Fiafia Returns (Written 6/10/07)

It has been a very interesting, if not tiring weekend. The festivities began on Friday morning when I got a call from Holly (Group 75) who told me that St. Joe's was booked for a wedding on Saturday afternoon. Well, the fiafia/welcome party for the new group was also scheduled for Saturday at St. Joseph's – so there had to be a change of venue. While we later found out the wedding would have been over with more then enough time left to do the fiafia, it's better not to take any risks with such an important occasion. So Holly was calling me to find out if it was okay to move the fiafia back to Chanel College. I checked with Kevin and got the ok for it. So, after weeks of believing I would get a reprieve from the fiafia duties – once again Marques was called into action. 

So my original plan was to go see a movie Saturday morning and head to St. Joe's afterwards to just wait for the fiafia to start. So even though there was a change in venue, I didn't want to not see a movie this weekend (I couldn't go last Saturday because it was just pouring down rain). So I went to see the 10am showing of Pirates 3. I thought it was a good movie (felt a little long) but it provided a very satisfying ending to the trilogy – though, I could easily see them coming back with a 4^th one if Disney was desperate. So, I got out of the movie at about 12:30pm and headed straight home to setup the place for the fiafia (since I was only told yesterday, it wasn't enough time to get the students to help setup the place). I arrived back home at about 1:30pm and as I walked into my room I noticed that my fan wasn't on – I thought "that's strange, I don't remember turning it off". When I went to make sure it was plugged in and the button was pressed, I realized that the power was out. I thought maybe something was wrong with the breakers, so I went to flip the breakers but still no power. I then went over to the Fathers house to talk to Kevin and he didn't even realize the power was out until I told him – it seems the power went out sometime after 1pm (after I left the movies) and since it was daylight, it was hard to tell. Well, that got me very nervous because we were only 4 hours away from people showing up and if there's no power – it's kinda hard to pull off a fiafia. Praying for the power to come back on, I went ahead and setup the place with about 67 chairs – and trust me, one person carrying 67 chairs up  stairs is not very fun…the things I do to make sure it all comes together. I literally finally got the chairs setup and my house cleaned before the first people showed up at my house at 5:00pm…and the power was still off. Now I was getting super nervous because at this point it was to late to change the venue to another place. But I was still praying for a miracle. Ray and Janet had their mom and grandson (who's name is Josh), and Josh helped me move some tables to use as the buffet line – so I was able to have the whole place setup before 5:15pm…still no power. So I went and took a shower, put on my shiny new white Manu Samoa Jersey (which got me quite a few compliments, everyone seemed to like it) and waited for the power to come back on. As I was standing out on the front deck of my porch, I was like 'Come on God, we've gotta have some power' and then literally the light above my head went off! Followed by all the other lights in the FaleSamoa and inside my house…the power came back on at 5:30pm! I took a deep breath of relief and went ahead with the final preparations for the fiafia.

One of the perks of having had the fiafia at my place twice before is that I know everything that needs to be done in order for people to have what they need (whether it be mosquito repellants, tables, stove, etc – we've got it down to a science by now) so I felt that this was the least stressful fiafia for me, even though it was last minute. It seemed like folks were coming up to me every 2 minutes asking for something and I had some kind of response to it – it was quite amazing really. Even though I didn't expect it, I also got to meet Julya's brother (Brian) who's visiting her – I thought they were going to be in Savaii this weekend, but glad they changed their mind and I was able to meet him.

At around 6:30pm, the trainees rolled in and at around 7:30pm the fiafia began. We had the traditional Samoan stuff (sasa's, slap dance, haka, siva teine) mixed with some singing by a few of the volunteers. The trainees also introduced themselves and even though I don't know all their names – there are 17 new volunteers – I did learn 2 things from their intros: 1) 2 of the new volunteers are African American (1 male, 1 female) which means we've DOUBLED the amount of African Americans in this country! 2) 2 guys are from Tennessee (1 from Murfreesboro, 1 from Cookeville) and when I was introduced, the one from Cookeville shouted 'Go Vols!' Now the highlight of every fiafia is of course the Fire dance (Siva Afi) where the guy twirls sticks of fire around himself. Usually we have the world champion Siva Afi guy (Hogan) perform at our fiafia's but he was unavailable that night – so instead we had a Samoan who's name was…and I'm not joking about this….Wally! That's right, Siva Afi-er WALLY performed at our fiafia. Now if that wasn't bad enough, when he arrived at the fiafia (at the start) he didn't bring any petrol with him – and while I can provide many things, I can't provide petrol – so they had to go somewhere to get that. When it finally came time for him to perform, we turned off the lights and waited like 3-4 minutes for him to come up and perform…we then found out that he didn't have any matches! I was like 'You're joking right'. Finally, we got him some matches and the show was able to go on. It was still quite impressive but probably the most troublesome Siva Afi show I've ever seen.

After the Siva Afi, Father Kevin came out to say grace. One of the great things about having the fiafia at Chanel is that A) Kevin really does like the performances and the effort that goes into it and B) He really understands the value and skills that Peace Corps Volunteers bring to any organization they work at. So it's nice that the first real Peace Corps 'Boss' the new trainees meet is someone who's really happy to have their volunteer. After the prayer was the requisite food and chatting up between the new volunteers and the old volunteers. For some reason, I really didn't feel like being super chatty this time around (must come with the old age) but I mainly played around with the kids that were there (Eva/Shaka – Jackie's kids; Tiffany/Rachel/Elisha – Teuila's kids; Matilda – Paul/Viv's daughter) which was a lot of fun. Now before, at a certain time of the night the 'after party' begins which means the Peace Corps staff goes home and the volunteers get to drink alcohol. Well it was decided that we would try something new this time and no alcohol would be consumed at this fiafia – which meant staff could stay longer and mingle with the volunteers (new and old) a bit longer. Now the ironic thing about this was that at one point during the night the police came up to Chanel because they got a call about someone drinking and causing a disturbance. Since there was no drinking at this fiafia I could confidently tell the cops that it wasn't us (but I had to bring in Teuila and Father Kevin to kind of put the cops at ease). The guest list for this fiafia included Janita/Brianna (two friends from Peace Chapel) and two of Bryan's (Group 75) friends who came in on the same flight as the new trainees. Overall, I have to say that this fiafia ran the smoothest and I had a lot more help cleaning up the mess at the end then I have ever had before. Heck, I was able to go to bed at around 12:30am whereas before I never got to bed before 2:30am. But I was glad to be able to provide a good spot for the fiafia when the original location fell through – just call me a clutch player!

Even though I was able to go to bed earlier, I was still super tired on Sunday so I didn't wake up until about 11:30am. After a bit of lolly gagging around I rode my bike down to St. Joseph's to play a little game of softball with a few of the volunteers that were playing – it wasn't a big crowd, but Jackie (one of our Associate Peace Corps Directors/APCD) and her kids were there…so it was just a fun time of hanging out and enjoying each others company. I only played for a little bit before they called it a game, then went to hang out with Ryan for a bit. I hung out at St. Joe's for the majority of the day and then at night we went to see a movie called 'The Perfect Stranger' starring Halle Barry and Bruce Willis. I thought it was a decent movie that tried to be a little bit to smart for it's own good – it's definitely a change of pace movie during this high tech summer.

And after that wild and crazy weekend, I'm back to the rat race called school tomorrow. Although this week will be filled with at least two crazy events….stay tuned to find out what they are! L8r.