March Madness where are you?

My parents called me the other day and informed me that the final four is set. In my last communication with the outside world they were still playing the conference tournaments. The point I want to make here is how much faster time flies out here. I was thinking the other day about “long winters” and how I couldn’t wait for them to always be over. In a place with no “long winters” there is nothing to wait for. It is a challenge remembering what day and even month it is sometimes. Since I don’t have a calendar, hate watches, and I’m always misplacing my phone, I actually have to think about it. Some of you are probably saying, “Wow, I think the sun is getting to him”. Personally, I think it’s living in a culture that could care less what day it is, except Sunday. I also blame the lack of Big Monday, Big Ten Tuesday, ACC Wednesday, Thursday’s on TNT, and Sunday Night Hoops.

Now that I’m finally settled in I’ll give you an idea of what a typical weekday might look like in Samauga.

6:30 a.m. Cock a doodle dooo

6:45 a.m. One of the big mama pigs gets an itch on her side. Using one of the wooden poles of my house, she relieves herself by rubbing back and forth. This usually gives the house a little shake. The old man comes and checks his tobacco plants (“Old man” is not considered offensive in Samoa. People take pride in their old age).

7:00 a.m. I roll out from under my mosquito net, get an update on the tobacco, and go check my garden in the plantation. Recently I’ve had fresh tomatoes and peppers every day. Sometimes there is a ripe papaya which I pick for breakfast. I plug in my electric kettle and heat water for coffee and rolled oats. I use a rubber band and piece of thin cloth for the coffee. It seems to work just fine. I throw some sugar or fruit in the oats, spread a little Skippy’s extra crunchy on some crackers and eat it. By this time I’ve cracked open my laptop and either listen to some music or watch an episode of “The Office”, or “Flight of the Conchords”.

8:00 a.m. If it isn’t too hot yet I do some work in the garden. If there is a school committee meeting I go to that.

10:00 a.m. Recently I’ve been spending my mornings working on the proposal for the new school. The committee changed their plan so I had to start over again. I’d rather not get into details in the blog but just know that I’m trying very hard to do this right. A few days of the week I visit the women’s committee. We talk about their peanut garden, village gossip, and when I’m going to settle down and get married to a nice Samoan girl. When they wrap all that good stuff up I sometimes visit different families in the village that I’ve gotten to know pretty well. By this time I’m well hyped up on cocoa Samoa (Local hot chocolate).

12:00 p.m. I return home to eat lunch. I either eat tuna sandwiches or cup-o-noodles which are great with the fresh tomatoes and peppers I picked earlier in the day. But, this will all change soon. I just got a gas stove so bring on the homemade tuna helper.

1:00 p.m. It’s hot. “Time for rest”, as the old lady always says (Remember, calling someone an old lady is cool in Samoa). Since it’s too hot to sleep, I usually do some reading or lately I’ve been working on additions to the house.

1:30 p.m. School’s out. Kids start coming for help with homework. Visits have significantly increased since I got my place. Before, when I shared a house with the high chief (who is also the old man), people did not come and visit out of a certain kind of respect for the chief. It’s not that he would have cared, but the rest of the village did.

4:00 p.m. I go to the homework center from Monday through Thursday. This is a nice break because I get to speak English. They don’t always understand me, but this is how languages are learned.

6:00 p.m. Go home and play the guitar or work in the garden until curfew. Curfew is a twenty minute period starting at 6:30 when villagers are in their homes praying. No one is allowed to walk through the village during curfew.

7:00 p.m. Dinner time with the high chief and his wife. We always eat first, followed by the rest of the family. I really enjoy this meal. Since my host family is so use to me being around, I get to see the real Samoan way of life.

8:00 p.m. I take a ride into the future in my Space Shower.

8:30 p.m. Relax, read, watch a movie on laptop, or play guitar with Va’a (see picture of Va’a on photobucket). Occasionally a kid will show up to get some homework help.

10:00 p.m. Roll back under the mosquito net and fall asleep to the itching of the pigs.

Moved in

I’m finally all moved in to my hut. I had an enormous amount of help from a local carpenter named Vaiasa. This week we are adding on a porch to do my cooking and keep my gardening tools. The homework center is well under way. I’ve been very happy so far with the kids who come. When I graduated from Lincoln High in 2001 I thought I had seen my last of algebra and chemistry. Not so, because I’m doing it all over again here in Samoa. My proposal for a new school building is almost finished. The application process is long and grueling but hopefully patience will pay off and a year or two from now they will have their school.

Welcome Back

I've spiced things up here bit to make it more interesting. Now you can check out what other volunteers are doing in Samoa as well as see what I'm reading and watching. Enjoy!!

