10-5-09
Before the tsunami, I had a long list of things I planned to write about. I didn’t get around to most of them, or only got partway through. Some that I deemed worthy of mention before feel irrelevant in light of the event’s of the past week. But, since we were instructed not to actually teach this week and we’re going to have half days every day, and my class (which is made up of three students today) is next door in the 3rd Grade classroom watching a live-action Dragonball Z movie after my Planet Earth DVDs got outvoted, I’ll get started.
September 1, 2009
Ruta, Dog Warrior
Yesterday I was witness to one of the more astounding things that I’ve seen since I got here. Steve and I were at school working in our rooms at dusk. I heard several dogs barking outside by the basketball court, which was nothing out of the ordinary. A group of five or six dogs from the house next to the school regular patrol campus looking for handouts from students or the cafeteria workers. This time was different though. The barking soon mixed with a high-pitched, pained squeal. I got up from my desk and walked out toward the sound.
The first thing I noticed was five dogs up against a fence in the open area of campus between the school buildings. I quickly realized that the squealing was coming from one dog that was being attacked by all the others. As I jogged over, not really sure what I would do when I got there, I saw Ruta, one of our students from the house next door, running up, picking up rocks as she came. She got there before I did and immediately went to work on the attackers. Keep in mind that this is girl can’t be taller than four feet and was probably the sweetest kid in fifth grade when I was teaching them social studies.
The biggest of the dogs was the main attacker. He has a tan and white coat with shiny black eyes set into a broad, scarred face that reminds me of a tyrannosaurus. He was latched onto the squealing dog’s throat. The other dogs leapt around barking and nipping. I hit the big dog in the ribs with a fist-sized rock and it backed up for a moment, but when it went back on the attack, I was at a loss for what to do. Ruta ran in, throwing rocks at the dogs on the sides, and then charged the big dog. She hit it with a rock and started kicking its neck and head with her foot, wearing nothing but sandals. The dogs never turned on her, I suppose because they all lived around her house and knew her.
Afterwards I realized that at this point I just leaned against the fence and watched. It was clear that she, a ten year old girl, had the situation fully under control and did not need assistance from me, a grown man. I could do nothing but gawk at her fearlessly trying to save one of her dogs. Eventually the attackers backed up and the battered victim ran and hid. Ruta looked up at me and Steve, who had come outside part way into the fight, and smiled. “Sorry teacher,” she said as she trotted back to her house. Steve and I turned to each other and broke out in amazed laughter. The kids here might not be up to academic standards, but they can sure as hell fight dogs.
Thursday, October 8, 2009
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Tsunami
The earthquake hit at about 7 o’clock yesterday morning. I was in the bathroom getting ready for school. When the house started to rattle, my first thought was that Craig, the bus driver who lives in the house behind ours, was really cranking the bass this morning. As it got stronger, my thoughts shifted to an airplane flying low over the bay, which didn’t make sense. I stumbled out of the bathroom and looked at Steve, who was standing in the doorway of the house looking outside. “Well, I guess this is an earthquake,” I said. “Should we stand in a doorway or something?”
The quake never got very strong. It shook the house for about 30 seconds and knocked over a vase and few things off the top of the refrigerator. We watched some people stumble around a bit perplexed outside. Our neighbors’ dog trotted around the yard looking confused. One of our students strolled by unperturbed on his way to school. When it was over, I put on my uniform and headed for school. I didn’t get far before some of the teachers drove by and told me that there was no school because of the earthquake. I returned to the house and Steve and I started celebrating our day off. A little shake seemed an odd reason to cancel school, but we were looking forward to a day to relax. Then I had a thought. “I wonder if we should worry about a tsunami?”
A couple of minutes later our neighbor ran over and told us to grab our things and get up the mountain. I looked out at the bay. I saw the top of the reef rising to the surface and my heart started to race. We ran inside, grabbed a few things (laptop, camera, phone; in Steve’s case—electric toothbrush) and went outside. Our friend Marx was standing in the back of a truck yelling at us to shut the door and run. We dove into the back of the truck. The reef was completely exposed now. We raced along the seawall, Marx yelling at people to get out. When we got to the edge of town and began to drive up the hill, I looked back and saw the water rise to the top of the seawall and flow into our yard before the jungle obscured my view.
We stopped high up on the hill and I could only see the water flowing in and out of the mouth of the bay. People came up to where we were and I heard several reports about what was happening in the town. The town was ok, the damage was minimal. This tidal wave wasn’t that bad, but a larger one was imminent. Some people were crying and said the water level had risen to rooftop level and a number of old people and children who didn’t make it out of the town were dead. I walked down the hill to try to get a better look for myself. I came to a place where the jungle next to the road cleared for a few feet and looked down at the town.
