Woop woop! We have a winner!!

I just received CDs from two people who decided to take me up on "the offer you cannot refuse", and they've made my week. Lauren and Lisa take the grand prize!! You guys have no idea how happy I was to receive those... and how jealous I made all the other SIT kids in my group (BOOOHAHAHA)

Favorite Tracks...
From Lisa's: "Herbs, Good Hygiene, and Socks" -Lovage
From Lauren's: "Quit Playing Games" - Backstreet Boys (And no. I'm not afraid to admit it!)

Thank you guys again! And anyone else who hasn't done so yet, get on it!

Let's say, if I can get 10 CDs, I will post pictures of my armpits when they're in more of a "Zoolander"phase than "Don King".

(I also hope that by this point my professors/former employers/important people either have a good sense of humor, or have stopped reading my increasingly vulgar blog altogether)

Rat-tails and Mullets

P4190107, originally uploaded by mandy.mantzel.

My new favorite activity is to make Meredith go stand near someone with a killer mullet/rat-tail. This way, it looks like I'm posing her for her own photo so I don't look like a snob from the states who thinks its funny to take pictures of rat-tails and mullets (even though that's exactly what I am).

I have enough photos I could almost make a slide-show.

Reflections from the girls ocean

Before I came to Samoa, I came upon a former Independent Study Project that inspired my studies here. The girl wrote a series of pieces that were meant to be performed orally and narrated through the eyes of a Samoan girl. This one was my favorite. I think she articulates exactly how I feel about Samoa and my interests here.

THE OCEAN by Shannon Sonenstein

In school we learned that most of the earth’s surface is made up of water. It’s funny to think of it that way because all Mr. Smith, my teacher, the pisikoa (peace corps), ever talks about, focuses on, is the land. I’ve heard the human body is like that too.

Even though I can’t see it, can’t imagine it, I’m mostly water.
Fluid.
Flowing.
Liquid and changing rather than confined to a solid.
Mold.
Role.
Form. As I’ve been trained to think.

Do you know what else I learned today? There are more women on earth than men. I told that to my sister and she laughed at me. She asked, “If there are more women, then why do we only learn about men — what they do? what they think?” And I tried to tell her that women must be like the ocean.

Deep.

Unexplored.

Fluid.

And it would make sense then that the body’s mostly water because that’s where we come from. When I think of my sisters, I think of water. Of nighttime. After supper when we gather under the pipe in the yard and bathe together. All of us sleek and shiny with water. Lavalavas clinging, scrubbing our underpants together. Sharing the water and blowing soap bubbles. Helping each other wash our long, long hair. Surrounded always by water.

That’s how I think of Samoa too. Of being nourished, washed, wiped clean by the ocean. Kissed on all sides by her waves. Protected from the rest of the world. Safe in the ocean’s womb. That’s how I feel after school when all of us girls run to the beach to cool down in our sami, our sea.
Safe.
Protected.
Rocked.
Calmed.
And surrounded . . . by my sisters.

Indigenous Fijian Music: Video!

Here's a video of some contemporary indigenous Fijian music. Those are flip-flops they're using to play the panpipes.

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.