Why I'm famous

Epic blog entry commence. I know I get ramble-y and boring, so I will attempt to write this one in poem form. Was going to rhyme, but it looks like mostly free versing is all I’m capable of…

Our time with our car was over on Thursday evening

We brought the car to the airport for the family we were renting it from to have upon their return

And that meant we had our first experience on the Aiga bus on Friday

These things are rocking, let me tell you

Only a dollar no matter where you go

And they run very regularly during rush hour

In the past we had used our car to go to and from work so Kelly could take it out to her snorkel sites

And AJ could use it for surveying

And because we often stopped to go food shopping and to head to various after work activities

So anyway, I hate this stupid poetry nonsense. Not happening. And completely failing

            So basically we had to start taking busses because we were no longer renting a car. I actually am really digging it, especially now that we’re comfortable with the island and have friends to drive us when we need rides. The only problem is that busses stop running at 6 or 6:30 pm and stop running by early afternoon on Saturday and don’t run on Sundays. We can also taxi when we really need to though. And a lot of the activities we participate in are close to our house (like Tae Bo and Frisbee) so walking or running to and from them isn’t bad at all. Aiga busses are manufactured here, meaning they take the front part of an old car or truck and make a wooden frame to stick on the back of it, pop some little wheels on, and you’re golden. I am flabbergasted they don’t constantly break down. Anyway, they always blast fun music from the CDs they have (there is only one radio station here that isn’t a Christian radio station and we had no other option in our car, and while that station isn’t bad normally, on our way to work they play some really obnoxious morning talk show, along the lines of the Z Morning Zoo but much worse, so you can imagine how bad…) the other thing is that the busses are decorated in such an awesome way on the inside…like the one today had rainbow feather boas and pieces of velvety dolphin blanket lining the inside front and another one the other day had a rubber eagle centerpiece flapping its wings when the bus moved. They also say random things on them and are decorated in a million colors on the outside. Riding in those with the windows down and music pumping, looking out onto the ocean with no responsibilities is the best way to start and end anyone’s day. I love it. They also take random detours and will stop at literally any point along the road, whenever anyone taps on the side or pulls a string attached to a bell type thing.

            Saturday morning we awoke at the crack of early morning light (actually like an hour before it) around 4:45 am to prepare for a day of Samoan Olympic games. Our friend Zach came and picked AJ and me up around five to bring us to the Avena Brothers grocery store where the first event, a 10k to Utule Beach where the rest of the festivities would take place. JJ and I were the only two to run it, and our friend Nyaz made us a sign that said on one side “Go team A-J!” and on the other said “JJ is Sexy”…not that he didn’t earn that statement…Anyway, it was still dark and had started raining, with wind whipping everywhere by a little after six when we started running. Aside from the weather, it was nice and cool, and the route was beautiful along the coastal road, and I had such a nice run. It was just great. I ended up finishing in third with a time of 51 minutes…my first time ever running a race longer than a mile so it was good, and I know I can do better. I got a medal for getting second place out of the girls! They also had Zumba which I participated in for a bit, and then there was a 40 yard dash and weight lifting and then all of the people hanging out with us put together teams of two for beach volleyball which was really fun.

            Then there was beach wrestling. I was really excited to watch the guys, but the ridiculous part was that Nyaz convinced me to do it with her since there were no other girls signed up. Anyway, it gets pretty intense. My one rule was that she couldn’t rip my shirt like one of the guys had done to JJ. It was a real competition, and I had no idea what I was doing. It is also WAY more exhausting than it looks, especially after waking up before 5 am, running 6 miles and playing volleyball…She knocked me on my back in the first round, and that should have been a hands down win, but the ref really wanted to see girls wrestle so he said that didn’t count as an immediate win since I landed on my butt first…anyway I ended up figuring out how to do it and getting the three points to beat her. I thought that was the end of it, but then the ref (who is also a wrestling coach) made me face the winner of the guys…who was a 16 year old shorter than me, all muscle, and heading to the junior Olympics for wrestling. I actually got the first point! But then he kicked my butt…Anyway, most importantly, Nyaz and I wrestling ended up as a HUGE picture in the newspaper!!! I’m basically famous. Don’t worry Mom, I have a copy!!

