American Samoa (in a nutshell)

My study-abroad program is actually considered to be a "Pacific Islands Studies" rather than just Samoa, so I have been island hopping a bit to American Samoa and to Fiji.

In American Samoa, the first thing I noticed was how many obese people there are. There's McDonalds, KFC, Pizza Hut and all the things we now see as mistakes in the States. My host family served me spam, fried egg, and mayonaise sandwiches. They have an abundance of resources as far as crops go and the Starkist tuna cannery is in Pago Pago, but they don't really tend to their crops like they do in (Western/Independent) Samoa and the fish that they catch are canned and shipped to America. I never had fresh tuna... only canned! Isn't sat vierd?

I also felt as though perhaps the people (specifically the girls) weren't as confident there. My host in American Samoa kept telling me she was trying not to eat so that she could be thinner. In (Ind.) Samoa, the big girls are like "yeah I'm fat! look at all this food I can afford to eat!"

The pollution was also a bit disheartening. In Samoa, they don't really have a very effective waste management system. When I'd help out around the house and pick up the rubbish, they'd have me dump it off the cliff into the ocean (or to roll down to their neighbor's yard). But I was picking up leaves, peels, and other decomposable things (they have plastic bags that are made of starch and decompose after 60 days). Vailima is a Samoan beer, and the only beer anyone drinks here, so the bottles are just rinsed and re-used. On the other hand, American Samoa is a US territory, and therefore has all kinds of US things imported. Packaged things with individual wrappers. Wrappers that don't decompose so readily. What a circus.

I was talking with some of the girls who were poli-sci majors at American Samoa Community College about women in politics (or lack thereof, in American Samoa's case), and in the course of our conversation, I thought it was interesting when one said she thought that most women aren't running for political office because they aren't taught that women can do the job, but that if Hillary were to win the elections in America, then perhaps that would set an example for women in American Samoa.

American Samoa also felt much less communal. On my first day of classes there, I was THREE HOURS LATE because no busses would stop. Apparently, this was because they were all full, but I was so confused because there is no such thing as a "full bus" in (independent) Samoa. Later that day, I learned (through an awkward trial and error) that "stacking" (sitting on another's lap) was inappropriate. Bah Humbug.

Cat-calling at cute boys

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P4061374, originally uploaded by mandy.mantzel.

Last weekend when I visited American Samoa, the girls I stayed with taught me how to cat-call. I was in culture shock as we were driving around in a rented pickup on a Sunday. First, because they had their own personal car. Second, because we were outside of their palagi-style air-conditioned house on a SUNDAY. But for girls to be cat-calling at boys (and not the opposite) did seem very Samoan to me.

Just when I thought I was comfortable speaking Samoan, I come to this place and find out that the youth have a language all their own. It's like a mix of English and Samoan... and yet I didn't understand it at all. "Dob-Dob Che-maaa!" is what you yell at a cute boy. Their favorite game was to make me yell it at anything with XY chromosomes within a mile radius.

They took me to the McDonalds there and when we were finished I wanted to say "I have a food baby, and my baby daddy is Ronald McDonald" in Samoan (Ua ko ma le mea'ai, ma le tama o lo'u pepe o Ronald McDonald)

I was worried it wouldn't translate, but whatever I said sure was funny.