My House is here

So I’ve got great news. My “fale samoa”, or hut, is finally built. The day was March 3, 2009 and it was a glorious day. The “mayor” who put this off again and again finally came through (with a little pressure from the high chief). This morning the muscle of the village and I went to the bush to get wood. The frame was up and sturdy in four hours. Samoans are very resourceful when it comes to construction. The nails were reused so there was no cost in getting this thing up. Finishing touches are applied by the use of a chainsaw. Coconut leaves are weaved and used as a roof. It took one day. The “mayor” made a comment along these lines. “Ua. Oh Simi. Samoa very strong, fast build house, one day ehheheh.” I replied, “more like five months buddy”. Everybody laughed, even him.

I’ll get some pictures up soon. Take care and thank you to those of you who are sending books.

Meeting and Eating

Today is the first Monday of the month. The village counsel meets every first Monday of the month. This is were all major decisions are made by the chiefs. Everyone sits Indian style around the outside of the “fale” (open house). It can be killer on your legs. If I want to do a project or have a program of some sorts, I have to go through them. Meetings start with an ava ceremony. For those who don’t know ava is the drink of choice in the South Pacific. It is a combination of water and mashed up roots from the ava plant. It tastes like dirt. But, I will say it has a nice tingly aftertaste. It numbs your mouth a bit and has a calming after effect. The older more esteemed chiefs do a lot of talking about things I don’t understand. They aren’t discussing anything. It’s more like a sermon. Then we eat. After eating issues are brought to light. Then we eat again. If there are more issues we will talk about those and depending on how long, we will eat again.

Today I had an issue. The pastor and his wife have decided to leave the village. This news came a week ago and has been a big bummer for me. Laila, the pastors wife, was fluent in English and helped me understand many things about the Samoan way of life. As many of you know I was working with them on a homework and resource center. But without their support I had to get permission from the village. As I expected, they said “fiafia”, which means happy, excited, enjoy, and party. I took that as a yes.

Following this meeting I had another meeting with the Primary School Committee. They want to do something about the condition of the primary school. It is in awful shape, even compared to the other schools in surrounding villages. I told them a few options with aid agencies and they liked what I had to say. We then walked down to the school into the hall where there were 70-80 parents, the principle, and vice principle. I was not expecting this. The school committee is under some heat because apparently they haven’t done a whole lot of upkeep. I was asked by the principle to talk about the possibility of receiving funds from overseas. So here I go again with my spiel. Before I knew it they were pleading for a brand new school.

The bar has been raised here in Samoa. The village has expectations now, and I have a big project to accomplish. Wish me luck.

Bad Blogging

Things are finally picking up here in Samauga. I’ll start out by saying that I am a horrible “blogger”. I understand that the point of a blog is to frequently provide interesting information. I’ve failed the frequently part and it is the readers job to judge whether or not it is interesting. The good thing is I should be getting dial-up internet in my house in the next few months. After that I’ll have no excuse.

Today I held my first meeting with my Peace Corps committee. Ths committee was supposed to be created before I arrived in Samauga. But, like most things here things don’t always go according to plan. But, nevertheless, I finally have a committee. The purpose of having the committee is to support me and my work. I divided my committee into for groups. Members were selected by myself and the “mayor” from different village committees. The first is the School group. In the group is Siliga, my host brother, who is very helpful and a very hard worker. Another member is Lina, who lived in Australia for a long time. She speaks great English and will be a huge help to me. The second group in my committee consists of women from the village women’s committee. They are as follows; Mafu, Malaepepa, and Pulemao. I spend a great deal of my free time at the women’s committee so I’ve gotten to know them very well. The third group is the youth who are out of school. Right now there are only two members, Saua, and Eli. The final and probably most important group for the villages sake are the older men. They are in charge of the decision making in the village as well as any major kind of project. Currently there is noone in this group. I left the selecting of this group to the “mayor”. He told me not to worry. He’s on it. He’ll let me know He’s taking his time. The meeting went great. Everybody who was supposed to show up showed up 30 minutes late. 30 minutes late is very early in Samoan time. I was very proud. I am a very lucky peace corps volunteer in that I have a projector and screen to show presentations with my laptop. So I put together a PowerPoint show explaining to the committee how best to utilize the volunteer that they requested. In the last several months I’ve come to realize that a large majority of people in Samauga didn’t understand why I was here. As I moved beyond small talk with the language I could tell that most people thought I was just here to get them stuff for free. During my meeting I strongly emphasized that this was not the way it was going to work. My job as a development worker is to help people help themselves. And to do that we have to work together. So to make a longer story shorter, I feel pretty confident that my point was understood.

Happy New Year

Happy New Year. I'm in Apia today working on a proposal for the homework center. I'm sending out an email for childrens book requests for the resource center part of the project. If you can help that would be great.