The Old Woman

My closest friend in Samoa stopped by yesterday to surprise me after class. We went back to my place and sat on a mat in the yard, guzzled soda, swatted at flies, ate Cheese-Its , and talked about dumb things. I was really glad to see her because I hadn't spoken to her in a while due to the fact that she's was in Savai'i for the past week. Her Grandmother passed away on Good Friday and I have never seen her so sad.

My friend's relationship with her Grandmother are one of the most beautiful things about Samoa. In America this woman would have been put into a nursing home simply because there is no structure in America to take care of her. In America, one of our strongest virtues is independence, which is one of the things that have been responsible for so much success, at least my success. But no where are the negative qualities of independence extolled so highly but in Samoa, where independence is a vice and interdependence and love is key.

I remember hearing a palagi repeatedly refer to the Prime Minister of Samoa as "the old man". I was pretty shocked at this disrespect. Later, I heard a friend refer to her older mother as "the old woman" and I realized that she was actually being respectful of her mother's age, much like we might say "the smart woman" or "the young man". Old is not considered a bad thing here, something to be hidden. It's something to respect.

So my friend's Grandmother, who was bedridden for almost twenty years, lived those years surrounded by people who adored her and took care of her. When my friend's mother gets old she will also get the same treatment, and the same will happen to my friend years down the line. I feel bad when I see my little sister in Niusuatia passing up her childhood afternoons playing outside to spoon-feed her invalid Grandmother mashed taro, but then again it seems a small price to pay for the lesson of learning to love all people, regardless of appearances, and putting others before herself. How many people do I know, including myself, who could have benefited from such lessons?

There's no question that I would want to be a kid in America, but I definitely was to grow old in Samoa.

Politics of Food

I went shopping in Apia the other day and noticed that the eggs at Chan Mow's were a particularly good price-- $3.50. I wasn't in the market for eggs, and I moved on. At another store the products were around the same price (I was hunting for gourmet coffee) but they had something else- local eggs. Local eggs are brown and a bit smaller. They also cost $6.50. That's right- you have to pay an extra $3 for a dozen eggs that haven't been shipped across the ocean in a voyage that most Samoans are not able to take. Do you see a problem here?

Most people here will laugh when you suggest to them that Samoa might someday not be able to feed itself. But it's a real possibility. Yes, there are breadfruit that are dripping off every tree, but the majority of foods that Samoans eat are imported. A lot of these are foods that can be grown or raised here—such as eggs, chicken, beef and some fruits like papaya. Samoan chicken is considered a delicacy, and is also not generally as meaty as imported cheaper chicken. Other foods are replacements for foods that are similar and local—such as rice being eaten rather then breadfruit, or canned fish rather then freshly caught. It's worse out in "kua", the villages far from away from Apia—although the villages tend to use more grown produce like taro, they are also more likely to depend on imported canned foods. The only local, fresh food that my family eats is taro, everything else is imported, and they are only about an hour from Apia (three by bus). Other then that it's ramen noodles, canned mackel and crackers. Not the best diet!

Importation is fine- as long as you have strong exports. But it actually costs more to import the can to put some coconut milk into for export then the coconut milk is worth. Most Samoan still rely on taro as a staple of their diet—the day that it becomes cheaper to import taro and breadfruit, Samoa is in big trouble. Their only viable economy is really tourism—but tourism increases importation and eventually leads to the destruction of plantation land, which reduces the self-reliance of Samoans. Finally, many of the new resorts are being put up by larger foreign-owned firms, like Marriot. This isn't going to help the local economy either, and will part the smaller places out of business.

Only time will tell.

Happy ANZAC day!

me: Happy ANZAC day!!
 Dylan: Same to you?

me: I just came in and all classes were cancelled.

I was just sitting at my desk checking my email, wondering "where the fuck is everyone?"

Got my coffee, went to class... all the doors were locked.

No one tells me anything around here.

Dylan: What's anzac?

me: Was just reading that myself actually...

