TGIF (Written 12/9/05)

Thank goodness its….finally over! After the most tumultuous 3 weeks I've ever experienced, today was our last full day in the village. For most of us, it's not that we're happy to leave the village it's just that we're happy to finally get started on our volunteer life and once again start living by our own schedule instead of an already established one. But before we could leave the village, we had to come up with a "vision statement" as a group that would act as a mission statement for us during our two years here. Although at our midservice conference it might get revised, here it is as written right now:

We, the people of Group 75, strive to maintain our individual and collective ambition towards bridging cultural differences, integrating with the Fa'aSamoa, working effectively towards sustainable change and building relationships with each other and those around us.

Not a bad vision and it will be placed on the program pamphlet at our swearing-in on Wednesday – yet another piece of the puzzle is now in place for us to become actual volunteers. So after our vision session and a medical session, we went home until the FiaFia/Ava Ceremony in the afternoon.

The Ava/FiaFia Ceremony was a strange event for us because we wanted to do the FiaFia but the village/mayor originally planned on having no FiaFia and just the Ava Ceremony on this Saturday (the day we're leaving). Silao had to talk the mayor into moving the ava ceremony to today and let us do our FiaFia as a thank you for the Ava. So the first part of the event was the Ava, very similar to the Ava ceremony we had when we first came to Falevao except it took place in our school instead of the village meeting area we had it in the first time. So the ava was served first and than came the FiaFia portion. Some of the younger male adults of the village performed a few dances for us. I was astonished by their coordination because they were able to get the timing of their dance and remember about 4 different songs in less then a week (because this idea of Ava/FiaFia was finalized on Tuesday). Samoans seem to have a very high capacity for memorization – I've seen a lot of Samoan sivas (dances) since I've been here and every time I am amazed by their ability to remember so many complicated moves and not only do them correctly but do it all on the same beat. So after the village went, we finally got to do our thing! We did a sasa (which is like a sitting slap dance), the guys did a Peace Corps Samoa War Cry, the girls did a traditional Samoan lady dance, the guys then did a standing slap dance (which was quite funny because Bryan and I were trying to knock other people down as we bounced around) and we finally ended with a play based on Matthew 25:35 that showed our appreciation to the village for their hospitality over these past 5 weeks in the village. While it wasn't the smoothest FiaFia in the history of PC Samoa it went pretty well without any problems and the trainers said they were very impressed by us. After we were done with the FiaFia we all went home to do our final farewells with our families – the trainers gave us a farewell in Samoan to say to our families. So I trudged through it (with my aunt helping me out with my enunciation) and took a group picture of my 'aiga Samoa (Samoan Family), so hopefully this works – I've inserted the picture that I took. If it shows up, great – if not, I'll post it again when I post all my other pics so far.

 

After I gave them my speech and their gifts from me, I ate dinner in my family's western style house for the last time as a trainee. It was strange kind of sitting there eating realizing that the next time I came back here it would be by way of bus and I'll be an actual Peace Corps Volunteer. Amazing!

After I got done eating, I did something I haven't been able to do in the states for quite some time – I played cards with my grandmother! J I had usually been going over to Bryan's house to play Suipi but tonight, since it was my last night, I wanted to spend as much time with my family as possible so I thought it would be cool to play with my grandmother. It also gave me a chance to talk to her since she mainly only speaks Samoan and I can only understand a little Samoan, but in Suipi there's a very limited dialogue to be used so it looks like I know a lot of Samoan when I really don't. It's funny, I use to play Rummy 500 with my grandmother back in the states and now I'm playing basically the same game in Samoa with my Samoan grandmother – who says God doesn't have a sense of humor! J I thoroughly got beaten by her 4 wins to my lousy 2, but a good time was had by all and I know she really appreciated that I took the time to spend some good quality time with her before I left. That was probably the closest I've felt to home while I was in the village.

And finally, I got another reminder of home during the night from the New Zealand news. It seems that the WWE is coming to New Zealand sometime soon (I think in March) and Batista was on there talking about the upcoming event. I'm a huge WWE fan and to have an opportunity to see one of my boys on TV while in another country – it brought back some good memories. Made me long for home even more and made me realized that even though I'm thousands of miles from home there are little moments (no matter where you are) where you feel connections home. Ah well, good times with a great Samoan family. I'll come back relatively soon (but not for Christmas because the buses don't run on that day) but our training director told us its just better to show up instead of giving an actual date to come back because in Samoan when they know you're coming it's a bit of a hassle whereas if it's a surprise it's less of a hassle on the family. So tomorrow I say goodbye to Falevao as a trainee. Yay!