I later learned there was a series of four waves that hit the southern side of the island. I think I watched the effects of the third and fourth waves on Vatia, which is on the north side. The bay sucked out until the entire reef was dry, and then the water rushed back in over the beaches and seawall. I was too high up to see how bad it was for the town, but it was clear that enough water cleared the seawall to do serious damage. Eventually the bay settled back down. No one seemed ready to go back down, though, so Steve and I walked over the hill to the next town to get supplies and see what the damage was there.
Things looked pretty bad in Afono. People said that six houses were gone—nothing but concrete slabs. The store was locked, but someone said that the owner was coming back. We sat down and waited. Eventually she showed up in a truck with a group of guys. They started grabbing loaves of bread, boxes of chips, and cases of spam, and throwing them into the truck. We asked one of the guys what was going on and he told us that they had about a thousand people on the hill between Afono and the next village, Aua. They were bringing up food because there was a warning that another wave might hit between one and three that afternoon. Steve and I bought a few bottles of water, a jar of peanut butter, a can of spam, and some Oreos, and climbed back up the hill towards Vatia. We joined everyone on top of the hill and sat down to wait.
As the day went on, we heard conflicting reports about the second tsunami. One person said the warning was cancelled. Another said that wasn’t true and we should wait before going into town. I managed to get a call through to talk to our WorldTeach director, and she confirmed the all clear. We waited a while longer because the townspeople didn’t want us to go back in, and then we walked down the hill.
The first thing that hit me was the smell. The whole town smelled like salt water. We walked past a car that had been washed into a river. Two houses near the entrance to town had collapsed. An open refrigerator lay on top of the seawall. A boat that had been sitting on the beach was up in someone’s yard. From the outside, our house looked fine. We opened the door fearing the worst, and fortunately didn’t get it. It was still daunting—there was sand and water all over the floor, and a dead fish was in the living room. The kitchen had a couple of inches of standing water in it, and my bedroom had taken on water. All in all, not too bad—nothing destroyed, just some cleaning up to do. I had some lunch and a Heineken and got ready to see how the school made out.
We went out the front door and noticed that the telephone pole that used to serve as a bench in our yard was gone. We walked down toward the school and over a shattered bridge. There weren’t any crushed houses on the west side of town, but the wave had destroyed the interiors of some and pulled furniture out through doors. Fortunately, the school was in great shape. There is a high sea wall in front of it that kept it dry. We walked around town for a while and talked to several students. A few had houses that were completely destroyed. Their demeanor was remarkable as they told me this—no defeated hands on heads or crestfallen looks. They were matter-of-fact, or even kind of laughed about it.
We cleaned up our house for a while and decided to catch a ride into town with our landlord. We heard that other volunteers in Tafuna still had running water and electricity. I also wanted to see how it looked on the south side of the island. At this point I had heard that Pago Pago was a mess. The death toll had gone up from ten to 22 as the day went on. I sat in the back of the truck and looked at the damage as we drove in. There were overturned cars and destroyed houses everywhere. We passed collapsed buildings and my landlord’s daughter told me how many people died in each. There were boats fifty feet inland. It was a surreal experience—I had never been that close to death, or seen such destruction firsthand.
The damage in the harbor was surprisingly focused. Only downtown Pago Pago was really hit hard, but it was hit harder than anywhere else on the island. I talked to other volunteers and found out that Leone, on the west side of the island, had suffered a great deal of damage. The volunteers on the east side of the island didn’t have power or water, and might not for weeks.
I’m glad that no one in Vatia was hurt, but we still have our fair share of rebuilding to do. I appreciate everyone’s concern, and will try to keep you updated on the recovery effort. I heard Obama declared this a disaster and FEMA is on its way. From what I saw in Pago, we’re going to need it.
The quake never got very strong. It shook the house for about 30 seconds and knocked over a vase and few things off the top of the refrigerator. We watched some people stumble around a bit perplexed outside. Our neighbors’ dog trotted around the yard looking confused. One of our students strolled by unperturbed on his way to school. When it was over, I put on my uniform and headed for school. I didn’t get far before some of the teachers drove by and told me that there was no school because of the earthquake. I returned to the house and Steve and I started celebrating our day off. A little shake seemed an odd reason to cancel school, but we were looking forward to a day to relax. Then I had a thought. “I wonder if we should worry about a tsunami?”