From http://www.awm.gov.au/commemoration/anzac/anzac_tradition.htm:
ANZAC Day - 25 April - is probably Australia's most important national occasion. It marks the anniversary of the first major military action fought by Australian and New Zealand forces during the First World War. ANZAC stands for Australian and New Zealand Army Corps. The soldiers in those forces quickly became known as ANZACs, and the pride they soon took in that name endures to this day.

Of course, this doesn't explain why this holiday is celebrated in Samoa, which really shares nothing with Australia except an ocean and proximity.  Plus an Embassy.  And a lot of Aussie restaurants. 

(I would ask someone Samoan, but no one is at work today.)

Join the "virtual march" against the genocide in Darfur

Good to know I can still March from Samoa.  Felt that I should pass this along.  It's from MoveOn.org:

Dear MoveOn member,

For years, many of us have read reports of the ongoing genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan, and wondered why world leaders have failed to step in. As many as 400,000 civilians have died and over 2 million have been driven from their homes, and yet the United States and other leading nations won't intervene and stop the killing.

This week, we may have the best chance since the genocide began to capture national media attention and give our leaders a mandate to act. On Sunday, April 30th, tens of thousands of concerned Americans, organized by the Save Darfur coalition, will gather in Washington to demand a real multi-national peacekeeping force to protect civilians in Darfur and end the genocide--now.

To support this urgent call, we're launching a "virtual march" to end the genocide in Darfur. We're aiming to sign up 100,000 virtual marchers in time for the rally--can you help us get there?

You can join the virtual march against genocide by clicking here:
http://political.moveon.org/darfur/

You can get more information on http://political.moveon.org/darfur/ and http://www.savedarfur.org/home. 

I rule!

I am taking a TESOL course to help pass my time here. Here's the comment from my latest assignment:

An excellent submission which I have awarded a grade of A minus You have shown that you can work effectively with materials not of your own choosing in the best interests of your learners A sound treatment of a challenging text Section B was also of a high calibre Well done

But shouldn't that be "An excellent submission to which I have awarded a grade of A minus"?

Note: Any recruiters who are looking for a TEFL teacher for a location in the Middle East (preferably volunteer with free housing, airfare, and a living allowance) should contact me right away, 'cause obviously I won't be on the market for long.

Update: Passed the class and got an 'A'!!

My students websites...

Here's a link to the websites that my "HCS386: Human-Computer Interaction" students built:

http://www.nus.edu.ws/hcs386/

There are also some pictures from graduation on there.

Update: One of my students made a new page for this site with bios of all the students. I'm pretty proud of him, Malo Wellington!!!

And now a word from Iraq...

Just wanted to pass this along. This is an email I got from my friend in in the Middle East. She's working in Jordan at the moment, and she had this to say about Iraq:

First to the oasis. Amman is feeling more and more like an Oasis in this region, an appropriate term for a land of deserts. I have stayed in touch with my friend in Baghdad, chatting on the messenger. Now of course you all know things are bad there but the news just fails to cover all the elements. In her area people come knocking at the doors., whoever answers is grabbed and next seen dead in the street with tape over their mouthes and noses, this is how they were killed! She only has electricity at home for 45 minutes a day, so has to plan the cooking, ironing, washing etc. to exactly fit in, something which sounds simple until you try living with it, especially it means there is little to take your mind off or drown out the noises of tanks, helicopters and guns outside! It seems to me that now people are almost looking towards a full civil war because at least then you know who the parties are and who to negotiate with, especially in the humanitarian field!

Whilst chatting there have been two bombs go off near the office, one next to her nephew's school and two attepts at another colleague's daughters school! Of course you see it on the news but it is far more real when you know people!

Additionally no-one can trust anyone except v close friends and family, the enemy is unknown! In Iraq life is still serious, there are no jokes about the situation, except perhaps about me going to visit. My friend offered to get me a student discount on my ransom!