            The other highlight of our weekend was instigated by a guy named Nico. On Saturday night we went out with our Coast Guard friends to a BBQ at the house of the family that owns an oil response team and has been working with the Coast Guard on the boats that have sank and leaked oil into the harbor. Anyway, one of the Coast Guard guys, Seth, has a sleeve and a half of tattoos and is adding to it with a Samoan tattoo while here. He met one of the family members, Nico, who is a tattoo artist, and planned to get a tattoo done by him. We were talking to him and one of our friends had been planning to get a tattoo while here and had originally wanted to do it in the traditional tapping method by the only guy on the island who does it, Wilson. But Wilson is off island, and so he’s been looking for someone else. I, of course, got to talking with Nico and my friend and worked out him coming over to our house the following day (Sunday) and doing the tattoo. The crazy thing was that he actually remembered and called us up and came over yesterday and did the tattoo with my pretty preppy and clean-cut friend sprawled out on our couch on a garbage bag, getting a shark tattoo on his upper thigh. Nico just shows up at our house with his brother and a tattoo gun, takes off his shirt (exposing a tattoo-covered 300 pound physique), makes an inappropriate comment about Kelly being a white girl but having a butt and the fact that our friend better not get excited while he’s touching his thigh, and goes to town. (This guy even had two tattoos on his wrist done by his daughters, who he had instructed to give him tattoos of their names when they were three and five years old). He drew out a basic outline with sharpie first and then completely free handed with the gun afterwards. It looks AWESOME and our friend barely even flinched. Then Nico ceremoniously washed his leg off and massaged it a bit in a gesture that is thought of traditionally as apologizing for putting the person through pain and voila.

            Then on Sunday we went back to our favorite spot, Tisa’s, and met a cool dude with dreads who had been in the Navy for ten years and is now working for the Forestry Service who is actually housemates with another Hollings scholar in Hilo, Hawaii. He wants to study in Costa Rica! We also met a woman who has been sailing around the world for 20 years who was with her French boyfriend. She wanted to study at my university in Costa Rica because she was looking to settle down a bit. She was looking for a place that was “Boho chique” and did not actually speak Spanish, but figured she’d pick it up since she spoke French and Italian. She was really interesting, but I had to give her a bit of a reality check in terms of Costa Rica. Of course I absolutely fell in love with it, but the Universidad Nacional is not exactly the most organized of places, nor is it of the same academic caliber as universities in the states or Europe…and I wouldn’t exactly describe it as “boho chique”…actually I wouldn’t at all describe it as that. Not even close. But she was so fascinating, and we talked about indigenous communities for a while and what determines “progress” and “happiness” and if “development” is necessarily a good thing and to what extent…and what “quality of life” translates to…

            Then there were a bunch of eels that came up really close to shore, actually pretty much on shore at our feet when Tisa threw some old fish into the water. There was even a reef shark! And today when I was out snorkeling at Airport beach on our way back we saw 2 sting rays then 16 eagle rays and a turtle! It was spectacular!

            Also, at the Olympics I met the retired Land Grant horticulturist, Larry, who is super awesome. He was drafted into the army and served in Vietnam back in the day, and he told me the first few months all he did was “smoke dope” literally all the time and then thought to himself, “what am I doing with my life?” then the guys realized he had a degree in agriculture and sent him to do some agricultural research, helping to figure out how to grow plants on land that was not very fertile, in the middle of nowhere, far away from the battlefield. He says he had an amazing time and has no idea what PTSD is like. He then searched for somewhere to go that reminded him of what his home used to look like (he was born and raised on Oahu in Hawaii and it obviously has changed a lot over the recent decades) and found here and fell in love with it. He worked in agriculture for 30 years, raised his five kids here, and is so content. Oh, and he also did the Peace Core in Thailand for five years either right before or right after Vietnam. Ironic much? We talked about passion, and he advised me to find something I really love and do it, not to think about how much money I will make. We talked about how many people seek educations and jobs solely to find high paying jobs and how empty that is because of how much of your life your job ends up being. He also agreed with my statement that your job is your main way of making an impact on the world. He is now retired and has no idea how anyone could be bored being retired since there are so many things to do, especially when you can grow your own food and have the satisfaction to know you created it, and when you can be outside. He is such a peaceful, genuinely content, easygoing and caring person. He also seems quite spiritual.