A couple of minutes later our neighbor ran over and told us to grab our things and get up the mountain. I looked out at the bay. I saw the top of the reef rising to the surface and my heart started to race. We ran inside, grabbed a few things (laptop, camera, phone; in Steve’s case—electric toothbrush) and went outside. Our friend Marx was standing in the back of a truck yelling at us to shut the door and run. We dove into the back of the truck. The reef was completely exposed now. We raced along the seawall, Marx yelling at people to get out. When we got to the edge of town and began to drive up the hill, I looked back and saw the water rise to the top of the seawall and flow into our yard before the jungle obscured my view.
We stopped high up on the hill and I could only see the water flowing in and out of the mouth of the bay. People came up to where we were and I heard several reports about what was happening in the town. The town was ok, the damage was minimal. This tidal wave wasn’t that bad, but a larger one was imminent. Some people were crying and said the water level had risen to rooftop level and a number of old people and children who didn’t make it out of the town were dead. I walked down the hill to try to get a better look for myself. I came to a place where the jungle next to the road cleared for a few feet and looked down at the town.
I later learned there was a series of four waves that hit the southern side of the island. I think I watched the effects of the third and fourth waves on Vatia, which is on the north side. The bay sucked out until the entire reef was dry, and then the water rushed back in over the beaches and seawall. I was too high up to see how bad it was for the town, but it was clear that enough water cleared the seawall to do serious damage. Eventually the bay settled back down. No one seemed ready to go back down, though, so Steve and I walked over the hill to the next town to get supplies and see what the damage was there.
Things looked pretty bad in Afono. People said that six houses were gone—nothing but concrete slabs. The store was locked, but someone said that the owner was coming back. We sat down and waited. Eventually she showed up in a truck with a group of guys. They started grabbing loaves of bread, boxes of chips, and cases of spam, and throwing them into the truck. We asked one of the guys what was going on and he told us that they had about a thousand people on the hill between Afono and the next village, Aua. They were bringing up food because there was a warning that another wave might hit between one and three that afternoon. Steve and I bought a few bottles of water, a jar of peanut butter, a can of spam, and some Oreos, and climbed back up the hill towards Vatia. We joined everyone on top of the hill and sat down to wait.
As the day went on, we heard conflicting reports about the second tsunami. One person said the warning was cancelled. Another said that wasn’t true and we should wait before going into town. I managed to get a call through to talk to our WorldTeach director, and she confirmed the all clear. We waited a while longer because the townspeople didn’t want us to go back in, and then we walked down the hill.
The first thing that hit me was the smell. The whole town smelled like salt water. We walked past a car that had been washed into a river. Two houses near the entrance to town had collapsed. An open refrigerator lay on top of the seawall. A boat that had been sitting on the beach was up in someone’s yard. From the outside, our house looked fine. We opened the door fearing the worst, and fortunately didn’t get it. It was still daunting—there was sand and water all over the floor, and a dead fish was in the living room. The kitchen had a couple of inches of standing water in it, and my bedroom had taken on water. All in all, not too bad—nothing destroyed, just some cleaning up to do. I had some lunch and a Heineken and got ready to see how the school made out.
We went out the front door and noticed that the telephone pole that used to serve as a bench in our yard was gone. We walked down toward the school and over a shattered bridge. There weren’t any crushed houses on the west side of town, but the wave had destroyed the interiors of some and pulled furniture out through doors. Fortunately, the school was in great shape. There is a high sea wall in front of it that kept it dry. We walked around town for a while and talked to several students. A few had houses that were completely destroyed. Their demeanor was remarkable as they told me this—no defeated hands on heads or crestfallen looks. They were matter-of-fact, or even kind of laughed about it.
We cleaned up our house for a while and decided to catch a ride into town with our landlord. We heard that other volunteers in Tafuna still had running water and electricity. I also wanted to see how it looked on the south side of the island. At this point I had heard that Pago Pago was a mess. The death toll had gone up from ten to 22 as the day went on. I sat in the back of the truck and looked at the damage as we drove in. There were overturned cars and destroyed houses everywhere. We passed collapsed buildings and my landlord’s daughter told me how many people died in each. There were boats fifty feet inland. It was a surreal experience—I had never been that close to death, or seen such destruction firsthand.
The damage in the harbor was surprisingly focused. Only downtown Pago Pago was really hit hard, but it was hit harder than anywhere else on the island. I talked to other volunteers and found out that Leone, on the west side of the island, had suffered a great deal of damage. The volunteers on the east side of the island didn’t have power or water, and might not for weeks.