The most depressing thing is unlike in other war zones we have studied like Cambodia where the capacity needs to be built up Iraq has capacity, in the early 80s it had one of the best education systems in the world. Now people are leaving or unable to work. As my colleagues say "Iraq, the country of oil has no oil, the country with two rivers has no water, the country with some of the best doctors has little health service!" etc. Everything is there and yet it isn't!

An Easter Adventure

Well, just got back from an exciting Easter in Niusuatua, of course, "exciting" is a relative term. I was supposed to get there on Friday, or "Aso Maliu" (Good Friday or "Death day" as it is known in Samoan) to attend a prayer camp in the next village, but there were no busses and I decided that I needed the day to hang out at home.

So I hopped on the bus at around 10:30, and it was busier then I have ever seen it. Fortunately, someone sitting in the front gave up their seat and I decided to take it. I had to stand all the way last time, so this time I figured that I deserve a seat. (The buses in Samoa make David Sadarus's trip in "Naked" look like traveling on the Concord.) It was one of those trips where you are full to the brim and no one has a lap without a person sitting on it, and then the driver stops and picks up 10 more people and you wonder what you are going to do with them. Fortunately for me, one of these ten people was a little kid who I immediately tagged as the occupant of my lap. I am a difficult size for busses… generally the smaller person sits on top, but I am too tall to really sit on someone's lap comfortably. So usually I wind up with a Samoan woman nestled in my lap who outweighs me by about 50 pounds and whose feet don't touch the floor.

Now this kid was in my lap for about five minutes before he started to drift off but had no place to put his head and kept falling forward and smacking himself against the dashboard. So I put my hand on his forehead and pinned him to my shoulder. The kids here will never cease to amaze me. The fact that he could sleep in a stranger's lap (especially a white stranger) was pretty odd, but the fact that he could do it on a moving bus that was blasting R&B at ear-spitting volumes while said stranger was holding him in a headlock was the really incredible thing. After about five minutes he went limp and was out for the count for the entire trip. After about two hours I finally got there.

Talosia (my Samoan mother) and Angel (the youngest girl) were gone and Anne was holding down the fort. A fifteen-year-old girl on a Saturday and she was doing her chores as if she wanted to do nothing more. Talosia went with the Women's committee to do something at the local hospital. I ran off to talk with Ruta, the pastors wife, who is one of the best speakers of English in the village. She had no new gossip to report, but she did inform me of the church schedule for the next day. There would be a sleepover at her house that night and a sunrise mass in the morning. She invited me to attend, which I did, thereby proving to myself that I had learned nothing about Samoan culture.

I was pretty tired but I figured that this was a "cultural experience" that I couldn't miss. I made the following assumptions: 1) I would be able to sleep in a roomful of kids due to the fact that I was pretty tired, 2) I would be able to sleep on the floor (Ruta actually offered me a mattress on her floor, which I declined), 3) that a "lights-out" would be enforced since the kids would be roused at 4AM. Wrong, wrong, wrong. The lights didn't get shut off until around midnight, and that was when the babies started to cry. Samoans can sleep through anything. Growing up in communal settings, darkness and quiet are unneeded luxuries when it comes to sleep. A Samoan will think nothing of cranking up the TV or radio after everyone has gone to sleep and the conversation has stopped. So at 1AM Anne was sitting next to me singing pop songs with her best friend and I was wondering if it would be okay if I slunk upstairs too see if Ruta's offer of a mattress was still available. At 2AM I finally just got up and went for a walk for a simple change of pace. I don't know how I have managed to sleep on the floor before. Either I am getting old or they snuck drugs into my coconut prior to my going to bed.

I did manage to drift off at around 3:45 (why does that always happen) and got awoken at 4AM. Now according to Ruta, we would split into two groups and walk back towards the church singing. Sounded nice at the time, not so nice at 4AM. We sludged out into the darkness (actually, I sludged, everyone else was pretty cheerful having been able to sleep) and started to walk. For some reason I figured that we would stop at the edge of town. We got towards my house and… didn't stop. It was Christmas all over again. We walked… and walked… I asked Anne how far we were going and she said that we'd go about 20 minutes out. Ha, what a joker. After about ten minutes, we stopped and stood around for about another 10 minutes, and finally the church bell run and we headed back, singing, candles in hand. A lot of the kids used their hymn books and shields against the wind for their little flames, and God must truly love this country because not one of those hymn books burst into flame.

