Sa'ilele

Not surprising, given that we live on an island, we can be found most Saturdays at the beach. We spend the day relaxing, talking with friends, snorkeling, and diving. One of my favorite beaches is in the idyllic village of Sa'ilele, and we went for another visit yesterday. After an hour-plus drive, our journey ends as the road turns into sand. Sa'ilele is a tiny village, with only about eight houses, but they do have a church. The people of the village used to hike to another village before they got their own church. The traditional trail connecting the two villages is still there and I plan to hike it at some point.

We went with several of our friends so there were plenty of kids for Emma to play with. She led the tree climbing and of course had to be the highest kid in the tree. It is cool that Emma is diversifying her tree climbing resume; with mango, banyan, and other tropical trees. Just about everytime we're outside, she's looking for a tree to climb.

Emma was off having a picnic with her friends in their fort of the day. She came over to me and asked if I had seen her bag of sun chips. I thought it was strange that she could lose a bag of chips, but I joined her in the search. We soon found the chips, with a dog's face buried inside!
Despite the theft of the chips, it was nice to see a healthy dog. There is a huge dog problem on our island. There are stray, neglected, sickly dogs all over. Sa'ilele is a beautiful village-- it is clean, the houses are well-kept, and even the dogs are pretty and happy. At some point I will have to give a more balanced view of American Samoa, and post pictures of some of the not-so-attractive places. Maybe I'm still trying to sell our island to gain potential visitors! I am really missing our family and friends.

Flag Day Dance

April 17 is Flag Day in American Samoa. Although it is a bit like the 4th of July in the U.S., unfortunately there are no fireworks. Another big difference between the two holidays is well the U.S. celebrates its independence, American Samoa seems to celebrate its dependence. April 17 is the day that American Samoa became a U.S. territory.

As with most Samoan celebrations, dancing plays a big role in the Flag Day holiday. Emma's dance group, Siva Maia, performed last night. For the past month, Emma has been attending dance practice 3 days a week to learn a new dance. The dance was a traditional Samoan dance, performed with clapping two halves of coconut shells together. Here are Emma and her Swedish friend, Agnes.

Emma has become known as quite the helper among the moms here. She is always lending a hand, and is counting the days until she is old enough to babysit.

I videotaped the dance performance, but with Paul off-island on a research trip, there was only one parent to manage the electronics. I tried, but couldn't hold the video camera and take pictures with the still camera at the same time! I did get pictures of some of the other dancers, though.

Throughout the group dance performances, there was a competition for the solo dancers. Traditional Samoan dances always have a solo dance number. The dancer is called the taupou. They dress in either a tapa cloth, which is made from mulberry bark and covered with traditonal designs or a woven fine mat (the taupou here is dancing in a mat). The taupou also wears a very ornate headpiece, with fake hair made from the husks of coconuts. I can't imagine that it would be very comfortable to dance with a mat wrapped around your body, while trying to balance that headpiece!

Diving at Fagatele Bay Marine Sanctuary

Today Carol and I went diving with Paul for the National Park. We launched the boat in Pago Pago Harbor. It was a beautiful day, and after popping some Dramamine earlier in the morning, I thoroughly enjoyed the 30 minute boat ride to Fagatele Bay Marine Sanctuary. It is always so refreshing to see our island from the water-- gone from view are all the problems, such as the insane amounts of litter. Instead, you just see the beauty of the island. Seeing the huge mountains and the rugged shoreline always makes me think of what explorers must have thought when they first saw Tutuila.As always, I was hoping to see dolphins, but instead we saw hundreds of flying fish jumping out of the water around the boat. We had a fantastic dive. The Sanctuary is filled with a wide variety of corals and the visibility underwater was amazing. The water temperature is 86 degrees right now. It is so warm that I don't even wear a wetsuit and we can stay underwater forever! Today our dive was 70 minutes long. It sure beats diving in the frigid waters of Lake Superior!

Easter in Samoa

For Easter, our friends, Jay and Carol, hosted an Easter dinner at their house. They decided to have a traditional Samoan feast called an umu. An umu is prepared by putting the food on the ground with hot rocks and then covering it all with banana leaves for insulation. Despite the umu preparation typically being a man's job, our friend Fua and her mother, Lei, were our umu experts for the day. Here they are stirring the hot rocks.