I’m glad that no one in Vatia was hurt, but we still have our fair share of rebuilding to do. I appreciate everyone’s concern, and will try to keep you updated on the recovery effort. I heard Obama declared this a disaster and FEMA is on its way. From what I saw in Pago, we’re going to need it.
Sunday, August 30, 2009
A Ride Home
8/20
Getting to Vatia from Samoana
Lying in the bed of a truck, waiting for “5-10 minutes,” which has definitely been an at least an hour at this point. What the hell. Island time sucks. The uptight, productivity-obsessed American culture definitely gets to me, but I still appreciate a little timeliness. Sitting next to reeking football gear, with an unsupervised, bawling child in the cab. Could’ve gone to the damn library and used internet with a decent connection speed and had her call me when I’m done.
I came into town on the bus earlier today for a teachers’ workshop at Samoana High School, and I agreed to take a ride home from one of the other teachers. But from now on, I’m going to do everything possible to avoid getting rides from people. It doesn’t mean anything but inevitable delays. At least with a bus you know what you’re going to get—a bumpy ride, some blasting music, the smell of the canneries, and a $2 fare. None of this being taken on errands, waiting for people in meetings. I should have been home an hour ago, knocking out lesson plans and quizzes for tomorrow so I could have a little time to unwind with the house to myself, but no.
And then her kids climb into the back of the truck with me, and things aren’t so bad. There’s something serene, something that puts my frayed nerves at ease, about having this kid here, sharing my boredom, wanting to sit next to me on the tailgate just because I’m something new and different. There’s also something awesome about seeing a two year old who can’t speak take a swig of cold Mountain Dew and exhale with a big “ahhh!” After trying to make small talk with the kids for a while, the meeting finally ended and we got on the road. Seeing American Samoa from the back of a pickup truck is a great thing, and began to make up for the long delays in our departure. But then, of course, we stop for another half hour to rent a movie.
In the end, when I got home at seven, from my workshop that ended at four, I wasn’t at all upset. The cool air on the ride home, seeing the harbor and the mountains in the failing light, sitting in the back of the pickup with those kids—it made none of the delays matter. And I realized that if I lived here permanently, the lack of punctuality would probably drive me crazy eventually, but for the time that I’m here I think I can learn to live with it if it means forcing me to take time to sit back and stop worrying so much about time.
Getting to Vatia from Samoana
Lying in the bed of a truck, waiting for “5-10 minutes,” which has definitely been an at least an hour at this point. What the hell. Island time sucks. The uptight, productivity-obsessed American culture definitely gets to me, but I still appreciate a little timeliness. Sitting next to reeking football gear, with an unsupervised, bawling child in the cab. Could’ve gone to the damn library and used internet with a decent connection speed and had her call me when I’m done.
I came into town on the bus earlier today for a teachers’ workshop at Samoana High School, and I agreed to take a ride home from one of the other teachers. But from now on, I’m going to do everything possible to avoid getting rides from people. It doesn’t mean anything but inevitable delays. At least with a bus you know what you’re going to get—a bumpy ride, some blasting music, the smell of the canneries, and a $2 fare. None of this being taken on errands, waiting for people in meetings. I should have been home an hour ago, knocking out lesson plans and quizzes for tomorrow so I could have a little time to unwind with the house to myself, but no.
And then her kids climb into the back of the truck with me, and things aren’t so bad. There’s something serene, something that puts my frayed nerves at ease, about having this kid here, sharing my boredom, wanting to sit next to me on the tailgate just because I’m something new and different. There’s also something awesome about seeing a two year old who can’t speak take a swig of cold Mountain Dew and exhale with a big “ahhh!” After trying to make small talk with the kids for a while, the meeting finally ended and we got on the road. Seeing American Samoa from the back of a pickup truck is a great thing, and began to make up for the long delays in our departure. But then, of course, we stop for another half hour to rent a movie.
In the end, when I got home at seven, from my workshop that ended at four, I wasn’t at all upset. The cool air on the ride home, seeing the harbor and the mountains in the failing light, sitting in the back of the pickup with those kids—it made none of the delays matter. And I realized that if I lived here permanently, the lack of punctuality would probably drive me crazy eventually, but for the time that I’m here I think I can learn to live with it if it means forcing me to take time to sit back and stop worrying so much about time.
Early Teaching Struggles
The following two entries were written as rants in my journal that I then typed up to share online. I haven’t yet had a chance to write another long post about all the more fun stuff I’ve done, but I will soon.
