Day 3: Samoa Is a Breeze and a Kiss

American Samoa, May 27, 2009

Samoa, or SAH-mwa, as pronounced by the people who live here, sounds like a gentle ocean zephyr rustling the palms, followed by the softest kiss to a baby’s fragrant head. It is a sweet sound, a gentle sound that evokes emotions of warmth, beauty, and family. So much feeling in such a short word!

Samoa, or seh-MO-ah, as pronounced by Americans, is also fully present here, living happily beside SAH-mwa. Samoa is lots of chubby babies, strapping children, and great, big men and women, happy and strong. It is volcanic mountains, hulking, jagged, and verdent, reaching up into the sky. It is endless, unfathomable expanses of blue water, forever bonded to her blue sky, climbing billows to heaven. Big and small. Now and forever. Banal and holy.

But I wax poetic. I return to the narrative.

Last evening I was reading a travel book. I laughed when I came across this passage: “skinny Samoans are as rare as hawkbill turtles.” I googled hawkbill turtles: they are critically endanged. This should be a strong warning to Samoan to avoid dieting!

Samoa a small island—it only takes four hours to drive all the way around it (even going the 25 mile an hour speed limit).

Big Samoa is exemplified by one of my students, a great man with shaved head and strong, confident voice, wearing a lava-lava (wrap-around), taking control of the room as if it had been his all along. He and our other two men in the class demonstrated "trust." I will ask the guys this afternoon if I can used their photos on the blog. That way, you can see big Samoan guys and lavalavas, all at the same time.

There is also visible and invisible Samoa. Both visible and invisable Samoa are big, in my view, but they are two different kinds of big. It's the women who construct invisible Samoa. Let me explain.

I never met my 19 students--16 women and three men--until Monday. I have been conducting my class through distance technology. That means we email, we Skype (sort of like video telephoning), I provide pre-recorded presentations and structured activities to make sense of the readings. Maria, my host, coordinated it all on this end. She is a vary able teacher who provided the eyes and ears I needed to make sure students were getting the concepts.

The capstone assignment in the class is a presentation. The class was divided into seven groups, each of which was tasked with presenting an hour-long lesson on a different theory. My assumption was that groups would divide the work and share it, roughly equally. Following is a passage from the reflection paper of one the women concerning her group project:

"My group gave me their trust to develop and plan our presentation...This whole experience of planning and writing our group project got me to realize that...one must have the compassion to do something in which others depend on it."

The group handed the task to this highly capable woman who must have worked herself to the bone to single-handedly create a well-researched, coherent and highly entertaining lesson for the class. (I would not assign a group project in the future!) I was struck by the fact that the only male member of their group ended up being the moderator and leader, and that the other female members very ably did their parts. However, it was apparent all through the semester that this one woman bore the burden of success or failure of the group. She did it with a quiet competence and grace that I find difficult to understand.

This is fa'alavelave; giving and giving. I am guessing there are moments of bitter resentment with all of this giving, so one must have fa'amahalo; forgiving. Giving, forgivinng. I don't know this for sure, but I think these are women's work here in Samoa, and maybe all over the planet.

I wondered about the fa'a prefix, too. It roughly means "the way." So the Samoan way is fa'a Samoa. Giving, forgiving; the Samoan way.