The Village (the non-horror movie version)

Wow, a little overwhelmed by the task of trying to sum up the experiences of the past week in one sitting. I’m sure you’ll be shocked to know that I have found it an amazing experience and am still in awe of this country and the people here. Maybe it’s the chlorine they put in the tap water to make it potable, but it seems to have the effect of making my glass appear half full these days. I’m just gonna go with it… Last Friday we arrived to be welcomed to our new home with an ‘ava ceremony followed by a huge meal. It was our first encounter with true village food. Including the ever-popular pig cross section (aka, every part of a pig, from the hair to the bone). I abstained from this particular delicacy due to my personal aversion to eating things that used to be cute and cuddly, or ugly and not at all cuddly but walking around of their own accord nonetheless. There was however a fabulous item called palusami which is made from wrapping up coconut cream in taro leaves and cooking it. You use taro to eat it and it’s awesome. It’s pretty universally regarded as one of the best Samoan delicacies and everyone seems psyched every time it shows up at meal time. After massive meal number one we were parceled off to our respective families who took us away to our new homes. I was a little confused at first since my mother took me across the street to the fale (house) that had been designated as the Peace Corps school area. She brought me into the big open structure (a roof held up by poles) with my hiking backpack on my back, nodded at me and sort of walked away. Eventually I realized that all of the houses around this area were part of the family’s communal living area, and there was a fale palangi (white-person style house) next door that would be my home. Double bonus: 1) Mari is never EVER going to be late for class and 2) Mari lives with the trainers, and the medical kits, and the purified water, so has all the resources at her fingertips. I didn’t realize how stoked I was with this situation until a couple days later when I took a walk to the end of town and saw that some of the trainees live a good 40 minute walk down the road. Let me tell you, a mile and a half walk in 90 degree humidity while wearing a puletasi… There are more exciting ways I can think of to torture myself. Within about an hour of being in my new home I was fed another huge meal by my family. I don’t think I went more than a couple of hours all week without eating. My Samoan father kept telling me that I needed to eat more so that I could get fat, because that is the fa’aSamoa (the Samoan way). My family was a little confusing to me at first because there was my mother, and my father, who is actually my mother’s son, which made me a little generationally confused, and then about seventeen children, mostly under the age of ten. I eventually figured out that the reason they were referred to as my mother and father was because they are the only adults who live there full-time, not because I was missing some obscure family tree linkage. All of the children there are grandchildren of my mother but many of their parents actually live abroad in American Samoa or New Zealand, and they have grown up being raised by their grandmother and their uncle. In Samoa, family is family and there is a lot more emphasis on being related to someone than on the specific relationship- raising children is much more a communal activity, and a lot of it is actually done by the older children in the family as well. All of the kids in my family are great. Our first afternoon together consisted of a lot of pointing at the chickens and saying “moa. chicken.” And then laughing because, well, that was about all we had to talk about. But they put me instantly at ease with the inherent awkwardness of such a situation, and we spent the rest of the day playing catch with a koosh ball I brought and having me teach them a bunch of American kids games like London Bridge and Ring Around the Rosy. They especially liked the “you put your backside in” verse of the Hokey Pokey and made me repeat it while shaking my butt at nauseum. We became immediately attached, and many of them never left my side all week. (Literally. Read: children following me into the bathroom, having to be picked up and carried outside so that I could pee alone.) Everyone in the village is super friendly and of course totally intrigued and curious about all of us wacky palagi’s that like to do silly things like go for walks just because, and eat vegetables, and write in journals. We truly are a funny breed, but they tolerate us quite well and are endlessly amused by us- it’s a good thing we can all laugh at ourselves J One of the great things about being in the village was how much more natural the whole language learning process became. All of a sudden we were there and using the language and immersed in the culture and it just seemed to click and come so much more logically. It made me realize how weird it feels to be sitting in a hotel with a bunch of other Americans trying to learn a language that we then turn around and don’t speak with each other outside of class. Being in the village makes it so much easier, and you really start to pick things up a lot more naturally. Especially when you have very patient small children glued to your side who are more than willing to repeat the same word five to twenty times if necessary. I feel a lot more at ease with the little bit of Samoan that I now speak in that at least I feel like I understand what and why I’m saying things, and how to do so, rather than feeling like I’m regurgitating token phrases I’ve been parroting in language class with my peers. There’s obviously a huge distance still to go, but it’s a nice start. I also feel like we got a chance to learn so much about the culture and the Samoan way of life. People are so open and good-natured here (at least after living in Manhattan)- once you get over the paranoia that big city American living fosters in you, it’s pretty incredible. We came back into Apia this morning and we’ll be here for the rest of the week. Tomorrow (Monday) and Tuesday we will all be going on job site visits to spend the days at the schools we will be working at to get an idea what it’s like. We actually went for two days last week to our sites as well but I will wait to write more about that until I post again specifically about my school and home because this is already ridiculously long, and I’m ready for bed.