8/18/09
Observations after Seven Days of Teaching
Tuesday afternoon, after seven days of teaching. Things had gotten better, but today might’ve been the worst. Definitely the worst since the first two days, when I felt more overwhelmed than I have in years. Last week I established that the kids didn’t know anything and decided to teach based on that, but I don’t think I really comprehended what that meant, or how hard it would be, until today. I tried to teach a music lesson about beats, where we clapped along to songs and I led us in Old MacDonald, setting the pace with the clapping. It went fine (except for some of the kids getting a little too enthusiastic with their clapping or singing and disturbing the other classes) until I tried to explain, in a basic way, how you count beats. The concept of beats per minute was just impossible. I tried to begin with 60 beats per minute, or the speed of the second hand on the clock. When I was asked how many seconds there are in a minute, I was met with “1,” “2,” and closest, “4.” When I tried to take a different approach, and talk about it in terms of rate, I again met with failure. They didn’t know what miles per were, so I didn’t have any kind of jumping off point.
In health class, my attempts to teach the Food Guide Pyramid crashed and burned when they didn’t know what “serve” meant, let alone understand the concept of a serving. Steve’s discussion on the scientific method fell apart when he tried to talk about the results of their paper airplane experiment and found they didn’t know how many inches were in a foot. When asked what they thought a ruler was for, they responded “For drawing straight lines!”
At this point, we’re left wondering—what the hell have they been doing for six plus years of school? They can write a complete sentence, sometimes. They can read, but all that means is that they can say the words out loud—there’s no level of comprehension. They can memorize definitions, but they forget them a week later and can’t come close to actually utilizing the vocabulary words. From what I’ve seen so far, it seems all they’ve done so far in school is copy things out of textbooks and mindlessly memorize. They haven’t been trained to think at all. Changing that will probably be my biggest challenge this year.
The upside of being here—this entry was written in my journal after a tough day of school, sitting against a rock out at the point, watching the sun go down on the mouth of the bay and taking in the waves hitting the rocks and rolling them back towards the sea with a sound like tearing earth.
8/18/09
Observations after Seven Days of Teaching
Tuesday afternoon, after seven days of teaching. Things had gotten better, but today might’ve been the worst. Definitely the worst since the first two days, when I felt more overwhelmed than I have in years. Last week I established that the kids didn’t know anything and decided to teach based on that, but I don’t think I really comprehended what that meant, or how hard it would be, until today. I tried to teach a music lesson about beats, where we clapped along to songs and I led us in Old MacDonald, setting the pace with the clapping. It went fine (except for some of the kids getting a little too enthusiastic with their clapping or singing and disturbing the other classes) until I tried to explain, in a basic way, how you count beats. The concept of beats per minute was just impossible. I tried to begin with 60 beats per minute, or the speed of the second hand on the clock. When I was asked how many seconds there are in a minute, I was met with “1,” “2,” and closest, “4.” When I tried to take a different approach, and talk about it in terms of rate, I again met with failure. They didn’t know what miles per were, so I didn’t have any kind of jumping off point.
In health class, my attempts to teach the Food Guide Pyramid crashed and burned when they didn’t know what “serve” meant, let alone understand the concept of a serving. Steve’s discussion on the scientific method fell apart when he tried to talk about the results of their paper airplane experiment and found they didn’t know how many inches were in a foot. When asked what they thought a ruler was for, they responded “For drawing straight lines!”
At this point, we’re left wondering—what the hell have they been doing for six plus years of school? They can write a complete sentence, sometimes. They can read, but all that means is that they can say the words out loud—there’s no level of comprehension. They can memorize definitions, but they forget them a week later and can’t come close to actually utilizing the vocabulary words. From what I’ve seen so far, it seems all they’ve done so far in school is copy things out of textbooks and mindlessly memorize. They haven’t been trained to think at all. Changing that will probably be my biggest challenge this year.
The upside of being here—this entry was written in my journal after a tough day of school, sitting against a rock out at the point, watching the sun go down on the mouth of the bay and taking in the waves hitting the rocks and rolling them back towards the sea with a sound like tearing earth.
Friday, August 7, 2009
Eighteen Days in American Samoa
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
Eighteen Days in American Samoa
Hey everyone, I think it’s about time to write an update about the beginning of my Samoan adventure in case anyone is curious. I know it’s long—I’d recommend taking it at a few sittings. I arrived in American Samoa two and a half weeks ago on the night of Sunday, July 19, after fourteen hours of traveling. Tafuna International Airport is a little one runway airport, and we deplaned down a set of steps out on the tarmac. The first impression was pretty stunning—a blast of warm (not as hot as Texas), sticky (but way more humid) air, and a clear view of the mountains, lit up by the moon. After waiting half an hour for our luggage to come around the carousel, we went out through customs and were greeted by a welcoming party of Department of Education staff dishing out shell necklaces and young students holding up a “Welcome World Teachers” banner. Then it was on to Nuu’uli Polytech High School, where we had some fresh-baked cookies, dispersed into classrooms (girls’ rooms, boys’ rooms, and one for married couples), and crashed on the floor on our foam pads.