The other day I went to buy some produce from the market, and I got to talking to a women selling her fruit there. She asked me why I was here (cause let’s face it, there really aren’t many white people here and definitely not much tourism) and when I told her I was interning for Fagatele Bay she insisted on giving me like ten free giant fat bananas (there were at one point over 30 kinds of bananas here…now there are still over twenty!) and told me she was going to give them to the nuns but that I do basically the same thing…ummm…okay…then she gave me three free papayas (which I now really love and eat with a spoon at the office and spill all over myself) which she said she was originally going to eat herself. I told her I could buy them, but she insisted…man, I’m really not used to people being generous for no reason…it’s weird. If that had happened to my mom, she definitely would have cried…

            Another funny thing is that Kelly and I went with this guy from the Coast Guard to dance at the bar/club establishment Bowling Alley last Friday evening, and it was a site to behold. The two highlights were surely when a group of middle aged men swarmed our plate of French fries while we were dancing, and when we returned, they incessantly tried to feed me French fries. I think they liked watching women eat? Each time I turned my head, there was a new French fry poking in my face. You don’t know how sad they were when I refused. They did get me water though which was quite nice. The other highlight was when this one middle aged man just stood and stared at me, several inches away, whenever I got back from dancing. He then somehow ended up with us in the back of the pickup truck on our ride home and was a little over affectionate. I kept telling him that I had a fiancé and he insisted that it was okay because he had a palagi wife and a child who were returning the next day on the flight. Oh dear…

            Also, I’m working on building a garden at our new facility as part of my project. The land grant program at the American Samoa Community College is helping me out by providing us with the starter plants, some compost and is a great resource on composting ourselves and acquiring some more help with labor and some ideas. Brooke and Ian, a husband and wife here (the husband is Samoan and the horticulturist at Land Grant and the wife is originally from Maine) are helping me out with it. Brooke has designed gardens in Hawaii and set them up for various educational institutitions. She has also taught gardening classes, and she is helping plan it out. Ian showed me around land grant the other day where they are growing a ton of different things you never see at the markets-off the top of my head they have pineapple, papaya, lemongrass, figs, limes, 3 different kinds of sweet potato, 2 kinds of eggplant, collards, a little bit of kale, lau pele, passion fruit, chili peppers, basil, and way more. It reminded me a lot of Costa Rica, and Ian sent me home with a bunch of collards, kale, sweet potato greens, lau pele, eggplant, passion fruit, limes, and this other strange fruit I can’t remember the name of. That day we also picked out and dropped off more fabric to get clothing made and ate at this little restaurant owned by the head of a cooking school where they made me a veggie stir fry with tofu (first time I’ve had tofu on the island and it was AWESOME!). I also bought a book from a used book store entitled “How Animals Have Sex” with pictures and everything.

            That very same day we went to Tisa’s Barefoot Bar where they have a traditional Samoan Umu feast on Wednesdays. Almost everything they prepare is from their own organic plantation, and the feast takes several days to prepare. The umu is the traditional Samoan oven, which slow cooks items in layers over hot rocks and covered with banana leaves over a period of several hours. We ran into some of our friends there, and it was awesome. We ate with our hands out of plates woven from banana leaves, and as for things I could eat, they had taro and green banana and papaya cooked with cinnamon and squash with lau pele (leaves kind of like spinach) and coconuts filled with coconut milk mixed with onion and taro leaves (tastes kind of like spinach dip and called pulasami). It was all very good but very very rich. After our supper under a thatched roof looking out over the ocean, Tisa played ukulele and sang while her granddaughters performed traditional dances. Candyman (Tisa’s expat partner) told us about how they established their own marine reserve and talked to us about preparing food and how he is trying to grow all varieties of bananas Samoa has to offer. It was a fabulous evening.

