One of the perks of being one of the senior volunteer groups is that you get opportunities to share some sage wisdom with the younger groups – which also means you get days off from school to give such advice. On Wednesday of this week, I had such an opportunity. But let me start on Tuesday….
….Because that is when I began my after school tutoring for some year 12 kids at Fatuatua College which is now owned by Peace Chapel (the church I go to here). Now I know I've said before I'm pretty stretched for time but there are three reasons I took this tutoring job: 1) It's not building a computer lab which is a lot less time consuming for me 2) One of the kids I'm tutoring is part of a family I'm close to 3) part of the deal is that they have to feed me dinner (since I can't get paid extra as a Peace Corps volunteer). So I'll be tutoring these 3 year 12 kids (Jewell, Uati and Lelani) on Tuesday and Wednesday for a 1:30 each day. I'll be doing the same lectures I give for my regular year 12 classes the only difference being I will be giving them the electronic notes so as to cut down on the amount of note writing. They are pretty bright kids and want to take computers – so hopefully that enthusiasm will last all year long. But this past week, we did a mega session (3 hours in one day) because I was going to Savaii on Wednesday. Let me tell you, I don't know how some university professors do it – talk for 3 hours without getting sick of your own voice (granted, I had been talking to my regular classes for 6-7 hours prior to this tutoring session). It was definitely a tough task and I could see I was losing them at certain points just because they were getting a bit tired – but in those 3 hours we were able to catch up with where my regular students are, so now I don't have to rush as much. After the 3 hour session, I stayed over at Paul/Vivienne's house (the parents of Jewell – Paul was the one who arranged for me to do this tutoring session) for dinner and fixed some miscellaneous computer problems for them (because no matter where I go, there's always a computer that needs fixing. I seriously think I could be on a desert island and there would be a computer there that needed fixing!) before getting my first payment – a nice dinner! We had chicken, rice, curry, vegetables, pumpkin and ice cream…soooo much better then any dollar amount they could give me. As soon as dinner was over though, I had to bolt home because I was getting up early the next day to head to Savaii. One of the best parts about knowing people in Samoa now is that when you don't know how to do something you can always ask someone else to do it for you – that was the case in terms of me getting to the Peace Corps office on Wednesday morning.
They wanted me to take the 8am boat over to Savaii which meant that I had to be at the Peace Corps office by 6am (in order to get a ride to the wharf). Well no bus runs that early which meant that I was going to have to take a taxi – so Teuila (our PCMO and the person I was going to the wharf with) suggested that I arrange for a taxi to come pick me up. I had no idea you could do such a thing and since I don't take taxi's all that much I didn't know of any quality taxi stands that would be willing to pick me up at Chanel at 5:30am (it's about a 20 min drive to the Peace Corps office). I told Viv and Paul this and they (along with their cousin, Junior) arranged for a taxi to come pick me up at 5:30am on Wednesday. I'll admit, I was a bit skeptical at first but when 5:30 rolled around a taxi arrived at Chanel ready to take me to the PC office. So I got there on time and hooked up with Teuila to catch a ride to the wharf.
In town this week, was a guy from Peace Corps Washington – Bill Frommer – who basically acts as the Washington backup for the Medical Officers at the Peace Corps sites around the world. He was here to get a real world idea of what medical facilities we have and to check out a few of the volunteer sites. So when I met him, he was headed over to Savaii to check out where Group 76 was having their conference and to see the hospital on Savaii. Unlike a lot of people who come from Washington, Bill actually worked at a Peace Corps site so he has a good understanding of the volunteer mentality and what realistic medical facilities we would possibly have in country. He previously worked at Peace Corps East Timor which was evacuated a few months ago (we got a lot of furniture for our PC office from that evacuation) so when he came here, he said he actually recognized most of the furniture that came from East Timor – there's a little bit of him/East Timor spread all across the Peace Corps Pacific Island programs. Anyway, we arrived at the wharf a little bit before the 8am boat left and began our journey over to Savaii – going to Savaii twice in less then a month, you would think I was back in my early days of volunteering! It was a good thing we caught the 8am boat because as soon as we were a good distance away from Upolu, a huge rain cloud started moving over the island and looked like it just began to dump tons of water on Upolu – there was so much rain you could not even see the island. But on the boat ride over, it was fine because we were far away from the after effects.
We got to Savaii and there was a Peace Corps driver (Papu) waiting to drive us to Group 76s Early Service Conference (ESC). We took a small detour to go look at the Savaii hospital but we eventually made it to Aganoa Black Sand Beach – which is where Group 76 was. I have actually been there before – when Josh lived close to here – but I had never gone down far enough to see that there were beach fales located in the area. The fales were definitely off the beaten track but the spot was gorgeous – secluded and a great ocean view. When we arrived, the volunteers were in the middle of doing their language sessions so I just went around taking pictures and talking to some of the language staff. Amos (Group 73 – Extendee) eventually joined us for lunch and then we (Amos, Teuila, Bill and myself) went to Julya's house to visit her and talk about our (Amos, Julya and I) computer/teaching session in the afternoon. So we stayed at Julya's for a bit, were eventually picked up and taken back to beach fales where we had a session talking about teaching and computers in Samoa. Julya and Amos talked about Teaching in Samoa (more village based teaching then city based) and Teaching to community members. I spoke on how to get computers into Samoa and covered some basic computer troubleshooting issues. While our experience in teaching is mainly confined to computers, we tried to make it as general as possible because a lot of these volunteers are working in villages as primary school teachers (Years 6-8) and thus have to speak more in Samoan then us (because our kids HAVE to understand English in order to do well on their standardized tests). I tried to be as informative as possible without bogging them down with too much information because when you're sitting next to an ocean, the last thing you want to do is be sitting in a room for a long time listening to folks.
So after our session, some of us headed to the Olemoe waterfall (located close to Josh's old village of Palauli/now close to Jan and Ray's (Group 76) village) and it was nice to see the waterfall again in it's full glory – the last time I was here the waterfall was not going at all. So we all climbed down (including our drivers – Setu and Papu) and had a nice time just enjoying the refreshing water (although Amos, Julya and I didn't get in the water – we were just watching the kids). After the waterfall we headed back to the beach fales for dinner which was bread, soup, rice and stir fry. We also had a 'movie' since apparently Group 76 is into high fashion we watched a few episodes from the second season of 'Project Runway'. So on Wednesday, I went from 4:30am (because I had to turn on all the computers at school before leaving) to about 11pm – it was a looong day.
I didn't have to wake up so early on Thursday (7am ), so that was a nice change of pace. And for the first time in a while I didn't have breakfast or oatmeal (the breakfast of New Zealand tramping!) but instead had papya, eggs and toast – the food at this beach fale was great. Once I was done with breakfast, I packed my stuff and headed to the wharf to wait for the 10am boat – which meant I got a little time on the internet at the Savaii office. So 10am hit and I got on the boat ride back over to Upolu where I was picked up by a Peace Corps driver (Liva), which was nice because I really don't like taking the crowded bus from the wharf to Apia – it's usually crazy packed. I got back to the Peace Corps office at around 12pm, had lunch and then ran a few errands in town. Specifically looking for information on the best way to do this internet café at school and paying a few bills. I was definitely not in a rush to get back to school and see the possibly damage done to my computers. Fortunately, when I did get home the computers were all in working conditions and nothing terrible had happened which is always a good thing. Now one more day and then the weekend will arrive….this week has definitely flown by. L8r.
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