A very common food here is taro. It is a starchy root, like a potato. To the right is Lei, peeling the taro.

A typical Samoan dish called palasami is made with taro leaves and coconut milk. The process of making fresh coconut milk took an hour in itself. We chopped the coconuts in half and then using a nifty little bench with a sharp metal grater on the end, we grinded up the coconut meat.

After we had a big bowl full of coconut flakes, we had to squeeze the milk out. We used some dried leaves (that Fua's mom had gathered and dried herself) similar to raffia and used a bunch of them like cheesecloth. A big handful of coconut was put into the middle of the leaves and then the material was twisted and squeezed and much to my surprise, coconut milk came pouring out! Making palasami was my favorite part of the umu preparation.

Before we ate, we had some typical American Easter fun with egg dyeing and hunting. The kids had a ball.

Later in the day, the kids played in the rain and after it cleared up, they kept the wet fun going with the hose. As Emma is always begging me to let her wash our car, I suggested that they hold a little car wash. They loved it so much that they ended up washing 5 cars. Since they were having so much fun, I didn't feel too bad about the child labor.

Fagatele Bay Marine Sanctuary Trail

The Fagatele Bay Marine Sanctuary just completed a new 4-mile long trail. This is quite exciting for us, as there are not a lot of trails to hike here. On Sunday, a group of about ten of us decided to hike the whole trail. The trail starts close to our friends’ house. Paul and Barbara have a beautiful yard, complete with sugar cane. Above is Paul giving Emma and Trey their first pieces of sugar cane to suck on.

About halfway through the trail our friend received a cell phone call to warn us of a tsunami watch! There was an earthquake in the Soloman Islands, almost 2,000 miles away. Given that our last “tsunami” was an 8 cm wave, we decided that we were not in any danger. In our year of living in American Samoa, there have been dozens of earthquakes nearby, but we felt only a few of those!

The trail follows along a ridgeline, passing by several beautiful bays. Our hike was amazing. Despite the less-than-comfortable conditions (the heat, the mud, the bugs), we love being in the rain forest.

Fafafine Pageant

There is a very strange part of Samoan culture that I have yet to share with people. Dad, you may want to skip this entry. You’ve been warned….

Despite the religious beliefs here, transvestites are an accepted part of the population. They are called “fafafines” (pronounced fah-fah-fee-nays), which literally translates to “like a woman.” At first, it was a bit shocking to have your bank teller be a man dressed as a woman, but as it is everywhere, you just get used to it. I now have an intern helping me with my public survey that is a fafafine. Fafafines even go to church, dressed in the typical white dresses that women wear, and sing in the choir.

On Saturday, I got invited to a fafafine pageant. Given that there is not a lot to do here, I was actually quite excited to be going out on a Saturday night. And how often does a person have a chance to see a transvestite pageant in the South Pacific?

I invited my good friend, Carol, and we went with a few other friends. The pageant was held in the Pago Pago Community Center. When we arrived, the place was already packed. Yes, hundreds turned out for the biggest fa’afine pageant of the year. This is the final pageant to crown “Mizz Corona”. The pageant was not only sponsored by Corona, but also Chicken of the Sea tuna. Think about that the next time you eat your tuna!

As soon as the first fafafine walked onto stage, the whole audience was laughing and shouting and it went on like that all night. The people in the audience were almost more entertaining than the contestants!

Like a regular beauty pageant, there were several different events like evening gown and the talent competition. But thankfully, no swimsuit competition! One of the stranger events was the “HE look.” The contestants came out dressed as men. This shouldn’t have been weird, considering that they really are men. But it was like a man acting like a woman trying to act like a man…. hmm, that made sense in my head.

Samoan people are generally quite large, and fafafines are no exception. It was a bit disturbing seeing these huge Amazonian-looking women strutting down the stage. The over-the-top performances and the energy in the audience created almost an out-of-body experience for me. I just kept thinking, “Where am I???” Samoa truly is a unique place.