I had a very interesting weekend. Some of the Samoan students here at USP had volunteered to host us for a couple days to let us experience life with a Samoan family before our ten-day long village stay which begins later this week. I went home with a girl named Luki who lived in Vaitele. She is one of thirteen children, most of whom are already married and living elsewhere. Two are actually married to American’s. As far as I could tell there were about twenty people living in her house. Or maybe it was eighteen plus her eldest brother and his wife who lived in the shack ten feet away. Her parents are separated so her dad lives in Savaii. Her mom is the village doctor.
How was the weekend? Overall it was very good. Before I left this morning they told me that I was to consider them my Samoan family and the mother started crying. It is absolutely incredible how welcoming the people are here. They may not have had much, but everything they had was mine the moment that I arrived. They lived in Vaitele, which is free-hold land so they actually owned their property unlike the majority of Samoans who still live on community land. The village was also interesting in that most people lived in palagi houses with fences. Luki’s family did not because her mother preferred the open fale, which I think I’ve described earlier. A fale is open on all four sides with a roof. They were also unique in that their shower was enclosed in metal as opposed to being completely open like many of the other students. Still not much however when you realize that its just a pipe hanging out of the wall about six feet off the ground. You also change completely in the open so I was very glad our teacher had given us a brief lesson on how to change and shower modestly in the open. By the end of the second day they’d gotten used to me so it wasn’t a big deal but when I first got their the little kids watched every movement I made. You try getting dressed under that kind of scrutiny!
Friday afternoon I went to my first rugby game. It was between USP and the NUS- National University of Samoa. We got our butts kicked royally. After the game we went to the Institute to pick up Luki’s sister Kanesa who leads one of the Bible studies there. Kanesa spent four years studying at Brigham Young University in Hawaii and I really enjoyed spending time with her. We went to Apia and were going to see a movie but there was only one left and they’d already seen that so we ended up just walking around, getting some BBQ and sitting under a tree in “downtown Apia” and chatting for a while. They seemed to know everyone! I guess it really is an island eh? We knew that most of the bars had been closed down for a couple months so I didn’t really know what to expect as far as a night-life, but apparently it consists in cruising around or walking around downtown, eating BBQ and perhaps having a couple Vailima (Samoan brewed beers) and just relaxing.
Saturday was how-to-put this…fun looking back but a little rough at the time. I didn’t sleep very well Friday night because it was my first time to be in that environment. I slept on the “bed” which was basically a mat raised up so that there was storage underneath. There is only one room in a fale so everyone sleeps together. I grew up sleeping in the same room as little kids but its been a while since I’ve heard crying babies in the middle of the night so I woke up several times. I also woke up at 4am when the roosters began crowing, and then again at 6am since Luki had a volleyball tournament in the morning. Two of the boys were staying with some of her friends from the same town and we planned to meet them at one of the beaches later that day. At around 10am they showed up at the tournament and picked me up since we were still waiting for the rest of her team to show up so that they could play. I haven’t figured out if there is such a thing as a forfeit there. The boys picked me up with beers in their hand so I figured that they relaxing day was going to include a little bit of alcohol. Yeah it was a little early, but I figured ehh…it’s Saturday. If I’d only known I would have run the other way. Also, before I go any further let me just state for the record that I am not a big fan of beer and that over the course of the day I had probably a grand total of one beer. And just how long was the day? They started drinking at 10am. They were drinking until midnight when they finally ran out of case number 6? There were about ten guys and four girls because one of the other SIT girls showed up with her host. None of the girls drank so that beer was divided up among the boys. It was basically an excuse for them to be drunk the whole day. I’m sorry if I’m offending some of the people reading this, but it is the dark truth about drinking here. They drink to get drunk and they drink an obscene amount of it. Although before you get the wrong idea I should probably add its more like a heavy buzz and not the drunkenness of American’s because they really do want to prolong the “happy state” or whatever. I dunno. I think it’s stupid. I am a firm believer that moderation in all things is good. Oh, and they don’t eat while they are drinking so even though we begged numerous times for food they never brought back anything besides a few cokes and some chips. I probably had 4 liters of coke that day. It was one of those nightmarish situations when you just wonder when and how is this going to end? I didn’t realize this at the time but one of the reasons we were stuck in the situation for so long was that both the girls who were hosting had given them all the money they had even though none of us were drinking. I’m still trying to figure out why she did that and my only guess is that they were trying to make everyone happy and that they’d never been in a situation like that. To me it’s just common sense- if you aren’t drinking why contribute to the pot? Anyways, that was the annoying part of the day and the part that seemingly would never end. It wasn’t all bad however. The beach was beautiful and it was for the most part a very relaxing day. I didn’t start getting frustrated until around 6pm when I hadn’t eaten all day. We swam about ¼ mile to and from this other side of the reef. I joined in with one of the Samoan teams racing practices. They are apparently practicing for the South Pacific Games so it was a lot of fun. Not as easy as it looked either to be completely in sync with five other people. I also had a great time hanging out with everyone. It was fun. Very chill. We sat around and talked. People have such different experiences here. It’s a very laid back life.
Sunday was also just a great day. After church they we had to’ona’i and then slept all afternoon. In the evening some more of their cousins came over and we went for a walk and laughed and talked and had a great time. I’d been very tempted to go back to school at 6pm with the boys, but I’m glad I stuck it out because otherwise I would have missed out on the evening. After getting home at midnight the day before and knowing that everyone in the family was worried I was feeling a bit like I was imposing and wanted to completely remove myself from the situation, but staying was very much the right thing to do. Those extra couple of hours turned the whole weekend on its head.
