Without a Hitch

Friday was the Savaii installation of our career day hosted by Avanoa Tutusa (“Equal Opportunities”). Last weekend we were talking with some of the volunteers that live on Savaii when they mentioned that there was a massive secondary school-wide sports day to be held on the same day that we had alerted principals two months ago was to be the day for our career day. After spending the beginning of the week debating on how many students might show up and whether it was worth holding the event, or canceling it, or postponing it, we finally decided to go ahead with things as planned and hope for the best. On Wednesday, our president called to confirm the venue to find out that they could no longer host us- the prime minister would be staying there at the time and he and the other ministers needed the space, so we were out. Two days to go and so far no place to have the event, and perhaps no students… Thursday morning we prepared to take off and the treasurer signed a check for the organization so that we could cash it to pay for everything once we got over to Savaii. The bank decided one signature wasn’t enough so Pete, our president, chased her down at her work across town and had her sign it a second time to return to the bank. Unfortunately, however, the signatures were not quite similar enough for the bank, and they refused to cash the check. So he returned to our treasurer who gave him her personal ATM card and a couple of pin number options. We went to the bank to withdraw money from her account but unfortunately Pete guessed wrong and the bank ate her card. No money, no venue, no students. Off we go to the boat! We arrived in Savaii mid-day and split up to conquer our rapidly developing crises. The Savaii branch of the bank was more than willing to cash the check (thankfully) and even commented that in the future we need not sign the checks twice, once would be just fine. We managed with the help of some friends over in Savaii to find a women’s committee building on a church compound directly across the street from the original venue that would work quite well for our event, plus the bonus of location. The pastor was nowhere to be found, which we found a little strange since he was to be leading prayer the following morning at career day, but his wife showed up and we explained that we were peace corps volunteers and having a career day the following day and needed somewhere to do it and she said we could use the space. We went back to the hotel where we had booked two rooms to find that actually the hotel was a little overfull due to a wheelchair repair conference, but they would do their best to find us a place to sleep, which ended up being across the street at the fale of our friend’s very generous aunt who let us take over their house for the evening camping out on the floor. The village vaita’ele (spring-water pool) happened to be right outside of the outdoor area we were sleeping in, which was quite nice and we enjoyed an evening swim there. We returned to the hotel to eat dinner when one of our members alerted us all to the fact that, with 12 hours to go, we no longer had a faife’au (preacher) or our keynote speaker, due to emergencies that had come up. Money and venue, no preacher, no speaker, and still possibly no students. So we begged her uncle from America who happens to be a preacher to get up and say a prayer for us and went in search of someone to give a keynote address. We were unable to find anyone so we decided we would try to ask one of the exhibitors in the morning and spent the rest of the evening relaxing and praying that things would somehow come together instead of continuing to disintegrate. In the morning we went to go pick up the breakfast we had ordered for the exhibitors to find that the man who was planning on making our meat pies had fallen ill and instead of the 30 we were hoping for we had 6. so we grabbed some pankeke (fried dough balls- they seem like they shouldn’t be appealing but man do those things grow on you!) and made some tea and helped everyone set up. The chief of police agreed to be our keynote speaker and suddenly out of the blue everything began going perfectly and the next few hours were amazing. It turned out that because we had to change venues to a smaller place at the last minute the sports day was perfect because we could never have fit more students into the hall than showed up. It was a truly impressive thing to live through... no money, no venue, no students, no preacher, no speaker, no hotel room... no problem. Things just somehow seem to work out here. Although I must say I had entertained thoughts of staying in Savaii for the weekend to relax and have a little mini-vacation, but by the time everything was over I couldn't get to the boat and back home soon enough. On saturday I slept until 3. It was perfect.