            Last weekend we also tried to find this beach known as Palagi Beach. We drove out to where we thought it was, tried to scramble across some rocks to get there but couldn’t find it, then eventually kept driving. A family in a truck offered to lead us to a different beach, over some pretty rugged roads our little taupe 2001 Toyota Camry had a little trouble navigating, and we arrived at a beautiful secluded beach area. Turns out the guy leading us was the head of the Department of Agriculture here and we crash landed on a brunch and beach day for football recruiters, most importantly the head coach of Southern Methodist University. It was pretty random.

            So, food. Need to have a little update section on that. I’ve been frying those fat bananas as if they were plantains, and they’re really good. One time AJ and I ate them dipped in chocolate frosting. Another time we sprinkled them with cinnamon sugar. My favorite was when I melted brown sugar and water and vanilla in a pot to give it the consistency of tapa dulce and it tasted almost exactly like the platanos maduros I learned how to make in Costa Rica. I also bought these amazing Asian buckwheat noodles and have been making stir fries with them. I bring a lot of the experimental foods to my boss who was raised vegan and loves them. I put in boc choy, onion, garlic, broccoli, wasabi peanuts, sesame seeds, sriracha hot sauce, and some of this gardene mandarin chickin and its sauce. It was awesome, and my boss loved it. Kelly also made fried rice the other night, and she thinks she burned it, but I thought it was awesome. I’ve still been making my weird breads that I love to eat in the morning-really filling and really healthy. I also tried a green papaya salad at this restaurant the other night-it was pretty good and kind of strange since the papaya was kind of like cucumber or something.

            Another cool thing is that we went to our good friend Dave’s tofa (means goodbye in Samoan, so his farewell party) last weekend and there was a woman from Wales who had learned how to fire dance, or Siva Afi, and did a demonstration. We practiced with practice ones which were lit up balls on the end of strings and I totally failed at it. It was really hard!

            There are also the cutest puppies ever that keep showing up at our house, and they look so healthy and furry and adorable and I couldn’t adopt them. But I took a video…which just made it harder.

            Anyway, life is good. Time moves so quickly! Under three weeks left here then it’s off to Western Samoa and Fiji! 

American Samoa is just such an interesting place. Things happen that just seem so absurd. For example, riding in the backs of pickup trucks is a very popular thing which is fine. But the thing is, people ride in the beds of pickup trucks in lawn chairs as if it was a normal seat back there. Also, for some reason just being a white person driving in a car is apparently very entertaining. Which I suppose makes sense since “palagis” make up significantly less than one percent of the population here. So we will drive around and groups of people will just laugh hysterically at us for no reason. Also, road maintenance often occurs during rush hour and consists of workers dumping gravel in potholes in between the moments cars drive over them.

            Another interesting thing is that there are constant cat fights in the night outside our house, with the strangest noises I have ever heard coming from these fighting cats, almost human noises actually. In the morning we see the cats with their battle wounds, sometimes bloody scratches on their faces. The other day we also discovered a headless dead chicken just lying in our driveway (see the next set of pictures I post) and couldn’t figure out whether or not it was the result of one of the cat fights and an angry cat decided to bite a chicken’s head off for intimidation factor or something…not really phased by much anymore evidently.

