Deep Sea Fishing!

a little slice of the good life. doesnt get much fresher than that.

check out that bad boy. 8 or 9 feet tip to tip. a sailfish caught off the southern coast of upolu. not sure about the weight. i guess this ends my fishing streak of bad luck, although charter fishing isnt really fishing. its more like just riding in a boat for a couple hours while the 1st mate sets the lines. you do have the option of reeling it in though.

Group 81 Fiafia

the samoan "taupou" (ceremonial virgin)

quite possibly the last "man dance." the next group doesnt come till next october.

This was held right after midservice last month. Sorry I've been busy...

midservice

this pig and dog (seeming to be the only of each kind on the island) were best friends. the pig also tried to get a little too friendly with most of us. if they only knew how different life was on the mainland.

Beach Fales...

Pretty small group huh? Niko was a no show. I left right after this picture.

Land!!!!

this was our middle of service break where we got to go stay at some beach fales on a tiny island off the eastern coast of upolu called namu'a. i only spent one night there b.c i had to go back to the village to do some filming for our project, but everybody said it was fun.

White Sunday

This is basically xmas in samoa. this is the one day of the year where kids are given gifts (new church clothes) and treated special (first to eat, and maybe ice cream for desert!) they also run the show at church doing plays and songs and dances. samoans always look sharp on sundays, and this particular day even moreso. here are some shots...

my girl, her sis, and little cousin who i really want to adopt. haha. she loves to talk to me but is terrified to get near me. like most kids.

the girls are in costume. they normally dress way better than that.

the cutest kids in the world!

at least one of us is good looking. my sweetheart.

my girl's sister, brother and baby cousin. how cute is that baby!

some play about a king who had a dream and something happened. im fluent in samoan, but not bible samoan. kinda like my english.

octopus hunting

one day while not catching fish with my fishing pole, i decided to go fishing for octopi with my neighbor. its actually quite interesting. just swim/wade around in the shallow reef and look down holes to see if anyone is home. it they are, fire at will. do ur best to spear it and pull it out of the hole by any means necessary. (some dont go all that willingly) once out, slam it on top of the water a few times to kill it good, and then loop it on ur belt and go looking for the next hole. my neighbor on the right is pretty good. im not that good. octopus taste really good.

Miss Samoa

Another September, another Miss Samoa. Here are a few shots of this year's contestants. All in all there about 4 contestants that live in Samoa, and 3 abroad (NZ, Australia, and USA). Miss NZ is in red, Miss Aus. sitting down in lite purple. The other two pics are of local contestants. You gotta love the girl in the rugby ball. Miss USA is very pretty and looks very cool, but i didnt get a good pic of her b.c she was always movin and throwing candy (hence the coolness).

Samoa Boat Race

the fautasi (boat) race was held yesterday in apia. the green boat won. sorry there arent better pics of actually racing.

Miss Samoa

Yeah so I got to meet Miss Samoa a few weeks ago, and I ran to get my camera and brought it back to have my picture taken with her and the f-in batteries were dead. So no picture of me and her, but I thought I would let all of you know anyways. She kissed me on the cheek too! I almost fainted. Her father's family is from my village, and she was back visiting relatives. She's actually my girlfriend's 2nd cousin.

Condi Condi

Almost forgot to post. Condi Rice paid us a visit last month. It was short and sweet. Apparently she was in town to dissuade Samoa from allowing the Chinese to put a satellite here or something like that. She stopped ever so briefly to take a picture with us and say a few words. She actually looks very fit in person, very skinny. She has a very stiff walk though. Maybe it was from all the flying.

Career Day

A career day was had in Apia for highschool students on from both islands last week. Schools, Businesses and Gov't agencies all came and set up booths. Overall I think it was a huge success. For some kids, this was the first time they have gotten to see what is actually out there in the world. Big ups to the Peace Corps volunteers who put the whole thing on. Myself and other volunteers were there to help make things run smoothly. (i.e. fetch water bottles, set up tables, and guard the snack table from hungry students.) Maybe I should have toured the booths and found a career for myself as well.

Training

• Since my group has hit its year mark, halfway mark, and soon to be year in the village mark, I thought I would take you back to what we were doing this time a year ago. Last summer, we spent our time between Apia and the training village in Manunu, Upolu. Here's some pics of that. Lot's of reminiscing as i write this blog. For most of us, our fondest memories are of our time spent together in this village. We were a group, a team, now we are scattered around the two islands and it seems like every month another one of us is leaving.

Me, Jacob, and some of the guys playing homerun derby. This event was not about culture sharing, or teaching new sports to kids. It was about young American men and their need to hit a ball as hard and far as they can. (I won!)

