Samoa AIDS Fashion Show (Written 5/28/06)

In the day to day living in a foreign country, you can sometimes
forget about the bigger issues that are taking place in the lives of
people you have never or will never meet. Sometimes that is because of
the lifestyles that we lead and sometimes its because they died before
you had the chance to meet – last night was about preventing the
latter from happening. The Samoa AIDS Foundation (SAF) put on their
second annual Fashion Awards show in downtown Apia and I had the
chance to go. There were quite a few Peace Corps Volunteers involved
in the management of the event (Josh and Julya along with Ethan and
Sarah from Group 72), so Josh asked me to come in and take care of
some of the technical stuff during the event so they could focus on
the event itself. So since I've never been to a fashion show of any
kind and this would a pretty big event for Peace Corps (our country
director and assistant country director were in the audience) I said
"Why not!" (plus, when it comes to technical or computer related
things now – it seems like I'm the designated volunteer – which is
pretty nice. It only took 5 months to develop that reputation; I think
that's a record.) Josh and Ethan set up the venue during the morning
part of Saturday and I came in during the afternoon to make sure the
projector and slideshow items would work properly. Once that was done,
we only had to wait till the evening time to put the event on.

So the event started at 7:30pm and from a management standpoint –
everything went off pretty smoothly. There were a few hiccups but with
this being the second time this award show has taken place, it was
definitely an improvement over the first year. The award show was
taped by TV3 (a new free television station in Samoa) and I had to
admit that their coverage of it was pretty professional (once my
computer part was done, we projected what they were taping on three
screens around the venue). It made me feel like I was back in my
college days working with the Teleproductions Board, it was also fun
just talking to the camera men and seeing their reaction to the event
because this was the first time they had taped an event like this one.
Like the Academy Awards, they had the winners pre-determined from a
pre-judging the week before so by the time the event started they knew
who the winners were and the event went a lot faster because of that
(so that was great foresight!). There were 8 categories: Parent &
Child, Traditionally Inspired, Young Urban Samoan, Menswear,
Beachwear, Puletasi, Faafafine and Samoan Gown. The designs were all
very interesting to look at (as you will be able to tell from the
pics) but since this was my first fashion show, I couldn't understand
the practicality of half the stuff the ladies (and men) were wearing –
I don't think I would see a lot of those clothes in the traditional
Samoan wardrobe, but after asking a few volunteer girls I think I
understand the concept of 'high fashion'. Regardless, it was a fun
night and I'm glad that I was only in charge of the projectors and
making sure things were straight with the camera guys – all the other
volunteers involved were quite tired once the event was over (it went
from 7:30 to 10:30).

If you were wondering, Samoa has a very low number of HIV cases
comparatively speaking (I think they said there are 8 known cases) but
the important thing to remember is that those are 'known' cases.
Unlike in America where you can get free testing in a lot of places,
in Samoa there are only 2 main hospitals and they're located in Apia.
There could be more HIV cases in Samoa that go unreported because
people simply don't know anything about HIV or know they have it. So
this fundraiser was really put on to raise money for future HIV/AIDS
projects to go out into villages and schools and teach prevention and
protection. Unfortunately, with a lot of Samoans getting tattoos and
some not using protections, it could only be a matter of time before
there's an AIDS outbreak in Samoa (or any other Oceania country) so we
have to do our best to lower those odds.

If you want more information about the Samoan AIDS foundation just
email: saf@samoa.ws. Here's to a successful 3rd annual fashion show
next year (with Josh and Julya back at the helm!)