Things that make me uncomfortable...I mean really!

Things that make me uncomfortable… I mean really!

Alright it’s official. I have now been in Samoa for a whole year. It is a very odd feeing to have people from the new peace corps group (which came last Wednesday) say to me, “I can’t wait to get to the point you are at now where you are so relaxed and know what’s going on.” Well, I have to say that was news to me that I was in the know. Apparently I am good at look cool, calm, and collected…who knew? At any rate, I was pondering my new status of “senior volunteer” in Samoa the other day on the bus, as there is nothing else to do on the bus but ponder meaningless things, and I began to think about how, even though I supposedly look under control to new peace corps volunteers there are still quite a few things in this country that make me a bit...well…uncomfortable. Now don’t get me wrong I am sure I do many things that make the people of Samoa feel a bit squimish…I can’t think of what but I am sure there is something. At any rate, this blog is not meant to be culturally insensitive by any means because I really do love this place (it’s a freaking tropical island what’s not to love?!), but there are just a few things, cultural differences if you will, that make me feel a bit uneasy and I thought maybe some of my devoted readers (thanks mom!) would find some humor in some of the predicaments I have found myself in over the past year due to these certain differences. So here goes…
1) Creepy crawlies- I’m talking specifically about centipedes, cockroaches, and rats all of which have tried at length to snuggle with me at some point and I just don’t find anything romantic about this. Actually just this week I felt something tickling my hip in the early hours of the morning just as the sun was coming up. I was barely conscious, but I pulled down my sheets and hoisted up my boxer shorts to take a closer look and out leaps (I kid you not, it jumped) a gecko. I mean really! Although the geckos might be better looking than the rats, centipedes, and cockroaches I still don’t really want them playing around my…well…you know, in the early hours of the morning. The centipedes in particular are probably the most vial creature I have ever encountered. Now I hate snakes, luckily there are none here, but centipedes make up for it. Imagine a creature about the size of a small snake or about 6-8 inches, but it has hundreds of legs enabling it to move faster than let’s say a human with only two legs. Oh and there poisonous. And ugly. Gross.
2) Lice- Ok the lice themselves don’t bother me (I actually have not yet housed the little guys but some girls have donated their heads to these little suckers to hang out in 6 or 7 times), it is the matter in which many Samoans dispose of these little mites. I had heard rumors of this process, but did not believe it until I was witness to the de-licing of a child just recently. So a woman sits behind a child and slowly and meticulously inspects each and every strand of the child’s hair. When they find a little white mite they don’t simply dispose of it but they eat it. That’s right. They mush it against their teeth to crack the heads off and then they swallow. Now that is one way to do it and I am sure there is nothing wrong with it if you have been doing it all your life, but personally it makes my stomach groan in protest.
3) Fish food- I love the fact that living next to the ocean I eat fish at least once a day. And it is good fish. I also love the fact that when I eat lunch at school we don’t use silverware. Especially since the fish is usually cooked whole and you have to get all the bones out yourself. What I can’t seem to get use to the parts of the fish the teachers at my school seem to view as a delicacy. I know they must think I am mentally unstable for only picking out the white meaty part and then discarding the rest of the fish as trash, but that’s what we do in America, make waste. And I do applaud the fact that nothing is wasted from their fish including the liver, heart, gills, eyes, brains, and even the scales, although I have to admit I still have to avert my eyes when this is taking place because my stomach thinks this is not at all funny. The part that makes me most uncomfortable about these little lunch time culinary adventures is the sucking out of the fish eyeballs and then sucking the brains of the fish through the eye sockets. I just can’t seem to get used to that. To my credit though, I did try mahi-mahi eggs this weekend. Not bad. I had to turn down the heart though which everyone thought made me weak. Its all yours guys.
4) Baby food- So you don’t really see much Gerber’s baby food around these parts, but Samoans clearly make do as they are some of the strongest people I have ever encountered. One method, which I have witnessed in Tafatafa, of feeding children who lack teeth (some children’s baby teeth have rotted out due to a very sugary diet) is very similar to a mama bird feeding her babies. A Samoan mother will take a cookie or cracker and chew it up and then bring her child’s mouth up to her mouth and transfer the now chewed cookie or cracker. Oddly enough this doesn’t really make me uncomfortable any more I think because it makes sense. Its not like there are blenders around here, might as well do it yourself.
5) “Hey Baby”- So many, many, many soles (a sole is a Samoan man between the ages of 15-50) think that the most persuasive and attractive pick up line to white girls is “Hey Baby!” I really wonder what these guys think I am going to do. I mean I am in the middle of running around town (this would never happen in my village because I know everybody and the boys in Tafatafa are very respectful and treat me like a sister) with a million things to do and then some scetchy looking dude yells “Hey Baby!” Oh yes! Let me just drop everything I am doing so we can run to the closest church, get married, and then I can start having your children. I mean really!

more pics

Meghan and I with the days catch. We are both holding on the the biggest yellow fin tuna i have seen yet. That is a marlin to my right that is of equally ridiculous size.

