The Samoan Adventure: Good deeds and pears

Last week was a week of good deeds…and pears! We started work on the computer lab at our school which was wonderful. Michael, who is a new peace corps volunteer living in Satalo which is a village about 10 min bike ride from me, is a very experience carpenter who has agreed to help build our computer lab. We put up screen and coco wire on the windows to help hinder some of the creepy crawlies from getting into the lab. We also discovered that I was a bit short on the measurements, so we could only cover about half the windows. No fear, though I made a trip to Apia this weekend to get more screen and coco wire.
On Wednesday Meghan and I were picked up by a Peace Corps car and taken out to Sapo’e to help set up a computer that was donated to the school there by another peace corps volunteer. I was mostly there for moral support as those of you who know me know that computers are not exactly my specialty (lets not get into why I am starting a computer lab at my school…its all very confusing here in Samoa…).
On Thursday during my afternoon jog I was hailed to a house of a good friend by a bunch of flailing children screaming “Lola sau!!” (Lola come here). The woman that lives at said house, Lise, is a wonderful lady on the Women’s committee in our village. I wrote a grant for their committee to get sewing machines which I have a check for, but we needed to work out logistics about when to pick them up and when we should start sewing classes, etc. Lise had been in American Samoa for the last few weeks so it was good to catch up with her again. As I was leaving she called me back to give me presents from her trip (in Samoa it is rude not to bring everyone and their mom presents after you come back from trips, more often than not presents are in the form of food). She sent her girls in the house and they come back out with a bag which she pulls out a box of chocolate covered macadamia nuts and then she pulls out a pear!! This might not sound very exciting, but when you haven’t seen a pear in over a year the sight of the sweet savory fruit is beyond exhilarating. I, of course, freaked out a little bit, which I think surprised Lise as she didn’t even know what the name of the fruit was.
Later that night, after I chilled the pear, I bit into it while standing in my kitchen and collapsed on the floor in fruity bliss. Im not kidding. So that is my story of the pear.
I volunteered with the Red Cross again last Saturday. We were helping out with the Manu Samoa 15s try-outs. For those that don’t know Manu Samoa is our national rugby team. Some of the players were there which is about as close to a celebrity sighting as I have gotten in awhile. Quite exciting really.

Now that is what i call sustainable development!! It might be hard to tell that this is my entire school and they are all signing the national anthem! Malaki (my brother from another mother, i.e. the little boy i teach with a hearing disability) is in the bottom left corner.