            So as I mentioned earlier, this really cool guy in his sixties who came here for the opening of the hyperbaric chamber bought the three of us gift certificates for massages at the spa at the nice hotel near our house. So that helped make for a spoiled weekend. Friday night we went out to dinner at one of the few restaurants then went to the hotel I stayed at for my site visit to hang out with our Coast Guard friend Dave and a bunch of Coast Guard guys from off island who were called in to work. They were working on getting a boat to float and cleaning the potentially thousands of gallons and oils that had spilled from it when it sunk in the harbor. One of the guys was from New Jersey, knew Holmdel because of our intense cross country course, and had gone to school in Cinnaminson (the town my dad grew up in!) and even knew my dad’s street! They were all really cool, and an older Samoan man asked me to dance to the live music that was being played.

            On Saturday we went out to Airport Beach, the beach right off of the airport runway. To get there you have to walk 30 minutes along the airport fence, through piles of fallen coconuts and trash. There is a crazy amount of trash there because so much is washed up by the ocean, and Kelly made a good point that the tsunami probably brought a ton. It makes sense because it’s not like this on the other beaches. But then again, this one is much less often frequented. There’s only a thin strip of land between the fence and the ocean. There were tons of shoes, toys, clothing, even a child’s tricycle and a rusted old refrigerator. It made me really sad to see. But the beach itself once we got there was so amazing. It was pretty much made of coral rubble, and the day was gorgeous. We snorkeled a bit, and Kelly identified some coral for me. There were also hermit crabs EVERYWHERE, especially all over my towel and bag.

            After the beach, even though we had put on tons of sunscreen, we realized how burnt we had gotten. Me especially. It was absolutely ridiculous. AJ and Kelly went to get their massages while I went for a run and then I went to get mine. It was glorious, and it didn’t even hurt my sun burn. The woman who massaged me was Fijian which was great because I actually just bought my tickets to go to Fiji today! Kelly and I are going to Fiji, and AJ is going to New Zealand. I at first was pretty torn up about where to go and even tried to figure out how to go to both, but we just didn’t have enough time. I even at one point was totally set on New Zealand. I chose Fiji because 1. I’ll get to SCUBA dive for the first time, and Kelly is an experienced diver, so it’ll be nice to have her there 2. I don’t know when I’ll get the opportunity to go back there, and even though it’s tropical islands, it’s very different from here 3. New Zealand is freezing right now, and I would only be there for less than 10 days, some of them without AJ since he has to leave earlier than Kelly and me. I know NZ is a place I really want to go and spend a decent amount of time in, so I figured it’s not necessary to go now. I am really excited about Fiji, and we’re spending some time in Western Samoa on either end of our trip since we have to fly in and out of that airport!

            Saturday night we went to a party at our boss Emily’s house which was tons of fun. Then, Sunday, Zack, who is Emily’s boyfriend’s 17 year old son (he went to high school in Peru and lived with his mom since she lives there and we speak Spanish sometimes which is awesome!) took us to this place called Sliding Rock which is absolutely spectacular. It is basically a sheet of volcanic rock, eroded differently in different places by the ocean and weathering, and it has little tidal pools throughout it. We snorkeled in one of the pools, and every so often a wave would crash over the rock protecting the pool and cascade into it in a little waterfall. Then we just stood out on a little cliff and looked at the crazy vertical inter tidal zone and talked and thought about how absurdly beautiful it is here. And how the fact that none of these places have been turned into tourist attractions makes them all that much more amazing.

            Another awesome thing here is that there are fabric stores with hundreds of types of fabrics all over and seamstresses who will make you made-to-order dresses, skirts and pulatasis (the “traditional”, or at least after the missionaries came what have been known as traditional, skirt and shirt combinations here). They are custom fit and designed by you and extraordinarily inexpensive. It’s really cool. Although, of course, Kelly and I went in to get fitted for pulatasis last Friday, they promised they would be ready a week later, and they weren’t. That day they swore to us they would be ready by Tuesday, which again they weren’t. They swore to Kelly Thursday, but she said my fabric was still sitting on the sewing table untouched when she went in to pick them up…oh, patience. I’m really trying to learn that. That’s how so many things are here though. Like when we got prepaid internet and they forgot to ever enter us in the system so we never got the internet and had to go back to the store and wait an hour and a half for them to understand what they did wrong…or the fact that there are two cell phone providers here and the two don’t have the capacity to text each other’s phones…and when I was having trouble with one of our phones and called customer service he told me he would let the tech guy know I was having trouble and when I asked if he needed my information he said no he would just let the tech guy know that someone was having trouble with her phone. So anyway I really am pretty low maintenance here and getting more patients with those types of things.