Monday morning I got up bright and early to take a freezing cold shower in the makeshift shower room, and then we were off to a little Samoan natural history museum where they hold a sort of cultural summer school for kids. We participated with groups of 7 and 13-year old in classes on traditional dancing, grass weaving, carving, and painting. I got my first lava lava (essentially their word for a sarong, but tied a little differently) in the dance class. In the afternoon, we toured the island in a school bus, but we didn’t get to drive up to my little town, Vatia, because in order to get there you have to take a side road up over the mountains that dead ends in Vatia after about 30 minutes.
The next few days were filled with six to eight hours a day of classes led by the Department of Education and PICED, an organization devoted to improving education in the Pacific islands. We learned all about curriculum—in every possible subject, whether that’s what we were slated to teach or not—some tips about lesson planning and classroom management, and a bit about Samoan culture and language. One highlight—or rather lowlight—was a woman who came to talk to us about teaching Correctional English, or English for students who don’t quite get it through normal instruction. She seemed to think that in order to tell us how to teach this program she had to actually teach us as if we were in the program, so we spent an hour and a half repeating vowels, consonants, syllables, and words on queue as she snapped her fingers at us and shouted “Eee-yah!” (she never explained what the hell that meant) and “Next word!”. Overall, the program probably prepared us to teach as much any two week program could, although some more instruction in Samoan language would have been good.
At the end of the two weeks, we started to cut loose a bit. The last Thursday, we all grabbed the bed sheets off of our mats and had a toga party in the large kitchen of the high school (not entirely sure why it had a kitchen…perhaps for cooking classes since it was a technical high school, or for cooking the students’ lunches). After waking up painfully early Friday morning to be introduced at a conference of all of the principals on the island, we went to $2 Beach for the afternoon. Fortunately PICED covered the $2 entry fee for us. I went out to a little rocky island right off the beach and attempted to scale it with another volunteer, Raj. We gave up about ten feet from the top after Raj tried to pull himself up by a little palm frond and instead just pulled the thing up by the roots. All in all, a very good time. Friday night we went to a local bowling alley/batting cages that’s also a bar at night and did some dancing with the locals. The next day everyone split up to go to their towns and take up their assignments.
Vatia is a small bayside village on the north side of the island. The first time I went out to visit it was the second Thursday we were here. I went with my roommate, Steve, and we had to wait two hours for the bus because it had apparently just left when we got to the bus depot. The bus fleet in AS does not run on timetables or anything. It is a collection of pickup trucks converted into small buses run by independent drivers. Only one bus runs to Vatia, so there are only a few trips each way throughout the day. The driver is a cool guy named Craig who gave us his phone number to check with him about bus times. He may have “the best sound system on the island” (2,000 watts running through the bus—very impressive), but his sense of time is a bit off and his predictions about arrival times are not quite accurate, to say the least.
On our first trip, a big Samoan in his late teens sat down across from us an asked if we were teachers. When we responded that we were, he asked if we were Alex and Steve. A bit taken aback, we told him that yes, we were, and asked how he knew that. He said that there had been an article in the newspaper, the Samoa News, that listed the names and assignments of all of the WorldTeach volunteers. He introduced himself as Marx, a recent graduate of Samoana High School, where he had some contact with last year’s WorldTeach volunteers. When we got to town, he showed us where our house was and introduced us to the secretary of the school. It was pretty awesome having a local guide showing us around and explaining who we were to people in Samoan. He has since taken to stopping by the house every night and we tell each other about our respective cultures.
Steve put it well when he observed that our living situation was a bit like staying in a beach house for a year. We are about 30 yards from the water in a little bungalow without air-conditioning or hot water. Everything is pretty much always wet, so our first purchase was a couple of fans to dry out clothes and keep the heat down. Once we did a fair amount of shopping (cooking utensils, pillows, a month’s worth of food), we were able to really make it home. It’s been wonderful to be able to finish up with training at our school, walk five minutes down the street back to our house, throw on our board shorts, and go out snorkeling. The bay doesn’t have the clearest water, but there’s some good coral and a few kinds of beautiful tropical fish.
