MJ Live

Sunday, August 26, 2007

…..The XIII South Pacific Games – Samoa 2007 (Written 8/25/07)

Note: This is a long post. Viewer Discretion is Advised.

The day after hosting the Vanuatu team at our school, the day had finally arrived to welcome all the teams of the South Pacific Games (SPG) to Samoa – today was the opening ceremony for the games. This again was one of those weird days where it just hit me full force that the SPG has finally arrived and not only is it going to happen – but Samoa actually looks ready to hold it. But as always, let's start at the beginning of the day and build to the big finish.

So I started the day by going down to the Chanel Rugby field to see how the church sports day was going – I didn't make it down yesterday, so I just wanted to make sure everything was still going well. I ran into a lot of familiar faces from church, but the person I was looking forward to talking to was Cecil. This was my first time talking to him since he arrived in country and moved to Savaii about a month ago. I asked him how Savaii and the village life was treating him – he said he's not really living the village life right now because he's living with the pastor of the church he's working for. And if you know nothing else about Samoan culture, know this – in a village the nicest house with the most amenities usually belongs to the pastor of the village (Pastor Samoa – the pastor of Peace Chapel – is different in that he's holding off on building his nice, beautiful home until the new church is built). So Cecil is hoping to move out of that situation in a few months, once they get use to him and stop treating him like a guest. It was fun hearing about his experiences in the village because they reminded me of my first few months in country when I stayed at Falevao and he's discovering things about Samoa that I can't discuss on this blog. Yes, I know – it's shocking that I am not letting all the details about Samoa out through this blog. I have to leave something to talk about with folks when I get back home! Anyway, I chatted with him for a bit and met the pastor that he's living with. His church (Cecil) was the only one to bring youth from Savaii, so it was definitely a good opportunity to just see where he was at. He is called Tomasi (sp?) in his village because his middle name is Thomas and he was basically there to take photos and videos of the youth for the church.

After leaving Cecil, I hopped on the bus and made the highly anticipated trip into town. Since today was the opening ceremonies for the games, I knew Apia was just going to be packed with people from different pacific nations. Oh how right I was – within about 2 minutes of me stepping off the bus into town, I saw folks walking around wearing different team uniforms – some from the Solomon Islands, some from Papua New Guinea, some from the Cook Islands – it was a veritable smorgasbord of athletes from the south pacific nations. While I was walking around, I realized that all of these foreigners introduce a new problem for me – not traffic related at all, although it now feels like every car in Samoa is being utilized for the games. Before the games, I was basically stared at by Samoan because of the color of my skin – they thought I was from a Micronesian country or they have never seen a black person before in their life. Now I'm being stared at because they think I'm an athlete – I've been asked twice already what sport am I competing in. So the more things change, the more they stay the same. I took this opportunity of walking around in town to go to the movies and see 'The Simpsons Movie'. Just to show you how much Samoa doesn't 'get' the Simpsons, on the ticket to the movie it says 'Simson'…not exactly the same thing. This was also the first movie that I've gone to in Samoa where the movie actually started late and when it began the theater was not crowded at all – it was mainly filled with people from other countries. So with a low amount of Samoans in the audience, this was my opportunity to see how other Pacific Islanders would react to a movie – would they be bored to tears, would they laugh at the appropriate times – and nothing test this theory like 'The Simpsons movie' because a lot of the humor is sarcastic and there wasn't a lot of action (which are the type of movies Samoans are more attracted to). I was pretty shocked when the theater laughed at the appropriate time and they seemed to understand all the jokes in the movie. It was one of the few times I felt like I was back in a theater at home because everyone laughed at the same time instead of laughing at inappropriate points in the movie.

With the movie done – it was good, not great but after 2 years of no new Simpsons episodes it felt great – I headed to the Peace Corps office to take a little nap before heading to the opening ceremonies. I knew tonight was going to be a long one so I had to make sure that I had enough energy to get me through the night. The office was crowded with volunteers (both old and Group 78) who were waiting on the internet to start and were headed to the opening ceremonies – and if you know me, you know I don't really like crowds of people in small spaces. So at 4pm, I headed over to Lorna's place to catch a ride to the opening ceremonies and she would give me a ride home (because catching a taxi after the opening would be near impossible and I probably wouldn't get home till like 12am). When I arrived at her house, I met Naomi and Maria – two of Fila's sisters – who were visiting for the two weeks to support Fila in the games. I had previously met both of them while I was in New Zealand and their family had a karaoke night the night before New Year's Eve. So it was quite fun seeing these folks that I saw and know from New Zealand on my home turf now – where no karaoke was sung, no matter how much they tried to get me to do it. At 5pm we headed to Apia Park – where the opening would be held – and promptly ran into more traffic then I have ever seen in Samoa. Our original plan was to park at Paul/Viv's house because they live close to Apia Park and we would know that the car was safe – but the police blocked the road to their house, so that was out of the question. Instead, we parked on the side of the road outside of Apia Park and unlike almost every other sporting event I have ever been to – there was no worry about someone towing your car, they only have like 2 tow trucks in Samoa and not nearly enough space to tow all the cars that were illegally parked tonight. With the car safely parked, we headed to the park gate (Lorna, Naomi, Maria and I) where we had to split up – they bought the $20 tala tickets which were good for sitting in the grandstands while I bought the $10 tala tickes which were good for sitting in the stands opposite the grandstands. The $20 tickets placed you higher so you could see all of the activities on the field, whereas the $10 tickets placed me lower to the ground and while I didn't have a good vantage point on the field activities I was able to take better pictures of the athletes once they entered the stadium.