With the financial help of a wealthy American family sailing through the Pacific, we were able to repaint and put new flooring in the Manunu Primary School. It was a festive day of painting and games. It's amazing what how good we look when other people give us money.

An amazing waterfall near Manunu. We spent lots of our free time here. Usually with a host of Samoans. good times...

This is before our big end of training party (fiafia). We performed several dances and a skit, but the real treat was watching the village perform their dances for us. There are only 9 of us left from this group of 16.

The Peace Corps version of "You Got Served." With our fearless leader Niko leading the way, we dueled with a local primary school in an all out dance battle. They were tough, but no match for the "Hokie Pokie" or was it the Chicken Dance?

I'm a father!

...Godfather that is. This is my sister, Loreta, from our training village in Manunu and her new baby boy Peni, named in honor of me. (Peni is my Samoan name.) Although it is common for Samoans to name newborns after a visitor that has spent some time with them, I am flattered and incredibly honored nonetheless. A child in this world carries my namesake. The first time i saw Peni, he smiled at me. I think I'll have a connection with this kid. After all, it seems only fitting that I be the godfather considering I could hear him being conceived during training last June. So much for privacy in Samoa. haha...

Samoan Funeral

final resting site of the departed. yes this common to bury your dead in your front yard. some say this is so ur dead will keep away evil spirits. others say it makes for settling land disputes in the future. this grave will have a few more layers and decorations added to it once finished. (nice water tank!)

A high talking cheif delivers a speech to the family. just out of view to the left is a chief and group of the family who thanks the high chief and delivers his own speech.

matai doing the ceremonial walk to the gravesite.

i partially witnessed my first samoan funeral last week. only partially because it turns out i was at the start of a case of dengue fever, and my first because ive done my best to avoid previous ones. funerals in samoa are almost like family reunions at the same time. they usually involve family coming home from australia, nz, and american samoa. the service itself can be anywhere from a few days after the death to about 2 weeks later. lots of gift are donated to the greiving family usually in the form of fine mats, cows, pigs, money, and boxes of canned fish. the tendancy is to give more than you can afford or should, and then things are redistributed back to contributing families at the end. a concept we americans will never understand. they last at least one whole day.

Group 80 Welcoming Party!

No those are not mighty Samoan warriors, they are me and my fellow peace corps gents showing off what we've learned in the past year. the new group just arrived june 4th and we had a welcoming party with men and women's samoan dance. new volunteers start to get an idea what life is like here, and of course meet the veterans (us). current volunteers (we) look at it as a chance to get drunk and eat great food. the one where we are in a line is called the slap dance, we basically just jump around and hit ourselves, and each other. the other is the war dance of the national rugby team (Manu Samoa) that they do before every match. i think after that night we owe a few apologies to Samoa. but it was fun!

More Fire Dancing

Here are some pics to go along with the video on Laura's blog. It's f-in awesome.

Fire Dancing

everybody! click on "Laura's Blog" (link to the right under "other blogs") and watch some video footage of the samoan siva afi. words cant describe how cool it is. definately something you have to see in person at least once in your life.

random pics

shipwrecked. two of them men decided against their better judgement to go out the other night in head high waves. they didnt make it out. this boat had the back cover ripped off and the outrigger badly damaged. as always though, the men were ok.

samoan head massage "fofo." the headache reliever of choice. 60% of the time, it works everytime.

one of the proudest days of my life. seriously. 16 coconuts, carried barefoot down a slippery, rocky hillside about a half-mile long. i was later told that that was a girls load. the young men in the family do this everyday, sometimes twice a day. ive seen guys carrying 35-40 coconuts before.

tearing apart a coconut with his bear hands! u can either shuck them open with a stick or mash them on the rocks until the husk loosens up, like this guy did.

a welcome sign into the village for special occaisons. sooner or later it is taken back down by the villagers or a nice storm. whichever comes first. there was no welcome sign for when i came.

this is the preschool graduation last year. kids in white are moving on to the primary school. notice the candy necklaces, a big thing for special occaisons.

samoan guy grating coconuts. "valu popo" this is a task done by either gender of most any age. the flakes will then be squeezed into coconut cream or fed, as is, the the chickens.

comments

by all means, send me comments on here. i love to hear from people. one thing though... if u are from back home let me know who u are in the comment. i dont really have any way of figuring it out, and the username doesnt always give it away. and if u want me to reply, its probably best to shoot me an email. but keep em coming. thanks...

the committee

this is my peace corps committee and the carpenter for the tank project, and a few other people helping to build this particular tank. these are some Neiafu "matai" (samoan chiefs) that i work with on a regular basis to do projects in their village. those tarps go up when it starts raining, which we had to deal a lot with in the past two weeks, but we still managed to crank out 15 tanks in 18 working days. (thats a good pace)