Apolima Crafts Day (Written 2/25/06)

The Apolima kids thanking the Bears (NFC North Champs) for the flag football gear!

This weekend I decided I needed a change of pace – a little time to get away from the mountain of mordor. So on Friday, I went to Bryan and John’s house and hung out with them for a bit. We went to see the movie Jarhead which was really good – I was quite impressed by it. Jake is a good actor and odd’s are Brokeback Mountain won’t be coming to this island anytime soon so this is all I can go off of right now for him. We all thought it was a very well done movie that conveyed what it probably really is like in the current marine corps – a lot of boredom and prep work before the ‘action’ starts. Also, this was one of the few movies I went to where there were not a lot of people at the movie theater – on a Friday night! That would be unheard of back home. Also, another positive thing that happened on Friday was that I finally got my bike tire fixed – so for the first time since the SuperBowl I was able to bike around Apia again. Boy, did my legs miss the workout! Anyway, I stayed at Bryan’s/John’s for the night and then headed to the Peace Corps office early on Saturday to go to a village called Apolima-Uta. Now, Apolima-Uta is a part of the island called Apolima-Tai, the only difference is that Uta is located on the island of Upolu (the island I’m currently on). Karen, the volunteer there, organized a crafts day for the kids of her village (and this was the first event of ‘Peace Corps Week’ which celebrates the 45th Anniversary of Peace Corps) and I went to help organized a game of flag football. A few weeks back, the Chicago Bears sent us some flag football equipment because some of the people on their board are former peace corps volunteers (RPCV – Returned Peace Corps Volunteer) and thought it would be a nice idea to share the idea of football with countries that may not get a lot of exposure to it (even though I watch the NFL here, it’s over a satellite and most Samoan houses do not get the channel). This was our first time actually putting this equipment to use – so since it was my home team stuff and I’m one of the few sports people in PC Samoa I was asked to organized a game.

So we left early at about 9am for the 45 minute drive to Apolima – this marked the first time that I have actually gone past the wharf on Upolu. We arrived before all the kids got there and everyone helped setup all the craft projects the kids were going to do. There was clay, coloring, face-painting, paper masks, bag puppets and balloon making – basically it was a heck of a lot of fun for the kids and for the volunteers involved. Of course at the beginning kids were shy but as the event went on they got more into it and at the end loved every minute of it. Once the crafts part of the day was over, the kids ate and then I (along with Pete and Andrew) took the kids to an open field that they usually play Rugby on and tried showing them how to play flag football. For the most part, the kids understood what we were talking about – the got the idea for the flags really quick and they split into even teams without us actually having to order them around. So when we finally start the game, I make the first pass and it’s a long one so the kids will have to jump up for it. And one of the kids caught the ball…..then he threw it to another kid, then that kid ran and he threw it to another kid and suddenly we had a game of rugby on our hands! So I got the ball back from them and Pete threw the ball this time and the same thing happened again! One funny incident happened when Pete threw the ball to a kid, the kid caught it and then ripped off his own flag causing him to stop (apparently we didn’t make it clear that someone else should rip the flag off). We tried controlling the game for a little bit and then realized that it just wasn’t going to work out so the game turned into a hybrid of flag football and rugby. Ironically, once we took the flags off the kids then they started play traditional football (because some older kids had joined them by that time and they knew what American football looked like). So it was cool to finally see Western Samoans playing a game of football – hopefully we’ll spread that around by the end of our two years here.

All in all, it was a great day of just hanging out with kids, having a good time and sharing a part of our culture with them. The flag football portion was of course my favorite and what made it even better is that it came from my hometown team (now if the Tennessee Titans or the UT Volunteers want to see stuff over here – that would just be great! J) . So now we have officially kicked off ‘Peace Corps Week’. So send your favorite Peace Corps Volunteer a letter to say how cool they are for doing what they are doing – and being part of the only Corps that has 45 years of spreading peace, knowledge and the positive aspects of America. L8r.

PS – Check out the new pics added to the photo album menu!