Puppies!

Picture 328, originally uploaded by mandy.mantzel.

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.

A pig getting stuffed: explicit content

P3301220, originally uploaded by mandy.mantzel.

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..."

An offer you cannot refuse

I am having SERIOUS music withdrawals. The computers here won't play mp3s, so I will travel to American Samoa this Thursday where I'll probably purchase a CD player. Right now I have a single CD (from Ron Artis's family band in Hawaii) that can hold me for a little while, but I'd really like some fresh tunes.

So here's my plea to you (yes, you! the person who visits my blog but probably never comments!):
If you send me a mixed CD, I will mail you a souvenir (or hand it to you, depending on our geographic distance) as soon as I return.

Mandy Mantzel c/o S.I.T.
P.O. Box 9268
Apia, Samoa (Western Samoa)
South Pacific

I probably won't be able to receive any packages, but if you slip the CD into an envelope and mail that way, I'll get it sooner.

I would be thrilled to hear any music that you like, or things that you've been listening to.

But if you're at an absolute loss for things to put on the CD and/or you have a free music downloading service, here's some songs that I happen to like:

Puh-puh-puhleaze?

String Band at Safua: A Video!

Okay. This took me all evening to upload, so that should indicate a) how cool this is to me, or b)how much I really don't want to be writing a paper in Samoan.

This is one of my favorite songs that they played, and if you will look closely, the percussion is a set of spoons, and better yet, the bass is nothing more than a string tied to a bucket and a stick. Watch the bassist move the stick back and forth to tune the string and make different pitches. Amazing. And you better believe we danced all night. And you better believe that the bass player is an excellent prospect for my Samoan husband. His little brother told me I look like a chubby version of Fergie. We're meant to be.

The Accident

P3150860, originally uploaded by mandy.mantzel.

This trip has helped me realize how living in America in an "advanced civilization" has dumbed down my own common sense. Everywhere we go, we've got signs to warn us of things that we should be able to see on our own. "Caution! Hot Coffee" or "Floor slippery when wet". Well DUH. But I feel like some of these signs I've come to rely on. Sketchy deteriorating buildings are blocked off so people won't wander into them. If it's not blocked off and there's not a sign, then I assume it's fair game.

So on this day, we went to go swim with some turtles. We saw a fale (reminder: it's like a hut over water) that was empty to put our things, so we crossed a teetering log to enter it. I remember someone saying "guys, is this thing safe?" to which another responded "of course, it's no different from any other fale we've been in". And the next thing I hear is "oh... *dirty word*" and I felt the fale shift a bit, and initially I tried to hold still, but when I felt that it was coming down either way, and as I realized that if it collapsed on top of me I'd be trapped underwater (it was just shallow enough for the roof to sink just below the surface) so I tried to jump onto the dock just as it crashed.

I still think it was by sheer luck that we all made it out okay. The way that the fale crashed, it angled just so that a corner of the roof caught on a post of the dock. Had it not caught, I would have been split in half somewhere around my midsection. Half of my body was on the dock, the other half still on the floor of the fale. There was a split second where I just blanked out, and talking to my friends in the accident, they all had a few seconds they couldn't remember. The next thing I heard was "is everyone out? Is everyone okay?" from meredith, who had a huge gash on her head just behind her ear. We got everyone out, and then bags. Everyone had a nasty gash of some sort on their back, head, neck, etc. I only ended up with one on my arm and on my hand (although wounds in the pacific are nasty... and my hand is officially infected). But thinking about what COULD have happened if the fale leaned a hair in any other direction astounds me. We really were lucky. Cameras, ipods, watches, and other important things drowned, but we walked from it. Which still baffles my brain.

So, back to my point. This was one of those moments where my "adventurousness" and my naivety had a face-off. Samoans probably think we're really dumb Americans without any common sense, because looking back, we really had no business climbing into that fale. Now when I go somewhere, like climbing mountains or jumping from waterfalls, I don't just assume that it's safe because there's no sign to stop me.