A quick word about dogs on the island. They’re everywhere. Absolutely everywhere. I had one try to walk into my classroom while I was getting things together at school today. Many of them are pretty mangy and bark wildly at you as you go by them. They also bark at each other at all hours of the night, which can make sleeping difficult, especially when you have to sleep with the windows open and they bark right outside your bedroom. If they act threatening and come near you when you’re walking, the locals recommend yelling “Ahlo!” at them, and if that doesn’t work, throwing rocks. I didn’t have to resort to the latter until last night when Steve and I walked down to the end of town to look at a trail that runs out to the point at the edge of the bay. We walked by a pack of dogs on our way out and had to yell a few times and fake like we were going to throw at them to keep them away. We got by them successfully on our way back, but then I heard a couple of them coming up the road behind us. I whirled around and got off a quick throw that popped one on the shoulder. He let out a yelp and they both fell back. I’d be hard pressed to find a better way to get your adrenaline pumping than fending off wild dogs.
As far as the actual teaching goes, I’ll post some pictures of the school on shutterfly. It’s a tiny six building school with a basketball court in the middle. I’ll be the sixth grade teacher, and then all of the 5th-8th grade students will rotate between teachers and I’ll teach all of them Social Studies. The classes are all incredibly small-no grade has more than ten kids. I feel alright about the beginning of school next Monday, but the prospect of writing out lesson plans for so many classes is rather daunting.
I hope things are going well with all of you!
PS: if you want to check out pictures, go to http://alexinsamoa.shutterfly.com/
Eighteen Days in American Samoa
Hey everyone, I think it’s about time to write an update about the beginning of my Samoan adventure in case anyone is curious. I know it’s long—I’d recommend taking it at a few sittings. I arrived in American Samoa two and a half weeks ago on the night of Sunday, July 19, after fourteen hours of traveling. Tafuna International Airport is a little one runway airport, and we deplaned down a set of steps out on the tarmac. The first impression was pretty stunning—a blast of warm (not as hot as Texas), sticky (but way more humid) air, and a clear view of the mountains, lit up by the moon. After waiting half an hour for our luggage to come around the carousel, we went out through customs and were greeted by a welcoming party of Department of Education staff dishing out shell necklaces and young students holding up a “Welcome World Teachers” banner. Then it was on to Nuu’uli Polytech High School, where we had some fresh-baked cookies, dispersed into classrooms (girls’ rooms, boys’ rooms, and one for married couples), and crashed on the floor on our foam pads.
Monday morning I got up bright and early to take a freezing cold shower in the makeshift shower room, and then we were off to a little Samoan natural history museum where they hold a sort of cultural summer school for kids. We participated with groups of 7 and 13-year old in classes on traditional dancing, grass weaving, carving, and painting. I got my first lava lava (essentially their word for a sarong, but tied a little differently) in the dance class. In the afternoon, we toured the island in a school bus, but we didn’t get to drive up to my little town, Vatia, because in order to get there you have to take a side road up over the mountains that dead ends in Vatia after about 30 minutes.
The next few days were filled with six to eight hours a day of classes led by the Department of Education and PICED, an organization devoted to improving education in the Pacific islands. We learned all about curriculum—in every possible subject, whether that’s what we were slated to teach or not—some tips about lesson planning and classroom management, and a bit about Samoan culture and language. One highlight—or rather lowlight—was a woman who came to talk to us about teaching Correctional English, or English for students who don’t quite get it through normal instruction. She seemed to think that in order to tell us how to teach this program she had to actually teach us as if we were in the program, so we spent an hour and a half repeating vowels, consonants, syllables, and words on queue as she snapped her fingers at us and shouted “Eee-yah!” (she never explained what the hell that meant) and “Next word!”. Overall, the program probably prepared us to teach as much any two week program could, although some more instruction in Samoan language would have been good.
At the end of the two weeks, we started to cut loose a bit. The last Thursday, we all grabbed the bed sheets off of our mats and had a toga party in the large kitchen of the high school (not entirely sure why it had a kitchen…perhaps for cooking classes since it was a technical high school, or for cooking the students’ lunches). After waking up painfully early Friday morning to be introduced at a conference of all of the principals on the island, we went to $2 Beach for the afternoon. Fortunately PICED covered the $2 entry fee for us. I went out to a little rocky island right off the beach and attempted to scale it with another volunteer, Raj. We gave up about ten feet from the top after Raj tried to pull himself up by a little palm frond and instead just pulled the thing up by the roots. All in all, a very good time. Friday night we went to a local bowling alley/batting cages that’s also a bar at night and did some dancing with the locals. The next day everyone split up to go to their towns and take up their assignments.
