Thanksgiving's faitala

in the pics...
matthewINA: white Sunday is a day for kids. They perform their songs and dances, then get food and ice cream, call it day.
whitesunLe: Le is a little girl in my Samoan family. At first she was very shy of me. Now she likes to climb on me.
Whitesunsticktongue: my samoan father doesn’t very often …lost the words. But the camera caught a fun face.


11/27
I’m going to apia tomorrow for the peace corps Thanksgiving party. I hope I don’t get too homesick. I don’t think so…because it’s so hot my body doesn’t really know that it should be cold (and snowy..) singing Christmas songs doesn’t work either.

Samoans …if they like something, and you’re younger, they just take it. I guess I don’t have much privacy anymore. The little girl comes in my room regularly. I’m sharing my bike, peanut butter, and flashlights, among other things. I was reading the social studies book from our school. It said along the lines of …development is improving peoples standard of living. Hmmmmm…I wonder if all the things I share improve the standard of living…that’s not really the main reason I’m here—it should be to teach computers. I won’t see any of the results from that…sometimes that’s hard.


11/24
Latest issue of Faitala (the Peace corps volunteer newsletter in Samoa)—Extreme bussing. See new Zealand face first! Collect some of NZ’s fine insect life…IN YOUR FACE. Improve bus aerodynamics and fuel efficiency… WITH YOUR FACE. Get amazing second-degree sun burns…ALL OVER YOUR FACE. (fine print: sun burns are free. You may take them wherever you wish.) I wonder if you get paid for saving fuel.?.


11/18
I read another article in National Geographic, march 1993, Easter Island Unveiled
It was really interesting. I want to go visit.
“shrewd exploitation of limited resources”
What I felt listening to Teao wasn’t so much the isolation of EI but the richness of local knowledge and culture that isolation had produced.
(I feel that is how Samoa is, but the outside world presses in more and more)
The start of regular air service in 1967 created a tourist industry, and the old cashless society of families sharing the work of farming and fishing began to break apart, replaced by the colder logic of commerce.
“the old family union is gone.” In the old system, large extended f amilies lived close together in compounds…
(that’s how it still is in Samoa in many places on the island)
The sense of place was ingrained in her in a way almost unfathomable to an American.
(as I look at a photograph in the magazine, with it’s pink sky sunset, clouds hung randomly, it almost looks like a samoan sunset.)