I didn’t bring my camera to the village this week but I definitely will next time. Andrew and Marques both brought theirs so you can check their sites and maybe they’ll post some photos. Otherwise I’ll have some in a couple of weeks.

Antici...pation

Greetings from the Apia Central Hotel. The past few days have been mostly full of language, language, and language. With a little language thrown in for good measure. We are heading off for our first week-long stay in the village tomorrow and I think the goal is to get us to the point where we can at least ask people what their names are and say “I don’t understand” (the #1 most useful phrase at this point in my opinion) by the time we get there. I know at least for myself it’s very exciting and a little nerve-wracking. I’ve been anticipating getting my first exposure to actually integrating into the Samoan way of life for so long and now it’s finally here. The past week has been really great and really intense and completely full of constant exposure to a gamut of new experiences, but at the end of the day we’re really kind of a bunch of palagi’s (foreigners, white people) staying in a hotel here and hanging out with each other. Only once we have to sink or swim in a fully Samoan environment will we be able to get our first taste of what life here is really like. I’m enjoying the language and getting to learn it, although my biggest frustration is that it feels a bit overwhelming to be trying to process everything that is so new and different that’s going on simultaneously, and learning a language is not a minor component in that. I wish that I had more time and resources to donate to being a geek and making myself flashcards and drilling myself and cementing it all in my brain, but I keep trying to tell myself that I can be patient, because I will get there eventually. My guess is this first week is going to involve a lot of grunting and pointing and interesting misunderstandings. I can’t wait! It amuses me how excited I am about being completely incapable of communicating with those around me, but there you have it. In other news, I am very proud of myself- two days ago I did my first ever load of bucket laundry. All my clothes are kinda stiff and probably still dirty but it was my milestone inaugural experience and it’s still exciting to me. Yesterday we went out to the ocean to do our water safety training and we were supposed to go out on a boat but apparently the boat decided it had other plans so we ended up snorkeling around on the edge of a really beautiful reef instead at the Palolo Deep marine preserve. Some of the current volunteers are working on fisheries projects there and they have set up pens where there are giant clams growing that are unbelievable… I’m not sure I have ever seen them in the ocean before in any of the places I have gone snorkeling or diving. Absolutely spectacular. It was a nice break and a change up from the couple of days before it where we were in training here at the hotel all day. Today we have a block of time off this afternoon to prepare for our departure tomorrow. What does one bring to go live in an entirely different manner that is completely foreign to them for eight days? All of the women in our group decided to get traditional dresses (called puletasi: a shirt and a wrap-around skirt, aka lavalava, that are made out of the same fabric) made so that we can wear them to our village. We are expected to dress much more conservatively in the village than in Apia, where we are expected to dress much more conservatively than in the US. We are picking them up this afternoon and are all very excited about our first Samoan formal attire. So this afternoon the plan is to figure out how little I need to throw in a bag for the next week and then all of the rest of the stuff will be stored at the Peace Corps office here in Apia. Tonight we are meeting with current female volunteers while the men meet with current male volunteers for our boy/girl talks. Should be a good forum for getting to bring up obscure female questions like how do you shower from a bucket while wearing a lavalava… And then tomorrow we’re off! I won’t be able to type while in the village but we will be coming back to Apia next weekend for another week here so my guess is you will hear from me then. Try not to pee your pants with the suspense.

