Well after a long absence I am finally able to sit down a bit and reflect on the past couple of days of training in the wonderful country of Samoa. Things have basically been going non-stop from the time we arrived back in Apia on Sunday and when we came back to Apia today (Wednesday). We had our volunteer visit, which is a time where we spend a couple of days actually living with a volunteer to see what they are doing at their current job sites and what they do in their down time when they're not working. All 14 trainees were spread across both islands of Samoa, with a majority of the volunteers (8) heading to Savaii – I was one of those 8. So our day started with the Savaii volunteers all crowding into a van on Sunday to head to the wharf for the boat to Savaii. The van left at 10am, so fortunately I was able to get up at 7am, eat breakfast and then head off the local café that shows football from the states and was able to watch the New England vs. Miami game – so that was definitely a neat little experience to wakeup on a Sunday and once again feel the familiarity of home before being whisked away to yet another part of Samoa for another new experience. Unfortunately I was unable to see the entire game but before I left the Patriots scored twice and I knew it was over (as I found out later, the Pats did win). So at 10am we were driven to the wharf on Upolu and it was a surreal experience being able to see the other island while standing on the shore of Upolu. Its like being able to see another state of America from a distance while still standing in your own state – I had never experienced anything like that (or seen anything like that). In between Upolu and Savaii are the two little islands of Manono and Apolima (our trainer, Fale, is from Apolima) so it was just a steady stream of islands until you got to Savaii. We got on the 12pm ferry to Savaii, making this my first time experiencing a ferry in my life. I took pictures of the ferry but you could easily tell that this was a ferry that has made this particular journey quite a few times. While there were a lot of people on the boat it was not nearly as packed as it is for holidays or other busy times of the week when its almost like a bus where people are sitting on top of people – so that made it a much calmer ride to deal with. We had some other PCVs with us (both on our journey there and on our journey back) so in case we had particular questions about how something worked in regards to the ferry we had some credible sources to go to – so we definitely did not go this alone. At 12pm the ferry left the port on Upolu and headed to the port on Savaii (Saliologo) which takes about an hour and fifteen minutes to complete the journey. Luckily, for both lefts of our travel the weather at sea was perfect and bright so that made it a much easier ride – especially since I had no clue if I would get sea sick easily or not (I don't when I'm outside, but when I'm inside and I can see the boat going up and down I get a little queasy)
I took plenty of pictures to document the journey between Upolu and Savaii and it was so weird seeing the island get smaller and smaller in my view and for the first time actually being able to see the size of the island from afar (since we flew in at night, I had no clue how big Upolu was). From afar you can see most of the mountainous ranges on Upolu, it's a site to see. We arrived in Savaii at about 1:30pm and once we got off the boat it was a foot race to the buses because at both ports you have to be quick about getting on a bus to which ever town you're going to because once they become full the buses take off and its more of a problem in Savaii then it is in Apia because for Savaii you have to take a specific bus to particular villages since Savaii is much larger and more spread out then Upolu (on Upolu, all the buses from the wharf head to Apia). Fortunately when we got there, some of the Savaii volunteer were there waiting for us because it was definitely a mad house and without them we would have no clue what was going on and where we were suppose to go. But guess whose volunteer did not show up – that's right. Fortunately I was getting on the same bus with another volunteer who had a trainee so they helped make sure I at least knew where I was going (they got off before I got off so I was alone on the bus for a good bit of time). Fortunately, when I got to my stop the volunteer I was staying with, Amos, was out there waiting for me so I didn't have to guess which stop was mine. My volunteer stay was a bit different from that of the other trainees because I was visiting a volunteer who is Capacity building while a lot of the other trainees were visiting Village Based Development volunteers – so my volunteer still had a job he was doing while I was visiting while the other trainees were with volunteers who could adjust their schedule on the fly. So I spent a lot of my time just hanging out with Amos and chatting about some of the things going on at his school. First let me give you a little bit of info about Amos – he's a 5'6" Phillipian-American from California. He's a part of the last Capacity building group (Group 73) and he is currently working at Amoa College on Savaii. He's the first volunteer sent there to work on computer studies so basically he's creating a program from scratch. Right now, Amos is building a computer lab from scratch – he's trying to create a room that can hold up to 32 computers (even though it won't ever hold that many) and installed a workstation in the middle of the room, painted the workstation and the surrounding desk area and was about to start the installation of the fans into the ceiling when I arrived. It was definitely an eye opening experience because the job I am going into at Chanel, the current volunteer there had to do the same thing that Amos is doing – create a computer lab from scratch. Its easy to see the end product and be impressed by it, but to come into the middle of the work in progress and see what work still has to be done (in about two weeks time because his principal wants to show it to the parents at the end of the year) just puts me in awe of what PC volunteers are capable of in this country. While Amos lives on the school grounds within the compound, the view from the road from where he lives is quite impressive – the coast is right there off the side of the road. I could literally see Upolu from where I was staying it was that good of a view. Unfortunately, Amos restated to me what a lot of volunteers have been saying about their stay in Samoa – once you're here for a while, things start to become routine and you're no longer struck by the beauty of the place because its part of the every day grind. I was like 'I could understand that happening in Nashville, but in a place like this – no way' but he's been here a year and he's already like 'oh yeah, that is a beautiful view'. So its definitely something I have to be aware of, being aware of the natural environment that surrounds me in Samoa and try to take advantage of it while I can (because I can't travel outside of Samoa for the first 3 months of my stay here anyway). Anyway, all of my time was spent hanging around with Amos somehow – very little doing anything. But it was still fun for me, I learned a lot about how it feels to be in Samoa as a minority (even though he gets easily confused for a Japanese, Philippians are very much a minority in Samoa) and how some of the idealistic views outsiders hold of the PC may not always be valid – the PC is just like any other job in America there are people who are gung ho and tow the company line, then there are guys who are show offs, then there are people who are overly competitive and there are the traditional hippies and peace/love volunteers that everyone expects from the PC. It was definitely good hearing another point of view about PC Samoa, basically from someone who is out of the loop of all the faitala (gossip) that floats around PC and Samoa. On my second day of my visit we jumped into the ocean for a little bit of swimming and snorkeling. He let me borrow his snorkeling gear and then something amazing happened – my vision actually improved when I put the snorkeling goggles on. I thought it was a mistake so I kept taking the goggles on and off and sure enough every time my vision was better but Amos does not wear glasses, so I couldn't figure out what happened. Well it seems that the last time he went snorkeling (which was a few months ago) he accidentally switched goggles with another volunteer who apparently had prescription snorkeling goggles and that's why my vision actually got better once I put the goggles on. So that was fun, being able to actually see while underwater – unfortunately it was cloudy under the sea because we went at high tide when all the water was coming in and pushing around the sand at the bottom. Amos was also trying to figure out how to do the breast strokes and other special types of swim moves, I'm a good swimmer but I only do freestyle – its times like this where I wish I had an ex-collegiate swimmer from UT around to show me (and Amos) how its done because I am definitely not a swim coach. But it was fun to see him try and get genuinely excited about trying something new in the water. On my last day there, I got up early in the morning and decided to try to watch the sun come up from the rocks since I was basically able to sit on the water while the sun rose. I got some cool shots of the suns rays breaking through the horizon but the sun definitely takes its dear ole time when you're waiting for it to come up over the horizon. While I was waiting on the shore I saw a small boat in the distance moving across the horizon and thought it would make a good pic, so I took a picture of it. After taking that picture, the boat started slowing down and then it turned towards shore. I stayed at my spot for a bit thinking that surely this boat was not coming ashore and instead just took a detour to get to shallow water for fishing. Once the boat got a bit closer I could see that there were about 4-5 guys on this little boat and two of them were waving around what looked like machetes. It was at that point I decided it was not worth the risk of staying put to watch the sun come up, so I bolted from my spot and back towards the house before the boat came to shore. Sure enough, the boat came to the very spot where I was sitting but I was on the road back to Amos' house before I could find out what they wanted. Amos told me they might have just been fishermen curious to know what I was doing on the rocks just looking at the horizon, but in the back of my mind I remembered the recent pirate attack on the cruise ship at sea and instantly thought 'Pirates' and got the heck out of dodge.
