As I head towards the end of my time in Samoa, it seems like the days are just flying by. There's just so much to do and so little time remaining – I'm doing my best to enjoy every moment that I have here so that's the reason it has been a few days since my last post. So let's get you caught up shall we….
Thursday (11/29) was an interesting day. Have you ever had that feeling where you woke up and you just knew it was going to be one of those long bad days? On Thursday I had that feeling. I was scheduled to do a few medical activities for my closing of service on Thursday and I had to be at the office at around 9am in order to start the process. Well the day started off very glum and dreary and as I was walking to catch the bus I just thought in my head, "Man, this feels like it's going to be a bad day". I got to the bus stop at around 8:15am and a bus was coming that I could catch. When I tried to catch the bus, though, it drove right past me – you see in Samoa, the bus drivers sometimes take a 'break' for a bit and there's really no way of knowing when that break will occur (you can guess, but the timing of the break is not set in stone). So if the bus had not taken a break, I would have been in town by 8:30am instead I had to wait an extra 15-20 minutes on the bus to come back around and ended up in town at around 8:45am. I then walked to the Peace Corps office (which is about a 15 minute walk) and ended up being a tad bit late for my appointment. On most days being late in Samoa doesn't really hurt you but on that day, time decided it wanted to be a very important fixture in my life. When I arrived at the office at around 9:10am, there was no driver to take me up to the hospital so that I could do my chest x-ray. So I ended up waiting around the office for about 20-30 minutes before a driver showed up to drive me up to the hospital. When we arrived at the hospital, the guy who mans the x-ray machine at the hospital was gone into town to run some errands – at 10am in the morning. I was like 'Are you kidding me?' So I waited about 30 minutes for the medical professional to come back (which he did not) before I had to go to another doctor for my physical. When I arrived at the general physicians office, he was not there (even though my appointment was at 11am, he was not there at 11am) so we had to go back to the office and wait for one of these two medical people to arrive at their spot. After waiting about 20 minutes at the office, we went back up to the x-ray hospital (Medcen) and tried waiting on the x-ray guy to return. By about 11:30am he still had not returned but the doctor who would do my physical had returned, so I left Medcen (again) and headed down to the physician. The checkup was pretty routine – I'm in fine health – and was done pretty quickly. Once I had my physical, I walked back to the Peace Corps office and got another ride up to Medcen for my x-ray. This time the 3rd time was the charm, because when I arrived at Medcen they sent me directly to the x-ray guy and he was actually there. The x-ray didn't take long at all and at around 12:30pm I was done with all the medical things I had to do.
During the afternoon portion of Thursday, I went to Group 79s training village to do the last diversity session for them. It was Beth (Group 73) and I who were the Volunteer panel. The discussion focused on the diversity within the Peace Corps community, not so much how American diversity is seen from the Host Country National perspective (i.e. the Samoans). We talked about how race, age, sex, political backgrounds and religious backgrounds can have an effect on your time here in Samoa. This was probably my last time going out to the village – I have been the most involved in the training of this group then any other, so it was kind of weird to think the next time I see these guys will be when they are volunteers.
After running around all week I decided that on Friday (11/30) I was just going to stay home and be available in case Kevin (my principal) needed any last minute help. Throughout the course of last week, the three men I have spent my two years with have been leaving the country. Mika left last Sunday and Sione left on Wednesday morning, so Kevin was the last person I had to say goodbye to. So I just hung around all day to make sure I could get in a proper goodbye. Around 6pm was when he was ready to leave and I thanked him for being such a great boss for the past two years and he thanked me for making the last two years terrific for the school – glad I could end his time here on a high note. While saying goodbye to my group members has been tough, saying goodbye to the folks who have been part of your local community is really tough because I have no idea if I will ever see these folks again. Mika, Sione and Kevin are just being scattered to different parts of the South Pacific and Kevin is already 65, so he may not be around when I finally come back to Samoa for a visit. But it's been a great two years with Kevin at Chanel and even though I know Pio, it just won't be the same around here. When I shook hands with Kevin to say goodbye, it felt like a real changing of the guard and I really got the sense that this place will feel different next year. I headed to bed early on Friday because…
…I had to wake up at around 6am on Saturday (12/1) morning. Why would I do such a crazy thing during my vacation period in Samoa? Well I had to go to the Peace Corps office to catch the van ride out to Manono. Manono is one of the two smaller islands between Upolu (my island) and Savaii (the other big island of Western Samoa). The volunteer who is living there –Stephanie (Group 76) – organized a clean up day for the village. So I (along with Candice) went to help with that activity – there were about 15 volunteers and 4 staff members who made the drive out to Manono for this activity. It was about 8am when we arrived at the Manono wharf and I was shocked when I arrived there – Grace/Jorim (Paul and Viv's kids), Racheal/Elisha (Teuila's kids) and Shaka (Eugene's son) were all there which I was not expecting. I was talking to Teuila asking her why she was there when I saw them and they all rushed me trying to hug me…it was quite overwhelming at 8am on a Saturday morning. So of course I was playing and hanging out with the kids for the majority of the day. We arrived on the island of Manono and had the customary welcome speech by the village mayor before we were served a light breakfast of egg sandwiches and papaya. Once breakfast was over with we were split up into small groups and assigned a direction to go in and start cleaning up. My group consisted of Candice, Racheal and Grace – had to make sure those 2 girls stayed out of trouble. The funny part of this clean up was the fact that BEFORE we arrived on the island, the people there did a clean up themselves to make the place look nicer. The only way to get trash off the island is by boat and apparently before we arrived they had sent a boat full of trash back to Upolu. So the front of the houses were pretty clean when we arrived, but when we went behind the houses and near the coastline is where we found a lot of the garbage to be picked up. While I know Candice can do pretty much anything, I was surprised by tenacity that Racheal and Grace showed. They weren't afraid to pick anything up and really got into it – helping each other out and not being afraid of getting dirty. We spent about 2 hours just cleaning up a small area of the village – it would take almost a month to REALLY clean the place up but hopefully we demonstrated to them that it's important to have a clean environment (especially when you live on a small island).