Bringing in the boat after a day of fishing. Ive started to go down to Dave's beach in my village Sun afternoons because they usually come in have a couple drinks, cut up a tuna that they just caught, and eat sashimi. Tough life

During the awards ceremonies we were all goofing around and dancing. I think our district should have gotten the most spirited award

The U-10 boys got third place overall. The people in the yellow shirts and rainbow i'es our the teachers from our district. As usual I was told about this "uniform" the day we left for the soccer games so I didn't match...oh well we had a good time anyway

This was after the U-12 boys district team one the final in Apia. From the left is Manaia, Mariota, and James from my school and the fourth boy is from a village about 10 min from ours. I just love this pic for some reason.

This is ben and the barracuda we (and by we I mean the boys that were fishing on the boat as I was leaning over the sides trying to get ride of my internal organs) caught. Pretty nast looking sucker...

Sina is one of the teacher's 3 year-old daughters. Maybe the cutest thing on this planet. Her family will ask her who her mom is and she will yell "Lola!" Should that freak me out?

Its my life!

I caught a fish..and then i puked...4 times. But it was deep sea fishing and awesome!

In true samoan fashion, they children holding up a i'e to give shade for the teachers...Respect thy elders!

Our under 12 boys lined up with the team from Sefa's district for the final game. We won by the way...

This is Malaki and I during one of his sign language lessons. We were taking a break to wave hello. If you look really closely you may notice the hearing aide in his right ear...yeah! He was recently accepted to a program that meets in Apia every friday. It is taught by Australian volunteers and caters to children from the village with hearing disablities. Very cool.

I made fish!

September??

Wow! What happened?
Well, my family has come and gone along with our trip to New Zealand. It would probably take about 10 years to load all the pics from their visit so i would recomend looking at my mom's websit which has some great pics http://homepage.mac.com/bonniehanks1/PhotoAlbum1.html. So the fam showed up in Samoa Aug 15th looking very bleary eyed and in great spirits...We drove into Apia to get some lunch and then headed out to my village where everyone was eagerly waiting their arrival. The village put on a welcome ava ceremony for them, where i had to mix the ava. They got me all decked out in traditional dress which was pretty fun. All the matais (chiefs of the village) were really great and so nice to my family. The village served us food after the ceremony and then we retired to the hotel as everyone was pretty beat.
The next day we went down to my beach and out with my buddy dave on his boat. He took us to the island nuusafee which is a tiny desterted island off the coast by my vil. SOO pretty out there. We did some snorkeling and hanging out and whatnot.
That Saturday I took my fam to my training village, Maasina, which was very fun. I was glad they could meet my host family and see how gorgeous that place is. My mom also took a video of me speaking samoan to my host mother, if you are interested to hear what it sounds like check it out http://youtube.com/watch?v=NkfGGst5Hsk. By the way, the baby i am holding is baby Lola, named after yours truly.
On Monday we ran a health clinic in my village that my parents, my village and I have all been organizing for quite some time now. I informed the village awhile ago and they let us use the school. About 70 people showed up all ages and all sorts of issues. Some other PCVs came out and helped check in people and hand out water and crackers. Dad worked with a Samoan Doc in one room seeing people and writing prescriptions. It was a really great day and went much smoother than i expected. At the end of the day we had another ava ceremony and my village presented my dad with a matai (or cheif) title name. For those of you who know my father...well you can imagine how excited he is to be a cheif. It was all in good fun though.
The next day we headed out to New Zealand for my first vacation in 10 months! We went to Auckland, Christchurch, Mt. Cook, and Queenstown all in one week. It was beyond beautiful, but not nearly long enough. I plan on going back to NZ after my PC service next year and possibly traveling around for a month or so.
When i came back to Samoa the South Pacific Games were already underway and Apia is totally crazy. I went to my village for a few days, but came back this Fri because the rugby 7s were being played fri and sat. So i was pretty much the happiest person in the world because i got to do nothing but watch rugby for 2 days straight and man do samoans know how to play rugby!! We actually lost the gold medal game to Figi (who would be the best 7s team in the world if it werent for a little team called the all-blacks), but it was an incredible game and came right down to the end. Sat night I went to the miss tutti fruiti contest which is a faafafine show i.e. a drag queen show. My brother/sister (or faafafine) was helping with the scoring of the show so i got in for reduced price...It was pretty hilarious all in all.
So its monday now and i am headed back to the village only to come back to Apia tomorrow because my kids are playing soccer at the mini-south pacific games tues and thurs. Its great to be running around and busy so i dont remember how much i miss my family. In other fun news I got my tickets to go to Thailand from Dec 27-Jan 16th with Steph who is a PCV here. I think Bangkok will be a pretty ok place to celebrate New years...who knows. Oh and I also got a new bookshelf and toaster/oven for my house so i can make cookies and i have a place to fold my clothes and put my books!! Yeah life is good!

