weightlifting and boxing have brought much national pride to this country, and it’s not uncommon to see rudimentary weight bench set-ups outside in communal field areas. And, of course, there is rugby.

Walk a Mile in Their Shoes

Okay, so it might be driving instead of walking, and kilometer(s) instead of mile, but to continue in the trend of video blogs, I present you with a day in the life of a SPBD loan officer.

 

I Dream of “Original or Crispy”

Blame it on too much Angry Birds, or my 200th piece of fried chicken since arriving…but it seems I’ve finally cracked. Luckily, I preserved it in video form for your viewing pleasure.

Three weeks left here! Stay tuned as I hopefully think of the most entertaining and informative blog posts yet.

Picking up Habits, and the Newspaper

One habit I’ll never get sick of: taking endless pictures of the epic clouds here.

Whenever you move to a new place, you expect to pick up new habits. If the move is more minor, say, switching neighborhoods in the same city, it might just be that your habits are re-wired–a new coffee shop to stop by in the morning, a different route to walk your dog. When I decided to spend 4 months living in Samoa, I figured I would pick up new habits that I probably wouldn’t be taking home with me. And that has definitely been true; I’ve become accustomed to cracking open young coconuts on a hot day, taking daily cold showers, drinking instant coffee, assuming all food is for sharing (well that one wasn’t much of a stretch for me)…to name a few things. However, I did not expect that I would get back into the habit of reading the paper.

Not Glamorous, But it’s Life

What you think I’ve been doing for the last month.

What I actually do every day.

After a small break from blogging, I realized I’d better dust off my keyboard, lest I disappoint my faithful readers (hi dad!). The truth is, whether it’s a result of getting close to my 3-month mark, a continually stalled social life, or a focus on work in the office instead of the field, I just haven’t found much to be blog-worthy lately. My biggest recent triumph is that I found a rugby team to play with! Hopefully, I can put together something about rugby in Samoa, which is the only thing that really feels like home here. In the meantime, I thought I would write a little bit about (yawn) work, since I realized it’s a little bit unclear what I do here besides go joy-riding in yellow pick-up trucks, battle mosquitoes, and expend huge amounts of energy grieving over what to eat.

Post-Vacation Blues

Nothing says 'vacation time' like drinks with little umbrellas in them!

Well, it turns out the downside of working in a prime tropical vacation destination is that you are, in fact, working and not vacation-ing. That changed for me, all too briefly, a couple weeks ago, when my boyfriend braved not only one, but one-and-a-half trans-Pacific flights (thanks to the inefficient flight route to Apia from LA via Auckland) on top of the cross-country travels that took him from Princeton, NJ alllllll the way here to Apia, Samoa. All the while lugging a suitcase containing a minimum of clothes, and a maximum of ‘family love’ in the form of Chinese soap operas (thanks mom!), forwarded mail, a BUG ZAPPER (thanks dad!), Chinese movies (thanks mom and dad?), and of course, edible treats. Needless to say, he gets brownie points.

Since arriving in Samoa, I haven’t had a chance to do much more than a little basic site-seeing around Apia. Sure, I’ve been all over the country with loan officers, but sweating profusely while financial transactions are completed in rapid-fire Samoan is not quite the same as kicking back on the beach with a snorkel in easy reach. Nik got one restful night in Apia (or not, turns out the roosters, dogs, and 5am church bells are still INSANELY LOUD, but I now sleep like the dead) before we headed off for adventureland. By the way, for those of you who are wondering, adventureland does not include being adequately supplied or planning ahead.

SPBD kindly lent me a car for the weekend so we took off on Friday, which happened to be Good Friday, when Apia actually became a ghost town. The south side of ‘Upolu is known to be the prettier side, so up and over Cross Island Road we went. Naturally, my excitement for Nik seeing the beautiful mountain greenery and epic ocean views triggered a massive rainstorm that seemed determined not to budge off the mountain. Once we finally inched down the other side (where of course the sun was shining), we kicked off vacation-time with lunch and pina coladas at one of Samoa’s fanciest resorts. Again, I emphasize that tourism in Samoa, while certainly an important and growing industry, is definitely not as developed as once might expect to find at a ‘tourist destination’–it’s no Hawaii, for example. We stayed at two places over the long weekend: Namu’a Island and Virgin Cove Resort.

Costco, Tiny Villages, and Making it Rain: American Samoa, Part 2

This is a continuation of my previous post, “Welcome to Ford Country (aka American Samoa)”. You can see Part 1 here.

Flags at the '09 tsunami memorial.

3. The American. 

Just as Samoa has a definite flavor of New Zealand and Australian influence, the US is reflected–probably even stronger–in Pago. You can see it everywhere–the giant, shiny, new, gas-guzzling trucks and SUVs that everyone drives; two McDonald’s, a Pizza Hut, a KFC, and a Carl’s Jr/Green Burrito; the hordes of kids playing rugby replaced by the hordes of kids playing football; fales traded out in favor of Western-style houses. And it’s true that on many fronts, the standard of living appears to be higher in American Samoa.

Am I at the mall back home??

Case in point: the 8-year-old in the family I stayed with walked around with an iPad (granted his dad works in the IT business). Food costs are much lower. The cost of everything seems to be lower, actually, despite the fact that the two islands face almost identical geographic isolation, and Pago represents an even smaller market. Pago is lucky too, because unlike their neighbors they have an industry: tuna canning. The two tuna canneries–Starkist and Samoa Packing, a Chicken of the Sea subsidiary–once employed up to a third of Pago’s work force. Since minimum wage laws were enforced by the US a few years ago, Samoa Packing has closed doors, and Starkist operates at a reduced level, but that is still more than Samoa has by way of industry.

Welcome to Ford Country (aka American Samoa): Part 1

The first thing I see upon walking into Pago Pago International Airport.

While I’m sure I’m not the only Kiva fellow who has to make a “visa run” (leaving the country to avoid having to apply for an extended-stay visa), I’m pretty sure I’m the only one whose visa run included a giant chunk of Americana. American Samoa is just a 30-minute flight away and pretty much the only destination that’s not prohibitively expensive to get to, if you want to leave the country. I had never been to a US territory before, and definitely had (and continue to have) mixed feelings about the whole concept. Regardless, my Lonely Planet guide referred to it as “the prettier sister” (ouch) of the Samoas, and my island fever got me pretty excited to travel anywhere…even to another island that’s even smaller than ‘Upolu!

Pago Pago (pronounced Pango Pango, but the ‘g’ isn’t so hard) is the name of both a village that is the capital and the harbor that defined this island as a US Navy base since it became a territory in 1900. Usually it’s shortened to “Pago” and is used to refer to the village, harbor, island of Tutuila, and the entirety of American Samoa. No one would refer to someone as an American Samoan–they say ‘someone from Pago’. Pago is even smaller than Samoa, clocking in at a whopping 55,519 during the 2010 census. The whole of the country amounts to around 75 square miles, which is roughly the same size as Washington DC. Tutuila is the main island, with 4 smaller islands scattered nearby. The license plates only have four digits. Basically, it’s small.

I was only in the country for 31 hours, but it was an incredible trip. To help me sort out my myriad of thoughts and hopefully keep this readable, I’m going to divide this post into several sections, and two parts. We’ll cover sections 1& 2 here.

1. The travel.
2. The beauty.
3. The American.
4. The Samoan.