We got to the church, and after a quick little mini play which featured the two Mary's wailing outside of the church/tomb and then we were called inside by a voice booming in Samoan. Not really the most inviting image to me (especially since I didn't know what was being said) and it was actually a bit chilling. Into the church for what Ruta promised would be a "short" service (yes, she lied) and finally we had a refreshing breakfast of coco Samoa and bread and butter and boiled eggs. I had wanted to paint the eggs the previous night, but apparently Samoans have a thing against eating cold boiled eggs. I guess it makes sense, in a weird way. I mean, we don't eat cold eggs in general, so why should be eat them after they've been boiled?

I went home and slept. Fortunately my family has learned about my strange need for quiet when I sleep and chased all the kids out of the house and turned off the TV. Woke up at around 3, went back to church (two a day on Sundays) and then came back and dyed Easter eggs, which can be viewed here: http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=e1iyj8p.qz30r21&x=0&y=-oxkiiw. This was a pretty huge hit although it took the kids a while to get the hang of what they were supposed to do. After which we made them lie down and wait for the Easter Bunny to come. They had no idea what the Easter Bunny was but were willing to cooperate anyway. I had brought a mess of candy and Talosia and I hid it around the house and we had a hunt, which was a big hit. The kids found about half the candy in twenty minutes and then spent the rest of the night coming across random sweets as they went about their chores. I'd be in the bathroom and hear a delighted shriek and know that another piece of candy was found.

Angel actually won, as she turned out to be the smartest at finding things. She found one under a cushion, and then had the brains to immediately check under every cushion and mattress, rather then run around the room screaming in victory like the other kids did. That kid is really coming along. She's taken to imitating the English words that come out of the television and has also shown a sudden interest in asking me the palagi words for things. It's pretty incredible since she's only four, and I used to think that she didn't realize that I even spoke a different language. I've taught her how to answer "What's this? Who's that? Where's so-and-so?" and she's managed to make up her own sentences. Unfortunately, the first of these was "Where is the susu?", "susu" being a female organ which she has discovered gets an interesting reaction out of me if she punches one of them. It's too bad that there is no one that can speak English too her, because now would be a really good time for her to learn.

Monday. Monday was the dance, or the tausala. A tausala is when all the members of the village get together and, well, dance. It has to happen during the day because Methodists aren't allowed to dance at night. The format is basically this: they play a song and announce a family. Members of that family get up and dance and bowls are set out. People clap and put money in the bowls. Then the bowls are collected and a group song is played in which everyone runs around and dances. The thing is incredibly fun—for about twenty minutes. Then it starts to get old. After old comes downright "please-kill-me-now" boring, and yet everyone seems to be having a great time.

Samoan dancing is very strange. It can be done well, and if you have enough boys running around shouting and slapping the floor then it can hold your attention for about five minutes. But if it's just a woman with average skill (which is more then I have) then she'll just stand up there swaying back and forth and moving her hands sort of like you would imagine a stoned hula dancer would do. I give it 30 seconds, top, before I start to rummage through my bag for something to read. And they do these things for 3-5 HOURS. For the group dances, I generally hop up right away before anyone asks me to dance. If I dance with someone, it's me and him staring at each other for the 5 minutes of the dance which we perform the boring moves described above. Usually I tend to act a little crazy during the first few dances but eventually even that gets old. And people seem to think that as an American I have some awesome John Travola type moves hidden under my belt that I have been saving for the right person. When they see that my dancing skills are more along the lines of Jessica Tandy the disappointment in their eyes is unmistakable. So I get out there before anyone can ask and my dancing consists of grabbing random small children and swinging them around. That one never gets old and it keeps the boys away because I can just sock them with a Samoan child if they get to close. Accidentally, of course.

