This was my first trip to Samoa and I was determined to make the most of it. I was rapidly realising that even though I lived in the Pacific, visiting the many hundreds of islands in it within the next year was going to be tricky, so every opportunity had to be grabbed by the horns (so to speak). Samoa for me conjured up images of fierce warriors, tribal tattoos and, more recently, a pretty decent rugby team in the World Cup. I had this image of the ultimate Pacific experience, a quite undefined and vague concept and yet I was [View Full Entry]

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With your skulls & bling, You make everything…groovy! Meet our new (1993) “Suzuki Sidekick” - a belittling model name for a car, I know - but this badass is no shrinking violet. We now cruise the streets of Apia with ferocious looking skulls lining both doors, “Wild Thang” plastered down the sides, and the piece de resistance, a diamante-studded dollar sign on the front grille! It may have a few mechanical woes which had us stranded in the middle of the island on Day 2 of ownership, and be lacking internal door handles so that we have to wind down th [View Full Entry]

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I think it is going to rain again. The rainy season seems to have started as soon as September finished. Last Sunday as I started walking home after to'ona'i (the reason I don't miss Thanksgiving: every Sunday is a Thanksgiving in Samoa; I am going to get so fat), the sky ripped its belly open and I was immediately soaked. I decided to walk the rest of the way home. On my way, I saw a sign for Samoan Prayer House. I was intrigued. I followed the signs up a hill, past a church youth practice, some faleoloa, and lots of [View Full Entry]

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On Tuesday I decided to go buy a mango. They are incredible and they are just coming into season. So I went to the market. Samoa is riddled with tiny stores (faleoloa) that sell snacks like Twisties (comparable to cheese puffs) or loaves of fresh white bread or sugar, tea, matches, tuna, crackers, oil, onions, ice cakes, and any number of things, differing greatly from store to store, of course, but very few if any will have fresh fruit or vegetables. So instead of going to one of the 4 faleoloa in the 10-minute walk between my house and my school, [View Full Entry]

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As I walk to school in the morning, I pass a house whose gardener my roommate and I affectionately call "the bean man." This tiny, wiry old man gives us long beans (pi u'umi) or tomatoes or cucumbers because he says "there's no one to look after you." He talks to his plants, and he yells at them if they aren't giving flowers or fruit. I asked him about it one day and he said, "oh, that's how you get them to do what you want. I'm always talking to my flowers." He used to work on a cattle farm and [View Full Entry]

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I came to Samoa in October 2006 to work as a music teacher and Peace Corps volunteer. They gave me a Samoan name, Moli. It means orange. Samoa is an amazing country, without hunger or homeless, that takes great pride in its culture. In my classes, I've had the opportunity to ask my students what they think the most important thing about being Samoan is, and I've had answers that range from God to family to having fun, but most people say it's the culture. I'm still learning what that means. It's not simply the ceremonies or the legends or being [View Full Entry]

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Julia here - thought I'd give you the rundown on my work. The office is a bit ramshackle; the roof leaks, the floor is wonky and it hasn’t been renovated since it was built a good forty years ago at least, but I have plenty of daylight streaming in and behind me through the window I can see away to the mountains. (Although I'll be playing musical desks a bit for the next couple of months). The work environment is interesting - it’s an odd cross between Pacific style (nobody ever does anything quickly or when you ask them to and [View Full Entry]

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So far so good with work for both me and Julia, but we might as well write about that later when we know a bit more about what we’re actually doing here, so for now, I’ll tell you about home, sweet home. We’ve moved into an old 2-storey German colonial house, which has been recently extended and redone to make four 2bd units. We’ve got one of the top ones that overlooks a lush overgrown veggie garden/forest which is exploding with ripe pumpkins, pawpaw, coconuts and even a Hawaiian guava tree. I went for a fresh coconut mission with crazy little [View Full Entry]

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After doing our best headless chicken impersonations and trying to madly catch up with everyone and get organised over the last couple of weeks, Ed and I finally scraped through check-in without having to pay for our ridiculously overweight bags, and collapsed in a heap on the plane. Five hours later we stumbled off at the other end, bleary-eyed at 1am the morning before we had actually left (although it’s not that far away, you cross the dateline to get to Samoa). We were greeted by a smiling Karin, the in-country manager of our volunteer programme, and her Samoan husband Bill, [View Full Entry]

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well i flew out of Auckland tea time on a thursday and landed thursday morning ! strange thing this date line business. spent a day around Apia then headed out to Return to Paradise beach,(named after a Cary Grant film) it was beautiful and i got chatting to two Kiwi Samoans who gave me beer, food and Sprite. top blokes stayed for a couple of nights above Apia in Cloud 9 eco lodge. absolutely stunning views and i had the place all to myself ! nice bottle of Pinot noir with steak then got the ferry over to Savai'i. very [View Full Entry]

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