Matagofie

In fa’aSamoa (the Samoan language) my new favorite word is matagofie. It means that something is beautiful, and it keeps running through my head like a broken record. I know it has only been four days that we have been here but it feels like so much longer, and there are so many things that keep taking my breath away on a regular basis. The town of Apia is set in on a harbor and wraps around the coast, extending inland and trickling up into the hills that are covered in lush tropical foliage. There is an elevated path along the water so that you can walk the line between the ocean on one side and the town and mountain on the other. There is so much beauty here in everything. I haven’t been able to leave my hotel without carrying my camera because I’ve noticed that I impulsively feel the need to document a visual memory so that I never forget what I’m witnessing, what I’m part of. Yesterday afternoon my fellow trainee Andrew and I wandered up into the mountain that bisects the town. You are walking along winding roads up through lush vegetation with beautiful flowering and fruiting trees, and then all of a sudden you turn around and look back down and there is Apia, the whole harbor and the Pacific ocean, laid out beneath you. Maybe it’s just the rose-colored glasses I seem to be sporting twenty four hours a day here but everything just feels so amazing and beautiful and perfect and it’s such an awesome feeling to get the privilege of viewing and being a part of it all. It’s hard to explain the feeling that being here gives me- kind of like everything is right, everything is just as it should be. That pretty much sums up my emotional state at the moment, and you probably think I’m a cheeseball for it. So with that I will end the sappy reflection and try to give a bit of an idea what I’ve been doing besides mooning over my newfound love with this island. We spend most of the day during the week in training, sessions all morning and afternoon on topics like safety and security, cross-cultural exchange, medical training, life and work, and of course language. So far we have mainly been doing “introduction to ___”, and talking about our expectations for what we can learn from training and on how to work ourselves into the Samoan way of life. On Friday afternoon we started our first language lessons and I am so excited! I love learning language in general and the Samoan language is very beautiful and it’s also just so great to be finally getting into the real work of acquiring the skills I have only speculated about for the past year in anticipation of this moment. I’m so excited because I feel like there is nothing more thrilling than spending the next two months learning to understand and communicate in the language here, and lucky me that’s exactly what we will be doing! We also get time during the day at lunch and in the evenings to wander around and explore Apia and all it has to offer. Last night the current volunteers held a huge fiafia (party) for the trainees as a welcome ceremony where they performed traditional Samoan dances, sang songs in Samoan, and there was even a traditional Samoan fire knife dancer (fire knife dancing is, indeed, what it sounds like it would be, and is quite impressive). Then we had a huge feast with tables and tables full of traditional Samoan food cooked for us by the current volunteers and staff that was really good- I even tried octopus. Although I gotta say the whole tentacle-y thing is not really my style. There is the best fresh tuna sashimi here that I have ever had and all kinds of other fish as well as some really amazing food where lots of coconut cream is used in preparation. The evening was really fun and it was great getting to talk to all of the volunteers who have been here and in this for some time ranging from a couple of months to two years. I’m so excited to be a part of it all and just so overwhelmed by everything but in a really good way. Today is Sunday which means no classes so we went on a “cultural exploration” to the beach. It was tons of fun, everybody’s sunburnt and apparently the little fish here are aggressive and territorial because we all got bitten by them when we were in the water. But it was wonderful snorkeling, and especially getting to be there when some of the trainees experienced coral and marine wildlife for the first time in their lives! I have uploaded photos of our time at the beach, the fiafia, and just hanging and wandering around Apia and into the hills. That’s all for the moment- I hope that I don’t sound too much like some starry-eyed sap and have actually given a bit of an idea what the past few days were like.