So after about an hour of this I was literally thinking that maybe the house would burn down and save me from this torment when I noticed that people were running outside. I went outside as well and was treated to the spectacle of two people beating the crap out of each other. It was pretty sweet and only became sweeter when the pastor ran out and started hitting the fighters with a stick, enraged because they had spoiled his dance and were endangering the amount of money that it would raise. They were separated a few times (obviously they were both pretty drunk), and we went inside to watch from the windows. A new fight broke out again, and this time a large Samoan woman picked up a log that I figured she was planning on using to separate the fighters. No. She ran up and smacked one of the guys on the head with it, screaming all along. It took three guys to get her down. I suddenly realized that Angel wasn't with me. I had brought her to the dance (one of the reasons that I was forced to stay) and I ran out to find her. She was standing outside watching, her eyes wide with fright. When I picked her up, all she could say was "oti… oti…" Oti means "dead".

Now obviously no one was dead, but I didn't know that. I ran inside to find Ruta, and I came in just as a round of speeches was starting. I sat down quickly and waited while various chiefs got up and made speeches, followed up a spirited speech by the pastor while Ruta, his wife, sat next to him quietly crying. I was pretty petrified at this point and wondered who, if anyone, was dead. People seemed awfully calm for someone being dead, but how was I to know how people here would act in that event? I have to admit that after everything I have seen here I wouldn't be too surprised if they brought in a body and dumped it in the middle of the floor. "Ruta", I whispered. "Is everyone ok?"

"Shh." She said.

"Did someone die?" I asked. Ruta gave me a look of horror that indicated that either I was dead on or dead crazy. This didn't help so I tried to question Angel. "Who died?" I kept asking her. She answered, "Oti ula!" Deadhead? What was going on around here? Were we being invaded by hippies? After Angel realized that I didn't understand she grabbed my hair and pretended to cut it with her fingers, repeating "oti ula." Oti means dead but it can also refer to cutting hair. To this day I have no idea what horror she witnessed.

I found out from Ruta during a break that the pastor had told the congregation not to fine the people who were involved in the fight. Were they to be fined, then the pastor would also be fined… something that would be humiliating. If the village chose to fine them, then he and his wife would start packing that night. I asked Ruta if that was a likely scenario. She just shrugged her shoulders. After the speeches, the dance was over and prizes for the people who gave the most money were handed out. No, I didn't make that up. Then a village council meeting was called to decide the fate of the fighters (and ultimately, the pastor and his wife).

I had really had enough after this so I snuck out of the meeting and went home and re-enacted the entire scene for Talosia and Anne's benefit with me and Angel beating the crap out of each other in the living room. Then I announced that had met someone that was heading back to Apia and I was going home. I had left my cat Gigi at home for two days alone and I wanted to get back to him in case he had run out of food or burned the house down. In that typical "God-loves-Samoa" way I had walked back to the house with someone who lived a town away from mine and was planning on leaving in her pickup in about two hours.

My trip in the back of the pickup went well until the woman that I was riding with started questioning my on my church. I told her that I go to the Bahai temple. "Why do you go there?" she asked with a disapproving glance. I told her that it was the same God, and that we read from the Bible. "No it isn't," she said, and looked like she was about to start an argument. I asked her where she went and she told me that she attended the religious center next to the Bahai center and that perhaps I should go there instead. She was Methodist, she said proudly. I was tempted to tell her about the last time I went to a Methodist function and two people showed up drunk and started beating up each other while our church leader socked them over the heads with a stick which had happened… um.. never. But one of the Bahai principles that my Bahai friends are fairly proud of is the fact that they don't give snooty responses about their religion to people trying to start something, even if those people deserve it. So instead I just burst out into my favorite Methodist hymn and started a dynamic topic on singing and sports.

Anyway, that was my Easter adventure. Peace.