            Also, the other day I went to this Tae Bo class taught by Nika, one of the coolest ever Samoan women in my office. It’s free, and it’s three days a week taught in this super warm little community center type place. It is one of the most fun things I’ve ever done. She blasts music, and the place is filled with about 40 people of all ages and all fitness levels. It’s a great work out no matter what shape you’re in, and the little routines are high energy and like dancing and fighting at the same time. I could not wipe the smile off my face. It was awesome.

            I’ve also been cooking up a storm. I really really love cooking. I made carrot bread using rice flour and raisins and walnuts and oat bran and flax and wheat germ and almond milk, and it’s delicious although I might have grated my hand a bit…I also made this AMAZING chili that’s just super good. Then I made green banana ceviche from a recipe I found online, but it was wayyy too lemon-y so I really have to ask my host mom for her recipe. But it’s actually really good when I mix a bit with the chili and put it over quinoa or rice. Then I made Christine’s mom’s candied pecan recipe which I brought to the party Saturday and everyone loved! My most recent invention was the stuffed eggplant I made last night. I sautéed onion and garlic and the scooped out inside of the local eggplant with some local boc choy then added a bit of salt and pepper. I scooped this inside of the eggplant skins, sprinkled pecans and sesame seeds on it, drizzled some balsamic vinegar over the top, and baked it in the oven. It turned out great and was one hundred percent made up so could have turned out terribly.

            On another note, so much for that host mom thing here. Not really sure what happened, but I don’t think she likes us as much anymore. She also always calls me Kelly. But the other day she took us aside and told us her energy bill was $60 higher this past month than it usually is and basically blamed it on us doing laundry in her machine…which we have done exactly three loads of. So, although electricity is approximately 3.3 times more expensive here than the mainland average, $20 a load doesn’t exactly sound right. She basically asked us to pay her $60 and went on about how she and her husband don’t work because they have to take care of her mother…all in all quite an uncomfortable situation. We just told her we would do our laundry in the Laundromat like we had intended to before she had offered to do it in our machine…and I’ve been washing stuff in the sink and wearing quite smelly workout clothes twice.

            Frisbee is still super fun, although it is sometimes hard not to get too invested in it. It’s really weird to be playing without any rules but definitely something I’m always looking forward to. We also got a few more friends to come out this time which always makes it better. The only bad thing is that one of the middle aged guys we play with had a bad fall and tore some ligaments in his ankle since the field has a lot of pot holes…so today another guy brought some buckets of dirt and some people went around and filled all of the holes to make it safer. I still got taken out when Brian (the other guy who has played for a while) and I were both going for the Frisbee from different directions and he basically decked me as I was in the air for the disc. But I’m absolutely fine, Mom and Dad.

            I’ve been rambling about the minute details of my entire life for a bit too long now. To anyone who has the patience to read this (I certainly wouldn’t), sorry for being so verbose, it’s a problem I’ve always had. To the parents, I know you love me giving this many excruciating details, so I love you and you’re welcome.

            Another really really exciting thing is that I just found out today that my brothers have been chosen to be featured guest performers at The Folk Project Weekend in October, which is the event I wrote my college essay on and deemed “Hippie Fest”. Anyway, they get to play at the concerts they have, lead workshops, and get free participation and food and lodging and everything for the weekend. I am soo proud of them and so excited to go see them!! 

AJ's deep fried grilled cheese, passing out on a bare mattress, and hiking some serious waterfalls