At 6pm, the ceremonies began and there was a sense of international flair that came from the PA system – they said everything in English and in French, so it was like one line in English, followed by one line in French. Also, while I was walking around I ran into John Harrold who is volunteering as a journalist for the games – he was walking around taking loads of pictures (might give me a run for my money one day). I also ran into Amos, Vik, Sarah Swanson, Tim and Dylan – but for the most part, I was just hanging out by myself taking as many photos/videos as I could. The first part of the program involved in the Head of State of Samoa arriving at the stadium. Now this was interesting on my part because I know he's a very humble man and probably, deep inside, he probably felt like the whole process was a bit much but it was just funny seeing a white limo drive up to the grandstands across from me, let the Head of State out of the car and then watch him walk up to his seat in the grandstands – why he didn't have a seat closer to the ground, I don't know. After the welcoming of the Head of State, they sang the national anthem and followed that with the opening prayer. It was at this point that thousands of kids ran out onto the field to perform the opening dance – these school kids were provided by various secondary schools in Samoa but the two that stood out to me were St. Mary's (Sara and Candice's school) and Don Bosco (Jeff's – Group 77 – school). After their opening dance number, the announcer introduced the ava ceremony to the foreigners and then they actually performed an ava ceremony at the opening – it was quite amazing. The first person they served that ava to was the Head of State, who was up in the grand stands, so a guy had to run from the field to the middle of the grandstands and then back down again – again, don't know why they didn't give the Head of State a lower seat but oh well. I think the next people that were served were the Prime Minister, the CEO of games from Samoa and the President of the SPG. With the ava ceremony done, they told two Samoan stories through dance – one involved Sina and Tuna (A girl and a fish) and the other involved Afi/Nafanua (Fire and the Samoan god that welcomed Christianity to Samoa). During the second dance, they performed actual fire dancing on the field and had kids holding a bunch of lit torches – which led me to thinking, did they have a plan B if it was raining during the ceremonies? Once the dance numbers were done, it was time for the March of Nations – if you've ever seen the Olympics, you've seen this – where the nations who are participating in the games march around the stadium. Watching all these athletes from the south pacific made me realize how important this event is to them – it's kind of like a true mini-olympics for them. I think a lot of these countries will participate in Beijing next year during the Olympics but not all of them, so this may be their only chance to compete on an international stage. It was at the moment that I was happy to be a part of this event – to be standing in the audience, cheering these south pacific nations on. It seemed like every country in the South Pacific (excluding Australia and New Zealand) were represented at the games and a few of them had quite a large delegation of athletes (probably to compete in every sport the games offer). So I'm going to list the countries that are competing – so get out a map and try to find them all:

Fiji (Large Delegation)

American Samoa

Cook Islands

French Polynesia/Tahiti (Large Delegation)

Micronesia

Guam

Kiribati

Marshall Islands

New Caledonia (Large Delegation)

Nauru

Niue

Norfolk Islands

Palau

Papua New Guinea (Large Delegation)

Northern Marianas

Solomon Islands (Large Delegation)

Tokelau

Tonga (Large Delegation)

Tuvalu

Vanuatu

Wallace & Fatuna

Samoa (Large Delegation)

So you take a guess as to who got the largest cheer from the audience? The stadium literally exploded when Team Samoa was introduced, so you know that had to feel like a great sensation for the athletes. Tonga also got a big reaction as well but I think that's because, other then Fiji, that's probably the only other nation a lot of the Samoans recognized. Watching the athletes walk around the stadium, you could definitely feel their excitement and joy to be participating in the games – they were dancing with the kids, joking with the audience – it was just a great amount of energy in the stadium from them. A few of the large delegations took a while to get around the stadium because they were messing around so much, but the best country (other then Samoa) was definitely Tahiti – they were all just having so much fun, it was palpable. Of course, once Team Samoa started walking around the stadium everyone got up and started applauding them. Now this is when something unexpected happen for me – as you notice from the list above, American Samoa is part of the games which means that the US is represented here (they even had the American flag along side the American Samoa flag) and I thought I would be super happy to cheer for them….but it didn't happen. It was like 'Yeah, American Samoa….alright, next' (which was the same reaction from a lot of Samoans). But once Team Samoa came out, that's when I cheered the loudest and got excited – it definitely felt to me like they were my home country team. I don't know if that's good or bad – after 2 years, is this place starting to feel like home and it took an event like this to make me realize that? I don't know but it was definitely an unexpected moment. The best part of welcoming out Team Samoa was that I actually know people who are on the team – primarily Zonder and Fila who are playing Touch Rugby. Fila is the captain of the Women's touch rugby team, so that was just an added bonus on top of being able to represent her country in the games. I felt bad for the drummers of the games though, they were drumming for the entire March of Nations, which had to be like 45 mins to an hour long…so imagine drumming for almost an hour straight with no pauses in between and you'll understand why I felt sorry for them.

