pics

last sunset of the world everyday.

my host sister teaching class. these kids would be 5th graders in the states.

kid fishing for octopus and invertebrates.

Google Earth - Neiafu, Savaii

thought this would be a good way to give u guys a better idea of where things are that i talk about in this blog. hopefully u can read the labels or blow up the picture. ok it would first be a good idea to be familiar with neaifu on a map of samoa. then you can look at this detail of neiafu. the scale in the bottom left is 2,985 ft. ive labeled the bathing pools where half of the village goes to bathe and do laundry. out past the waves there is where we do our spear fishing. i have been surfing lately right out in front of the bathing pools where the channel makes a bit of a wave. on the inner reef right in front of my house is where i take the village kids surfing. people also go down to vaoto beach for fishing. vaoto is a secluded beach that u actually have to scale down a cliff to get to, but it is well worth the dangerous climb. nobody lives there, only a few people even go there. it is the epitome of a private, isolated tropical beach. i go down there sometimes and pretend im tom hanks from castaway for a few hours. they say people used to live there long ago, but nobody has lived down there for a very long time. my g/f's house is across from the primary school where we just built the fence. all the churches are labeled. i want to say its about a mile and a half between my family's neiafu-tai house (my house) and their neiafu-uta house. from my house to the bus stop is all uphill. one hell of a hill. all of the land to the north and west out of view of this picture is still neiafu, but it wouldnt fit in view and theres no real landmarks that way. the road through neiafu tai does connect to another road which takes you down to tufutafoe village.

pictures

nothing much going on since i got back from fiji. my host family is building a house for some relatives in new zealand that are coming back to stay sometime this year. here's some pics of building a house in Samoa. ill upload more when finished.

thats where the concrete is made. the sand is from the beach in neiafu-tai, and the water is from the (not-so)freshwater springs in tai as well. the cinderblocks are made in my family's garage in neiafu-uta using the neiafu sand and tank water. clearing down trees. we did have a chainsaw, but much if this type of work is done with hacking with machetes as well.

all the stones and rocks are brought from the surrounding woods by hand. usually lots of untitled men from the village come in an afternoon and pile up a bunch of rocks. for some laborers their whole job all week was to collect rocks to fill in the foundation

this will be an open-air front room where meetings can be held, but really this is where samoans choose to spend most of their time. eating,weaving, hanging out, even sleeping is usually done in an open room/house like this. this type of room can be totally detatched from the rest of the house. the back will be for bedrooms and maybe a bathroom and kitchen (the later two often detached from the house as well.) but bedrooms are mainly for storing belongings and changing clothes, not really for sleeping or sitting around in.

Fiji

a fijian on a horse

a nice hostel we stayed at for about $20 american. free internet, kayaks, breakfast, horseboarding, etc. great place to stay.

yes that is me wakeboarding behind a horse. how about that for ecotourism!

hanging out with some volunteers from fiji. they drink together by placing drinks on the lazy susan and spinning it around the table.

just got back from a week in Fiji. awesome time. great to get out of Samoa for a little while. the landscape is very different. i think samoa beats them there. but fiji has a much nicer city and better options for backpackers and international travelers. great indian food.

random pics

some volleyball at the Neiafu-uta Methodist church. the turn-off in the background takes you down to my house. the little hut is where we wait for the bus.

some kids jumping rope in front of the house. they are standing on the cement strip used for pitching the cricket ball.

this is the wharf at salelologa where the boat takes us to upolu island. im standing at the peace corps office.

school fence part 2

Very close to the finished product. just some more pipe to go between the poles at the bottom and we will be done. Hopefully next we will plant some fruit trees on the school compound for the kids to eat for lunches. we'll see..... Oh yeah, these pics are with my new camera, so hopefully it wont take me two months to put up a new blog.

Neiafu Primary School Fence

work around this gate took longer than expected and ate up more material than we budgeted for. but im sure it will look nice.
except for a few days when all the manpower in the village came out to cement poles and build up the stone fence, all the work has been done by a few dependable workers that u see in these pics. it hasnt been easy at times.
its actually a nice view when u are coming down the road and see the gate. the tree on the right there helps hide a few out-of-level posts.
im carrying the brick over to another area because we only have one grinder, and one electrical outlet, one hammer, one level, one hacksaw, one trawel, one measuring tape, and some days only one shovel. i bet you can guess how convenient that is.
this little gate and the steps we built for it kicked my ass. plain and simple.


i know it's been a while. sorry. my camera is broken so i dont really have any new pics of anything and im not really one to blog w/o pictures. but my buddy spencer from group 80 came down to help us with the fence last week and he took some pics. looks like we hit the foreign aid jackpot again and got a $32k (about $11.5k US) dollar grant from Australia to build a primary school fence. this project hit the ground even before our tank project was finished, so ive had no problem, or time for that matter, in finding another project to do. the purpose of this fence is to keep pigs, dogs, and cows off school property to provide a safer (animal shit-free) school ground. also to help beautification or agricultural projects now that animals wont be there to eat everything u plant. hopefully with the help of some villagers i will start planting fruit trees there in a few months. and with any luck and extra material, i will get enough people on board to build a recycling bin. (highly doubtful)