The First 24 Hours

After stumbling off the airplane at 3 in the morning in the rain (might as well get a realistic view of the weather from the first moment on) and being greeted by a host of current volunteers, we got on a beautiful brightly painted bus and bounced our way into Apia. When we finally arrived at our hotel and got our massive quantities of luggage to our rooms it was already five in the morning and the roosters were crowing. Speared on by a portion of us that had actually gotten five minutes or more of sleep on the plane, we decided to watch the sunrise and stay awake rather than napping a bit before our morning activities began. We all wandered into “downtown” Apia at least a bit, just to check it out. The water in the harbor is pretty much all surrounded by large lava rocks and there is a beautiful boardwalk that you can traverse from one end of town to the other with the ocean on your one side and a view of the town with the mountain looming in the background on the other. All along the water are planted huge banyan trees that are not only breath-taking but provide a much-appreciated respite from the heat of the direct sunlight. As we were wandering around town we kept nudging each other and saying “guess what? We LIVE here…” It was an amazing feeling. I think within a couple of hours we all felt so comfortable and excited and in a weird way at home, even if we are living out of duffle bags with what basically amount to complete strangers. At 10 we convened in the outdoor courtyard area of the hotel to be debriefed on the ‘ava (kava in some other Polynesian countries) ceremony that was to be held in our honor by the Peace Corps staff and current volunteers. We then loaded into vans and went, all fourteen of us desperately stumbling over the five word Samoan phrase they told us we were to say when we were offered the ‘ava which is of course still relatively gibberish to us all since we have not begun language training. We arrived at an open fale (houses and buildings here, particularly outside of Apia, are called fale’s and are basically large oval structures with no walls that are thatched roofs held up by large pillars. They’re beautiful because it gives you the sense of being inside while still being completely a part of your surroundings. We all sat in a large circle and all of the important individuals gave speeches in Samoan about how glad they were to have us and how excited everyone is. Then one of the current volunteers made the ‘ava by rinsing and ringing out root fibers in this large wooden bowl with tiny legs all around the base. A small coconut shell was dipped into it and in an order that I’m sure made sense although I couldn’t quite figure out what was driving it, each new trainee was offered a cup of ‘ava. We did our best to regurgitate the phrase we had been running through our heads of the past hour, poured a little out for respect and drank some. I have heard many things about ‘ava, from it looking and tasting like dirty dish water to it making your whole face go numb when you tasted it. Maybe it was the 36 hours without sleep that I was running on, or my overall adrenaline, or the fact that most of it made it on my shirt (those of you who know about my drinking issues will of course have seen this one coming) , but other than it being vaguely particulate and crunchy tasting I didn’t get much of a sense of what it was like. The ceremony as a whole, however, was an amazing experience. Every time I looked out the fale to the left, there was the huge mountain that divides Apia in two looming at the end of an open field. At one point a huge mass of clouds swept over the top and we watched them descend down the mountain towards us. In the middle of the ceremony it began to rain and all around you could see the water coming down all around. We came back here for lunch where we drank cold fresh young coconut milk straight out of the fruit, which was the most refreshing thing I have ever tasted (this impression possibly fueled by the streams of sweat that were by then rolling down my back). After lunch we had a brief common expression language lesson and hopped in vans to be taken on a driving tour around town. I must admit that eating lunch was the kiss of death that turned my exhaustion into full-fledged delirium and I spent the majority of the rest of the afternoon having a psychological war with myself over the fact that I had to stay awake whether or not my brain was capable of functioning. I wish I had been more coherent when we were driving around but we definitely got a little bit of a sense of the area if nothing else, and were taken to a place where we could actually walk into the water and get our feet wet in the local ocean for the first time, which was cool. In the evening the whole group of trainees went out to dinner together at a little seafood grill place where I think at least half of us ordered fish and chips. They said they had a vegetarian burger on the menu. All of a sudden my mind is racing a mile a minute conjuring up images of black bean burgers and soy protein, but when pursued it turned out this meant egg, cheese, lettuce, tomato and pineapple, so I figured I would pass. We all ate quickly and realized we were absolutely exhausted and in no mood to socialize so we walked back here and retired to our respective rooms to crash. I woke up at five o’clock this morning (yes, Mari really woke up before the sun), only 24 hours after first arriving in this amazing place, feeling a little congested and a lot in awe and amazement that our time here so far has been so brief yet so rich and powerful. This is truly a magical place and an extraordinary opportunity and I feel blessed (yes, my non-religious self is choosing that term) with the honor of being a part of it all.

