Oh, the busses in Samoa. This one's nicer cause it's charter, but it still captures the essence.
Here's a list of some phrases seen on the front of these busses:
"Loose Kids"
"Legalize it"
"Sa Piling Mo" (the title of a popular show from the Phillipines)
"Island boys"
"Ill-da-noiz"
"I'll be back"
... and I'm at a loss for others. But they're good, ok?
And my favorite has been the bus with a huge blown up pic of Tupac in the front, and on each side is a smaller pic of Jesus.
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.
One of the most difficult adjustments I've had to make here has been the handling of dogs here. There's very few registered vets in Samoa, much less clinics, so dogs aren't spayed or neutered. Where's Bob Barker when you need him? They're a lot more aggressive and are notorious for attacking people. At the same time, the people are brutal towards the dogs. It's a vicious cycle. One of the first things I was told when I got here was that if I saw a dog approaching me, I should throw a rock at it as hard as I could, "it's even better if you kill the thing!". It has been rumored that some villages eat dogs. You'd better believe that shook my wannabe-vegan-bones.
H'okay. So as most of you know, my dogs mean the world to me. They are my best friends. When I'm home I spend almost all of my time with them, and when I'm away I spend all my time talking about them. So this has been a real conflict for me.
This picture was taken at my homestay in Lotofaga. One of the strays had a litter of puppies outside our house. When I would go and play with them, my family thought I was CRAZY. Initially, I kept a demeanor that said I was a happy always-friendly, never-angry palagi. But the first time I saw one of the little boys pin the puppy's tail to the ground and then kick her, all hell broke loose. I went off on him in English, and then Samoan. And if that didn't work, I used gestures to indicate exactly what I would do to him the next time I caught him hurting any of the puppies.
Sorry for the blunt and un-creative heading. I thought it would be courteous to people like my mother. I've been here for a while now, and I've seen many pigs killed, and I suppose that now is the time that I've been de-sensitized enough to not only take a picture of this, but to post it on the internet.
A lot of things have changed for me since I've been here.
From living here, I think my biggest shift in beliefs has been in my own conception of death and how much control I really have over my own life and the world around me. In Samoa, it doesn't seem like people avoid or fear death like we do in the States. When someone dies, the family lay touching that person... even sleeping with them. And then they bury their family members in their front yard with these HUGE and elaborate tombs. And years later the family members lay on them while they're gossiping about the neighbors. Or they lay on them and think about their deceased family member. Either way, it seems like the deceased are always remembered in daily activities.
At this point, this post looks like a huge digression. But in reality, it's these thoughts that help me make sense of the food chain and my own place in this great big world.
In the words of William Shatner,
"Life life! Live life like you're gonna die!! ... Cause you're gonna..."