Once we were done with the clean up (we sent about 2 boats filled with garbage back to Upolu), it was time to go home. So I went home, took a quick shower and then headed down to ClickNet to help out while Eugene was in Savaii. After being there for a bit Vik, Sara (Group 76), Dave (Group 77) and Bryan showed up. This was going to be the last time I saw Bryan before he and Candice head off to New Zealand on Wednesday. The best memory of Bryan that I have is our first encounter with one another – which was during staging. He was wearing a University of Texas shirt and I immediately started making fun of him for it (because I went to the University of Tennessee i.e. the REAL UT). At first Bryan was a little bit taken aback by distaste of the University of Texas, but it formed a solid bond between us and we've been friends ever since. Out of all the members of my group, I believe that Bryan will be one of the first ones I see when I get back to America – for some reason I just can't avoid Texas folk.
That brings us to Sunday (12/2). I went to church and usually after church I ride back home and try to find something to eat for lunch. On this day, Pastor Samoa invited me to his house for lunch. This would be the first time I had been over to his house since my mom was here in May. This would also be the second Sunday in a row where I went over to someone's house for To'ona'i. So I went to Pastor's house (along with Sara, Janita and Brianna) for lunch and a soccer game was on. It was the LA Galaxy for a Wellington soccer team. This match up was apparently important because it featured David Beckham playing for the LA Galaxy (a MLS/ Major League Soccer team). I think the only reason I actually watched the game was because it was an American team playing – if it were Rugby, I could care less and if I happen to be watching this at home I would probably be doing something else and have the TV as background noise. Even after two years, the 'Worlds' sport' has had no affect on me. The meal, though, was excellent as always. Once lunch was finished and I took a mini-nap it was time for me to bike back up my mountain and get ready for my night activity.
I went back down to town (by Taxi) at 6pm to go to one of my last night time services at Peace Chapel. It was a good word about relying on the Lord when you are weary (using Isaiah 40:29-31) which is especially true towards the end of the year. During the service it was just pouring down rain – it sounded like the rain was literally coming down in buckets. After the service, Brianna drove Sara and I to the pizza place called 'Giordano's' which is owned by one of the families we know from Peace Chapel. We were there to have dinner with Julya, who is leaving Monday afternoon. When we got there she was waiting for us and we went to have our last pizza together in Samoa. It was a good time of just finding out what Julya is doing after she leaves here (she's travelling to Japan and Korea for a little over 2 weeks) and how she felt about leaving. It was a very salty but good conversation and I was very sad to have to say goodbye to her. One of my favorite memories of Julya were the times during our training days when Bryan and I would have to go over to her house to 'save' her from her family. That's probably the time when we really got to know each other. I am also proud to say that despite the myriad of illnesses that Julya has had over the past 2 years, she has stuck it through when a lot of people might have quit. So I know she now realizes that if she could survive this ordeal, she can survive and live almost anywhere – which is an encouraging thing to know about yourself. After dinner we said our goodbyes and went our separate ways – to meet again on the other side of the pond.
So this week we lose Julya (on Monday) and Bryan/Candice (on Wednesday) – after that, Sara and I will be the last members of our group in Samoa. Sometimes, when I really think about it – it feels like my group is just slowly fading away. It's definitely the nature of our group not to draw to much attention to ourselves, but it's still tough to think that on Thursday there will be only 2 members of Group 75 left. The countdown clock is still ticking away….
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