The Importance Of Family (Wrriten Oct 20 2005)

Tomorrow (Friday) we head off to our training village for the beginning of the village portion of our training in Samoa. This is definitely going to be a new experience for me because for the first time in my 24 years on this planet, I'm going to have a new family in my life – my Samoan family. One of the steps the PC uses to help volunteers integrate more quickly into the culture is to have the volunteers adopted into Samoan families in their training village. So it could be quite possible that by the end of the tomorrow I will no longer be an only child (in the Samoan sense) and could have brothers and sisters. That's definitely going to be strange. But I know you're reading this and saying to yourself 'How can this be your new family since you're just living with them?' The family that I'm adopted into (and the same goes for every trainee) will be the family that I'm associated with for the rest of my stay in Samoa. The families have also been told to treat us (the trainees) like their own kids – so we do chores, help around the house, play with the kids, etc. This is also the family that we'll be celebrating Thanksgiving with while in Samoa – don't know if they'll have the traditional American thanksgiving food items, so that in itself will be a bit of culture shock. Its exciting and scary at the same time because we've been told that a lot of the families that PC puts trainees with are awesome and the volunteers love their families and visit them almost every other weekend. But on the flip side, we've also heard of volunteers who have had bad experiences with their host families or have had families that treated them more like an honored guest rather then one of their own children. So we'll see which side of the equation I am on. This will also be our first look at the traditional Samoan culture, away from the Westernization that's occurring in Apia – so we get to see first hand the importance of the church in the village, we'll get to see an actual ava ceremony (which could take as long as 2 hours to get through), we'll be up close and personal with a Samoan Fale (but for those that are curious our personal items will be securely locked when we're not around them) and finally meet a matai inside the village structure (a lot of the PC staff are matai in their respective villages). So I'm nervous in that I hope I live up to the expectations that my family has for me (just like I do back in the states) but also excited to see how this integration works out. No matter where you go, you can never get away from your family!

Also today was the first day that I had to wash laundry in Samoa and unless you want to take the cheap way out (using the Laundromat, which around here would cost $13.50Tala to do one load of wash/dry) can be a labor and time intensive endeavor. What we are all doing is getting a bucket (or wetbag) of hot water, then putting in some laundry detergent from the local market, then throwing in our clothes to let them soak for a few minutes. After they have soaked, you then have to wringe out the clothes one by one in order to get all the excess water out of the clothes (which, when you have a lot of clothes to dry, can be the labor intensive part) and then hang the clothes out to air dry, which takes a few hours depending on when you put them out on the line. It's a good thing its usually hot and humid here no matter what the time of day otherwise it would be very hard to wash your clothes here. I know Jonas' grandmother will be happy to hear that I'm washing my clothes this way since she was fairly convinced that one day I would end up doing it this way – she's gotta be psychic or something! So since this is the way I'll be washing my clothes for the next two years, when I get back home I won't complain about how long its taking to wash my clothes – those machines work REALLY hard!

I got a little reminder of home today from the convenient store next to our hotel. The wife of the owner of the store was in their today and asked if I was the one who was curious about her husband's t-shirt. Previously I was in the store and saw the owner wearing a MTSU t-shirt (MTSU in Samoa, I was shocked!) and had asked how he got it and he said he got it from his wife. So when I talked to the wife about the shirt she said it came from her niece who is going to MTSU right now, her name's Ashley, and she's on the volleyball team. When I told her that I had a friend who was also going to MTSU (Jonas), she got all excited and said that even though her niece was born in California, she's part Samoan and that's who she obtained the t-shirt from. That was definitely the highlight of my day (that and finding out that the Colts are still undefeated) and yet another reminder of my family and friends, just can't leave home without them. Talk to you in a week! L8r.

 

Roll Over Tide! Go Vols!