In Samoa you laugh at everything; even things that aren’t funny like a little kid getting beaten. However you are also allowed to laugh at things that would be considered funny in American/Western humor. Last night before dinner we all had to share one funny moment and one moment that really stood out from our trip. Going around the table I realized that I had neglected to mention some of the funny stories from the village so I’ll try to share a couple of those now.
Tuesday, after we made the umu, we went back to Jackie’s house to play a language game. Let me first describe the layout of the “compound” for lack of a better word. The school building/Jackie’s house is in a circle with four other houses and a store. A little further back is a fifth house, the Samoan kitchen where the umu was made, the chicken coop, and several other storage type buildings. This little area is where most of Jackie’s family lives. But back to the game. The game that day was a scavenger hunt with the clues given in Samoan. We were told that it was a race and that there was a nice prize to be given to the winning team. My team was composed of three people: Mira, Rachel, and myself. We were given the first clue which said something about the “falemoa” or chicken house. We looked at each other and ran out the door not stopping to put on our shoes. This turned out to be somewhat of a mistake since the muddy ground was strewn with rocks and coral. We quickly picked our way across the courtyard until we came to the house that was removed from the rest and called out to the group sitting inside “falemoa?” They looked at us and pointed to the right. Off we went. We must have made a funny site holding our language books and lifting our knees high in reaction to the sharp path. I reached the coop first and grabbed the pink paper which said something about the book “Mary Mary.” “That’s on the bookshelf,” Rasela called so we turned to go back. As we quickly started picking our way back across the yard I realized that something didn’t feel right. I looked down to see my lavalava undone in front and threatening to fall off completely. All I could think of at this critical moment was Jackie telling us to “Pick it up and twirl it around” if it were ever to fall off in public. Trust me if it had I very well might have.
Another funny story that wasn’t quite so funny at the time happened one evening after dinner. Although the family I stayed with had electricity the bathroom (which as I mentioned earlier was slightly removed from the house) did not have a light in it. Not really that big of a deal right? Usually the light from the room from the upstairs room filtering in through the slot above the door was enough to allow you to see all that was necessary. Since dinner was normally eaten around 7pm the sun had already gone down and darkness was only broken by a few street lights and the lights from the few nearby houses. We were sitting in the Samoan fale when suddenly there came a screaming from somewhere across the yard. I knew at once that it was the four-year old but I had no idea where she could possible be. Had she fallen down and gotten stuck somewhere? Vaiula and I ran across the yard to try to locate her. It was then that we realized that she was in the bathroom- stuck. Let me say another word about the bathroom. It was build out of wood with a metal roof and concrete floor, and was just big enough to hold a toilet and a person. It could be closed from the inside by a sliding latch and the outside by a wooden bar that slid across to hold the door closed when it was not in use. One of the first things I’d noticed about the sliding latch (similar to the ones in bathroom stalls across America) was that the metal part which stuck out a bit had a tendency to fall out and get lost on the floor. This meant that if you wanted to leave the bathroom you had to search on the ground for it. Easy enough during the day but at night? You’d better hope that you could find it by the light reflecting off of it. Once we knew where the source of the sound was we knew what had happened. She’d lost the pull and couldn’t get out. Her grandfather came running across the yard and proceeded to try to yank the door from its hinges. No luck. Whoever had attached it had done a great job. At this point I was torn between feeling bad for the poor little girl and laughing hysterically like the rest of the family. I mean- she was stuck in the bathroom! But then again- she was stuck in the bathroom because the latch didn’t work but why replace something when it can still do the job? Finally, the grandfather picked up the ten year old and stuck him through the twelve inch gap next to the ceiling. For a ten year old boy it was fairly simple to find the missing piece, insert it in the correct place (also rather tricky even in the daytime), and open the door to free the still terrified little girl.
That’s all for now folks! Today was rather uneventful. After starting class at 10am (yay for the free morning) we had to give presentations on some aspect of the village that we’d been assigned before we left. After lunch we divvied up the gifts from the village. Some people went into Apia while I set up a few research meetings for later in the week and then headed back for a pretty fantastic two hour nap.