You might be a hippy if....

...you join the peace corps and make make hemp braclets with Samoan children. So I brought a bunch of hemp to school Friday because I knew we wouldnt be teaching and I wanted to give the kids something to do instead of lighting things on fire...Ive seen it happen. So I sit down with a couple year 8 girls and realize that explaining how to make macrame in samoan is a little more difficult than english. I told them it can be a little hard at first since it usually takes most american kids forever to learn. So they watch me do it for about 3 min and then they start making their own. Im not even kidding these girls seemed like they had been making hemp jewelry since they were born. It was unreal. I was planning on them taking the whole day, but they all finished in 20 min. I couldnt believe it. In summation Samoan kids are more crafty than americans...I think...

Yeah...she's ok...

Malaki is my little 5 year-old buddy who is deaf. I help him and his family 3 days a week with sign language and learning letters and numbers and whatnot. We recently got him a hearing aid from an Australian NGO which has been very exciting. The thing is, in Samoa if you have any sort of disability, you are a misfit. Believe it or not, if you have white skin you are also a bit of a misfit. I recently came to this realization and it dawned on me that this is more or less how my village views Malaki and I, as the misfits. Not that this bothers me, mind you. I feel that both of us play our parts very well. If you already stand out, why not play it up? For instance, Malaki usually gets pretty excited when I show up at his house with my bag of goodies i.e. legos and alphabet flash cards. Often times he jumps up and down and does this spastic dance. How could I not join? His house is right next to the road so we often begin his lessons doing this crazy, spontaneous dancing for each other and half the village that is watching from the road. Oh look at the misfits. Good thing they have each other to be weird with. To be honest, I am glad too.
Things are going very well out here in the middle of the ocean. I have stopped counting the days I have been here and started to relax and enjoy the overall experience of it all, such as lizards falling on my head while I working at my table in my house. So many funny little things happen to me on a day to day basis I sometimes wish I had a tape recorded 24 hours a day.
My family is coming to visit in 3 weeks and I have never been so excited to see all of them! It will have been 10 months since I last saw them. We are organizing a free health clinic for the whole village which should be very fun and equally chaotic. My village is also quite excited and has already started talking about ava ceremonies and dances. I am thrilled that my family will be able to experience Samoa as it really is and not just a tourist attraction, although I am not sure they quite understand what they are in for, but that’s all part of the fun, right?
Term 2 is slowly winding down, which means substantially less teaching. I started my reading program at school, which is going splendidly. I tested all the kids in years 4-8 and put them into groups of 6-8 depending on their reading levels (we are talking English reading levels by the way). There are also 2 boys how have pretty severe ADD, so I have started helping them 1 on 1. I really enjoy this schedule much more than what I was doing because now I can walk into an empty classroom in the morning and I have a few minutes to get things organized and get my brain in the right place, i.e. finish my 2nd or 3rd cup of coffee. Then I go and pull kids out of class for an hour or so to come and work with me and if they are driving me nuts I can just send them back to class. All the kids are also really excited to be pulled out of class because I give them stickers and words of encouragement and I don’t punish them in the typical ways that most Samoan teachers often punish them…I’ll just let you think about what that means…
Now just because things are going well, doesn’t mean that I don’t appreciate email and packages any less. It is so wonderful to come home after a rough day and have a little chocolate in my fridge. So thank you all that haven’t forgotten me and keep it coming! Love to you all!

Slider...you stink

Few more pics to enjoy. Gotta run to see Harry Potter 5!!!



Tupu, the flower boy at the wedding...umm does it get any cuter?

So these are my "friends" in Samoa...yeah...

Left to right- Dave, Aaron aka beautiful man, Tim aka sketch ball, Dylan, Todd

After finishing the...ahem...half marathon. Thats right, I danced across the finish line (mostly because I was so happy I wasnt last). Nice shirt too, eh? Virginia is for badasses!