Hello dear readers! I am feeling very pathetic that I am halfway through my stay in Samoa and I've only posted twice on my blog. Nevermind. Here will be a super update. We came back from our village stay in Lotofaga which is on the south coast of Upolu, Samoa. My family was HUGE. My samoan mother is a traditional healer and my father works in construction in the capitol, Apia. He stays in the city all week while working and returns on Saturday to be with his family. His work is the only source of income my family recieves aside from remittances other members abroad send home and the salary my sister makes working as a chemistry school teacher at Lepa College. There was a steady influx of villagers with an assortment of pains visiting my mother during the day. She was massage them with some Samoan coconut oil in the way she had learned while chatting with the person's family. Once, I saw a family carry their son over to our fale (traditional open thatch/wood beam house) and watched in horror as my mother massaged him and the little boy writhe in pain. I inquired and apparently he hadn't been able to go to the bathroom in a couple of days. Sometimes people try to bring Tauveve gifts of food and money for her services and but she never accepts them because it would be innapropriate for her to take money for a gift that was given to her by God. This other time, I watched her pick some leaves, masticate them, and spat them back out into a leaf which she promptly wrapped and gave away to a visitor. She said it was for treating "mumu", which is a kind of red rash. I wish I knew what it was.
One of our assignments was to make a kindship diagram or family tree of our Samoan families. I underestimated the complexcity of the assignment. My mother and family have seven daughters and one son. In addition, we also have two adopted daughters and another son. That makes eleven brothers and sisters. In addition to that, about three of my sisters had children of their own. My kinship diagram was so big I couldn't fit it all on one page. I'm really proud that I managed to remember almost everyone's names.
Some nights my family would gather in the open portion of the home and watch this horrible overly dramatic Filipino soap opera called Gu Long. That was when I would retreat back into my room. Gu Long is really popular here. I saw some people wearing lava lavas (its like a unisex wrap around piece of fabric skirt thing that most people wear in the South Pacific) printed with "Gu Long" on it. The samoan paper, the Samoan Observer, had a two page spread devoted to the soap opera. Its really cringe inducing.
I had one really annoying little adopted brother that would constantly be teasing me. He is nine years old. When I first came to stay with the family, he would do really sweet things like pick "wi" ( a kind of green and extremely solid pacific version of an apple) from the wi tree for me and skin the fruit and bring it to me on a plate. When I would walk places, sometimes he would follow me and tell me where I should go. After we became more familiar with eachother, he would run up to me and slap me or otherwise play really rough with me. Samoans, especially the children, are really physical with one another so I tried not to take it too personally. But then it started calling me "saiga" instead of "Sona", my samoan name, and it became really irritating. The is a considerable chinese diasporic community here and many of them have been here for several generations and speak Samoan fluently. The word for a chinese person is "saiga" (prounced sigh-nah or something close to that) and it is merely a physical descriptor. Its something I have to get used to. In the states, calling someone by a racial descriptor is rude but here, nothing is meant by it. There are no offensive racial stereotypes attached to the descriptors. Anyway, my brother would always be calling me saiga saiga saiga. I was walking down the road once, telling my friend how annoying he was, and he popped out of a tree next to the road and yelled "SAIGA" as loud as he could before laughing hysterically and falling off the tree.
Midway through the week, Jackie, our academic director, organized a lesson around food and making food (fai le mea'ai) and making the umu, a type of underground oven constructed of hot hot hot river rocks. The umu is made and filled with delicious Samoan foods like taro, breadfruit, palusami( coconut cream with tiny bits of onions wrapped in taro leaves wrapped in banana leaves wrapped in breadfruit leaves. You only eat the taro leaf and coconut cream part though. Sort of like a pacific version of turducken except vegetarian), and a whole pig. The umu is then covered with more hot rocks using the stem of the coconut palm as tongs to move the rocks. The rocks are covered with green banana leaves, slightly less green leaves, old leaves, and finally old pandanus mats. The food is left in the pile to cook for an hour or so and then ta-dah! FEAST!! I have a video of the pig being strangled to death for our epicurian pleasure but I'm having some difficultly loading it to youtube. Meanwhile, I have a few photos of me and Pisa pounding the roasted Samoan cocoa beans into the substance that is used for making cocoa samoa, a yummy dark chocolate drink that makes my heart race.
In other news, my back is peeling into a butterfly shape from too much exposure to the equatorial sun. I swear I'm not sunburnt though. I'm just peeling. Its not the same.
This was taken shortly after we met our Samoan mothers. Me and Taylor were out by the matafaga (beach) traipsing around in the leis our families made for us. My mom made me a little head piece too! Those flowers (pua) are found everywhere here. The English call it frangipani, Americans call it plumeria.
Lolling around on the beach with my two of my nine sisters! They are such badasses. They were always taking me to the shop to buy cigarettes and candy. You can purchase cigarettes here individually for 40 sene a piece! Pall Malls are really gross through, I never smoke them.
