Monday morning we went to the ceremony for the unveiling of the new hyperbaric chamber in the hospital here (Linden B. Johnson Tropical Medical Center) that our office, Fagatele Bay National Marine Sanctuary, helped fund with some funding set aside by the governor and support from people at Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary and a medical services center based in North Carolina. Hyperbaric chambers provide oxygen therapy that is used to treat patients after they have gone through radiation therapy to treat cancer (after the cancer is gone many cells are left damaged by the radiation and patients can die if not treated by the chamber that provides oxygen to facilitate the building of new cells). They are also used to treat diabetic wounds in a very similar way (not the diabetes itself but the complications caused by it). The connection to NOAA is because decompression sickness from SCUBA diving is treated using the oxygen therapy provided in the hyperbaric chamber. There are a lot of divers who dive on the island, and in the past they had to be flown off island for treatment. This will help attract diving activity here. However, the main way to retain support for it and to help the community is through helping to treat complications caused by diabetes since 40% of the AS population is diabetic. The chamber has also been built to be very large to accommodate a person who is up to 750 pounds, a chamber Samoan style. I still vote that doing that addresses the effects of the problem and not its source. I think it’s extremely important, but people also need to focus on being healthier. One ironic part of it was that as part of the event, lunch was served which consisted of a tray per person of about a foot and a half diameter filled with mostly meat.

            After that, us interns went to the national park to take a few short hikes with our superintendant and the superintendant of the Thunder Bay sanctuary. Thunder Bay does a lot in connection with their local community college Alpina, especially through different marine education programs, and we do a lot in connection with American Samoa Community College, so we work with Thunder Bay to develop similar programs and partnerships with our college. We went on a few hikes through the national park and saw their work to get rid of an invasive tree species (it’s a slow process where they kill the trees by manually stripping their bark from them) and to reforest the land to minimize soil erosion and runoff. At the end of one of our tours, our guide told us the group of guys working around the trail wanted to sing for us. They sang this absolutely beautiful song in Samoan, complete with clapping and little dance moves. It was seriously so awesome. We stopped at some other places with the most breathtaking views. Then we went back to our house to shower and change into more formal attire and went to the reception for the opening of the hyperbaric chamber at this resort place right on the ocean. It was so amazing, and there was even food I could eat! I mean there was a roasted baby pig in the middle of the fancy food table which made me really sick and sad to look at, but there was also fruit and pickles and bread and this amazing traditional Samoan dish made out of taro leaves and coconut milk. And I talked pretty much the whole time to a few different people but mostly this one fascinating guy who never went to college and dropped out of high school to join the British navy when he was 15. He was chosen to get dive training (he thought that meant jumping off a diving board…) and it ended up opening up the door to all of his future opportunities. He has done crazy diving projects and lived in scientific pressurized underwater chambers for months and underwater chambers working on oil rigs for weeks at a time. He ran an underwater NOAA hydrolab for five years. He is now a top technician for hyperbaric chambers and worked at his medical center in North Carolina to gather the parts, put together the chamber and train people to operate it. We all were talking to him at the end, and he randomly offered to get us gift cards at the spa at the hotel right near our house. The two southerners (my fellow interns) were appreciative but not in shock. I could not believe or accept it. People in the northeast are very rarely generous for no reason. He said he was doing it because he didn’t have to. People do that ALL THE TIME here.

                  Wednesday we went to Aunu’u, the island part of American Samoa right near the island we are on which is Tutuila. There is one village and about 500 people on the five square mile island of Aunu’u, and there is no grocery store or school there, so everyone living there must travel to Tutuila for work, school or to buy things. To get there you have to drive along the road hugging the shore for about thirty minutes. We rode in the back of a pick up truck to the ferry to take us across, and then I almost had a heart attack when I saw the size of the waves and the tiny run down boats we were going to take across. But we did it. With the most insane waves and the boat going nuts the whole time. And then once we got to Aunu’u we had to get right back on the boat and go back because the water was too rough to snorkel in…On our drive home we stopped at a restaurant known for their burgers and fish and chips. They were awesome and made me a made-to-order salad with fresh vegetables from their garden (actually good tomatoes for the first time since getting here!) but the guy actually knew what a vegan was! They were really flabbergasted as to what I could eat and told me I was the first vegan to come there…pretty sure there are only two vegans on the island in general including me so that’s not surprising. Then, when we got home tonight we found that our host mom (that’s what we call the woman who lives in the house next to us) had cleaned our house, made our beds, restocked our towels, cleaned our dishes, cleaned our bathroom. I almost started crying. So then Kelly and I decided to make her something to thank her, and we made oatmeal raisin cookies without any measuring utensils. Kelly did most of the measuring guestimating of it, and they turned out really good. I made quinoa with onions, garlic, chives, carrots, broccoli, balsamic vinegar salt and pepper in the rice cooker in the vegetable stock I bought for dinner, and it was really good.