CLICK ON THE PHOTO LINK AT THE LEFT TO SEE ALL OF MY PICTURES OF STAGING AND OUR FIRST DAY HERE!!!!!

Are We There Yet?

722 kilometers to Apia. We have been on this plane for about five years now, give or take. Someday I am going to learn how to sleep on airplanes and ten hour red-eye flights will stop being so delightfully eventful. Unfortunately, today was not destined to be that day. The big screen at the front of the cabin claims there is one hour and one minute left until we arrive. It’s absolutely surreal to think that I met all of the people sitting around me less than 48 hours ago. The past two days have felt more like an eternity (notice a theme here)- so much has gone on psychologically, and it is so intense to be meeting and getting to know people and preparing to leave together. Despite the fact that I have now spent my entire life doing this, somehow, we’re still not quite there yet. Where are we? Where have we been? We spent Monday and Tuesday (today? yesterday? unclear at this point…) in workshops going over basic protocol and getting a general overview of the kinds of information we will be processing during training. And, more importantly, getting to know and be comfortable with each other. Peace Corps Samoa group 75 consists of 14 individuals. Shockingly, we are skewed on the gender ratio with 8 men and 6 women (average PC percentages are more like 60-40 women-men). There are a half a dozen individuals doing information technology (otherwise known as computers), about the same number with a variety of educational positions (vocational skills through university teaching), two social workers, and of course the one special needs volunteer. I am, incidentally, also the one vegetarian in the crew (doing my part to make for a more diverse group of individuals). Speaking of vegetarianism, somehow Air New Zealand did not hear that I don’t like beef for dinner and turkey for breakfast even though I swear I made sure to alert them in advance. Fortunately the stewardesses (one of whom was a former PC volunteer… break out into chorus of “It’s a Small World”) and my seatmate were willing to offer up whatever non-muscular scraps they could find, so I was okay. I’m sure you’re all breathing a long-awaited sigh of relief at that comforting news. Anyways, the plan is now to land and stumble our lethargic selves through customs and get to Apia which is actually about a 45 minute drive away (when they call the airport “Apia” it is basically a euphemism for “somewhere on the same island as Apia”). Then we get a few hours to recuperate in the hotel that will be our home for the next ten days before we head off in the morning for welcome ceremonies and the beginning of our ten week careers as Peace Corps Trainees. It sounds like after the time in Apia we head out to a village about a 45 minute drive east of Apia where we will be living and training for the following five weeks. That’s pretty much all I know since, obviously, we still haven’t managed to get off the plane. But hey, it only says 374 kilometers now. If I weren’t so tired that my entire body was numb I would swear I could taste it!

P.S. I obviously wrote this while I was in the air, but rest assured, I had to land to actually post it, meaning I am also in one piece safe and sound.

On Your Marks, Get Set...

Goodbye! I’m off to meet my staging group in Los Angeles today. I can’t believe that the time has actually come. Or that all my stuff actually fits into my bags. Carrying them is a whole separate issue, of course. The minor detail they forget to mention about having one hundred pounds of luggage is… well, I myself don’t weigh ALL that much more than that. And I don’t usually walk around carrying an entire human being draped on me. But it builds character, right? At least that’s what I’ve been attempting to tell myself as I stagger around under it all. Anyways, back to the whole leaving thing. I will try to check in if I can once I arrive in Samoa but I’m not sure what my access will be like there yet. So I thought I would wish myself bon voyage on your behalves and say goodbye en masse, in the least personal way possible. Keep in touch, and I will do my very best to do the same. Love to everyone (even those of you I don’t know- I’m in a charitable mood these days)! Here we go…