During the March of Nations, as each country completed their march they brought their flag up to the main stage to be held there in conjunction with the other flags of the South Pacific. Once this was done – and all the countries had marched out – the official flag of the SPG was brought out and raised above all the other flags. The SPG flag is solid blue with a light blue globe in the middle and in the middle of the globe is a torch – so not really as iconic as the Olympic rings, but it works. After the flag came the athletes and officials oath to uphold the rules of the game. Following that came the official speeches from the Prime Minister of Samoa, the CEO of the Samoa SPG Committee and then the President of the SPG. All of these men talked for what seemed like forever and then after they talked, the commentator had to summarize their speech in French – so this portion seemed to drag on forever. The last person to speak was the Head of State, and remember how I said he was humble and didn't get caught in the glitz of it all, well he just stood up – basically said 'I now open the games' (in less then 3 minutes) and then sat down…short and sweet baby! The last part of the ceremonies involved the torch being brought into the stadium and run around before heading to the main stage to light the official torch to start the games. So that took a few minutes and the final person in the torch relay road a sail boat to the main stage (I found out later that Lorna and them had seen people constructing the sail float up until a few minutes before they actually used it). With the lighting of the torch, the ceremonies were closed and the games officially began.

Overall, I would say that the opening ceremonies were a great success – it went a lot smoother then I had imagined and even though a few parts weren't clear as to how they related to the games (the dancing parts), it was still a great showcase of the Samoan culture and their dedication to making sure that these South Pacific Games are the best ever. This is only the second time that Samoa has hosted the SPG, so you know they want to make sure they are selected for a 3rd time relatively soon (the games are in New Caledonia in 2011). Now of course, after having such a great time at the opening, something had to go wrong – right? Well when we got back to the car, a very rude woman came up to us and told us that we owed her $5 for parking on private property. In fact we were just parked on the side of the road, not actually parked on any property and there was no sign out when we parked there. Her reply was 'Everyone knows this is private property so we don't need a sign' which was just a stupid comment in and of itself. This exchange only demonstrated the ugly side of Samoa that may come out during the games – people taking advantage of tourists because they don't know the Samoan 'rules'. So we paid her the $5 just to get rid of her but then gave her the helpful advice to put up a sign next time and in true 'I know everything and don't care about you' attitude, just blew us off. So even though Samoa has a reputation for being nice and friendly – during the next two weeks, there will be some folks who will throw that reputation out the window just to make a quick buck.

So here we are – the 2007 South Pacific Games are upon us. There will be no sports played on Sunday (the games will encounter two Sundays), so all the sports officially begin on Monday. And of course you may be asking yourself 'Marques, what sports are being played at the South Pacific Games'? Glad you asked, because I have the answers you're looking for. The games that will be played over the next two weeks are:

Archery – Week 1

Athletics (Track & Field) – Week 2

Badminton – Week 2

Baseball – Week 1 & 2

Basketball – Week 1 & 2

Beach Volleyball – Week 1

Bodybuilding – Week 1

Boxing – Week 2

Cricket – Week 1 & 2

Soccer – Week 1 & 2

Golf – Week 1

Hockey – Week 1

Judo – Week 1

Lawn Bowling – Week 1 & 2

Netball – Week 1

Powerlifting – Week 2

Rugby 7s – Week 1

Rugby League 9s – Week 2

Sailing – Week 1 & 2

Shooting – Week 1

Softball – Week 1

Squash – Week 1 & 2

Surfing – Week 1 (This is the only SPG event taking place on Savaii)

Swimming – Week 1 & 2

Table Tennis – Week 1

Taekwondo – Week 1

Tennis – Week 1 & 2

Touch Rugby – Week 1

Triathlon – Week 1

Boat Racing – Week 2

Volleyball – Week 1 & 2

Weightlifting – Week 1

Wrestling – Week 2

So those are all the sports that will be played over the next two weeks and the weeks that they will be played in. One last thing, there will be shuttles that leave from Apia Park and take folks to the various complexes around town in which the games are being held. The most interesting thing that I noticed while in Apia Park is that they actually have bus stop signs now – that's like a first in Samoa. Usually you just flag down the bus you want to ride on, but it's good to have a designated spot – Samoa may become a modern country yet. I haven't decided which games I am going to attend, but with tickets only being $5 it's not expensive to go to them. Remember, if you want to keep up with the various events just head over to www.samoa2007.ws for more details. L8r.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Malo Marques. Isn't it the xiii (13th) south pacific games 2007?
Great blog though man. Informative. Malo lava.