Sometimes curiosity is not worth risking disappearing. If there was one thing I think I provided to Amos over my 3 days with him was something we all take for granted at times: company and conversation. He's pretty isolated where he is and I got the feeling he doesn't get to many visits from other volunteers around him because of how far out he is and because he's not VBD – so while most of the other trainees experience the beaches and waterfalls of Savaii, I feel like I provided an ear and shoulder to lean on for someone who doesn't get to do that to often. I'll have 2 years to see the sites, but you only get a couple of chances to actually have real, fulfilling conversations with people and we talked about everything from teacher-student relationships to religion. It was weird, at times while I was talking to him, I thought in the back of my head that had I done this two years prior I could not handle talking with just one person for 3 days straight – guess I've got a lot more stories now then I did two years ago.
J Anyway, I left on the 10am boat back to Upolu on Wednesday with some Savaii volunteers who were going in for some required Volunteer meetings this weekend. Once we got back to Apia we hung out with some of the Savaii volunteers before heading back to the hotel for our debriefing and learning what all the other trainees did during their volunteer stay. So that was the compressed version of the last few days for me in Samoa – like I said whirlwind.
On Wednesday, I also got my first piece of mail from the states and unfortunately it did not come from my family – but it had something that I was waiting for with great anticipation. My package from Camp Ozark arrived today with my long sleeve t-shirt (for those cold Samoan nights, but at least it was in Caddo red!) and the session/promotional DVDs. It was great because it gave me another piece of home here in Samoa and it was especially great to see the place (and the people) that helped prepare me mentally, physically and spiritually for my tour with Peace Corps. And I could not be anymore happier to have it all in DVD format so that I can pop it into my computer anytime I want – thank you Dave and Sam! So that was definitely a highlight in my day, hopefully one day I'll be able to go back there.
The last part of my Wednesday dealt with meeting a very important in my professional career for the next two years – a very influential Samoan by the name of Peter Meredith. He's the chair of the Chanel College advisory board and basically is the man who got a lot of the computers that Chanel currently has. This was my first time meeting him while Michael (the guy I'm replacing) was still around – so it was important that we meet before my three week endeavor back to Falevao. We hit it off pretty well and fortunately during the course of our interaction together during the evening I was able to show him how tech savvy I was. He had heard about Google Earth from somewhere but did not know where to download it or what it really was but he wanted to try it out. Well, as luck would have it, I have on my jump drive a copy of Google Earth and we installed it on his computer and showed him the satellite images of Apia, Samoa. He was quite impressed, so thankfully as of right now I'm definitely on his good side. This was the first time I had met someone important in a professional sense so I wanted to come across as both tech savvy but fun at the same time. So while we were hanging around just chatting, I started playing with his 4 year old grandson who really took a liking to me once I showed that I was playing with him and not just teasing him (since his old sisters do that to him) and he started giggling and having a good ole time (after being kind of grumpy and powty earlier in the evening). I'll see him again in 3 weeks when I am finally sworn in as a Peace Corps Volunteer – he seemed excited about the prospect, so that makes me happy.
And that's all he wrote folks, a lot has happened in these past 3 days – a lot more then what has been written, but these are the highlights. Tomorrow we do not get a day of rest from this cyclone known as training as we return to the wonderful world of language (yippee!). See ya then and enjoy this novel I just wrote. J L8r
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