Cell phones

I feel like I’ve reached such a road block in terms of what to say. We haven’t covered anything new in class since the test is tomorrow, and there hasn’t been a whole lot of excitement around campus. I’ve been spending most of my time in the computer lab sorting through pages and pages of development reports on energy development and electricity in Samoa and the Pacific in general.

This morning we had to do an audio-visual presentation, which was basically our opportunity to be creative and talk about some aspect of the culture. A lot of people loved it, but I really don’t like having to be creative so I didn’t have as much fun with it. I ended up doing a skit with one of the boys on cell phones. When we were in Hawaii I was talking to one of Jackie’s former students and she said that cell phone coverage in Samoa was about to hit something like 90% by the end of September. Well, they may not have been quite on schedule but this week a new cell phone company has rolled out a huge advertising campaign. Digicel is now the private competition to Samoa Tel, the government run phone company. There was a very critical editorial in the Sunday paper about Digicel because their advertisement targets youth and individualism- a cell phone for everyone, whereas with Samoa Tel their advertisement was geared towards “Family First.” This particular author saw them as attacking the very root of Samoan culture. I didn’t go into Apia yesterday but apparently the advertising was everywhere and people were lining up outside stores to receive their free phones. The town is said to be completely decked in red and white- Digicel’s colors.

Back to my story. Jared and I had actually picked this topic before we even know about Digicel’s new launch. Like I mentioned earlier I knew that cell phones were on the horizon before I even arrived. And its not that people didn’t have cell phones before, but the network coverage was nowhere near as good and apparently Digicel’s price is half what Samoa Tel was charging. Personally I’m not surprised as many government organizations struggle with optimization. Anyways, what sparked my interest in doing cell phones was actually something that happened in Fiji. We were hiking up the mountain in Abaca and our tour guides were texting and chatting on cell phones. Now you’ve got to remember, this is a village that doesn’t even have electricity! And yet they were able to use diesel generators to charge their cell phones to talk while they were hiking up a mountain. In the States most cell phones won’t work in the more rural areas, but then I guess that’s a reflection of Fiji’s small size. Another interesting observation about cell phones here- like everything else they really don’t belong to one specific person. I mean yeah they might, but then again not really. I don’t know how many times I’ve had someone tell me not to call them today because so-and-so has their phone. Or I’ve been in the computer lab and someone answers and says “oh no, I’m using his phone today but I’ll tell him you called.” It’s something I don’t think you would ever see in the US. Part of it is definitely the way cell phones work here. For the most part people can’t afford to have a plan so they buy minutes and its easy enough to pay back minutes but it’s still unusual to see cell phones being passed around so easily. And speaking of ringing in the lab, I don’t think I’ve been in the lab for more than forty-five minutes this entire semester without at least one cell phone ringing. Finally, just one more comment about cell phones- but this one from American Samoa. Texting language is not just used for cell phone conversations. It’s used for emails and myspace messages and pretty much any other form of electronic communication. That was actually how we did our skit. Our entire conversation was a series of signs written out in texting talk. I don’t think the rest of the class appreciated them as much as we did but it was still fun.

One of my favorite presentations was a slideshow on sleeping. People here sleep a lot, and they sleep just about anywhere. One of the girls had taken a bunch of random pictures of random Samoans and of us sleeping in well, random places. There were pictures of us passed out at 2:30am in the airport lobby; pictures of people sleeping in fales by the side of the road; and a picture of the pastor who fell asleep after he’d come to assist at a birth to name just a few. But the one that takes the cake was a picture of our academic director Jackie. Jackie was born in South Dakota but has lived most of her life in Samoa since coming here with the Peace Corps and marrying a Samoan. We often joke with her that she is more Samoan than American and this picture demonstrated that so very well. It was a picture of Jackie asleep on the floor…next to a very comfortable bed. Only a Samoan would do that and so…Jackie must be a Samoan.