Vatia is a small bayside village on the north side of the island. The first time I went out to visit it was the second Thursday we were here. I went with my roommate, Steve, and we had to wait two hours for the bus because it had apparently just left when we got to the bus depot. The bus fleet in AS does not run on timetables or anything. It is a collection of pickup trucks converted into small buses run by independent drivers. Only one bus runs to Vatia, so there are only a few trips each way throughout the day. The driver is a cool guy named Craig who gave us his phone number to check with him about bus times. He may have “the best sound system on the island” (2,000 watts running through the bus—very impressive), but his sense of time is a bit off and his predictions about arrival times are not quite accurate, to say the least.
On our first trip, a big Samoan in his late teens sat down across from us an asked if we were teachers. When we responded that we were, he asked if we were Alex and Steve. A bit taken aback, we told him that yes, we were, and asked how he knew that. He said that there had been an article in the newspaper, the Samoa News, that listed the names and assignments of all of the WorldTeach volunteers. He introduced himself as Marx, a recent graduate of Samoana High School, where he had some contact with last year’s WorldTeach volunteers. When we got to town, he showed us where our house was and introduced us to the secretary of the school. It was pretty awesome having a local guide showing us around and explaining who we were to people in Samoan. He has since taken to stopping by the house every night and we tell each other about our respective cultures.
Steve put it well when he observed that our living situation was a bit like staying in a beach house for a year. We are about 30 yards from the water in a little bungalow without air-conditioning or hot water. Everything is pretty much always wet, so our first purchase was a couple of fans to dry out clothes and keep the heat down. Once we did a fair amount of shopping (cooking utensils, pillows, a month’s worth of food), we were able to really make it home. It’s been wonderful to be able to finish up with training at our school, walk five minutes down the street back to our house, throw on our board shorts, and go out snorkeling. The bay doesn’t have the clearest water, but there’s some good coral and a few kinds of beautiful tropical fish.
A quick word about dogs on the island. They’re everywhere. Absolutely everywhere. I had one try to walk into my classroom while I was getting things together at school today. Many of them are pretty mangy and bark wildly at you as you go by them. They also bark at each other at all hours of the night, which can make sleeping difficult, especially when you have to sleep with the windows open and they bark right outside your bedroom. If they act threatening and come near you when you’re walking, the locals recommend yelling “Ahlo!” at them, and if that doesn’t work, throwing rocks. I didn’t have to resort to the latter until last night when Steve and I walked down to the end of town to look at a trail that runs out to the point at the edge of the bay. We walked by a pack of dogs on our way out and had to yell a few times and fake like we were going to throw at them to keep them away. We got by them successfully on our way back, but then I heard a couple of them coming up the road behind us. I whirled around and got off a quick throw that popped one on the shoulder. He let out a yelp and they both fell back. I’d be hard pressed to find a better way to get your adrenaline pumping than fending off wild dogs.
As far as the actual teaching goes, I’ll post some pictures of the school on shutterfly. It’s a tiny six building school with a basketball court in the middle. I’ll be the sixth grade teacher, and then all of the 5th-8th grade students will rotate between teachers and I’ll teach all of them Social Studies. The classes are all incredibly small-no grade has more than ten kids. I feel alright about the beginning of school next Monday, but the prospect of writing out lesson plans for so many classes is rather daunting.
I hope things are going well with all of you!
PS: if you want to check out pictures, go to http://alexinsamoa.shutterfly.com/
Meeting with the Chiefs
Hey everyone, I decided to start up a blog to keep y'all up to date with my goings-on in American Samoa. I have a really long post to leave about my first couple of weeks here, but the computer at the library tagged it as virus-infected when I tried to open it off of my flash drive. So this little tid-bit will have to do for now. Hopefully I can take my laptop somewhere with internet later today and post my main update. I hope things are going well stateside!
Thursday, August 06, 2009
A meeting with the chiefs
Last night while we were hanging out at the local Mormon church playing basketball and getting acquainted with some of our future students, Steve met one of the village matai, or chiefs, named Moaga. He told us the matai meet most every night and invited us to come by that evening to meet them. When we got there, Moaga wasn’t there, but we told a man standing nearby that we would like to meet the chiefs and he led us over and introduced us. There were five of them sitting in a half circle in a fale, or open air guesthouse, by the side of the road. They spread out a grass mat for us and told us that we had to learn how to sit properly. We sat down cross-legged, covering as much of our legs as possible with our lava lavas (sarongs).
They asked our names and where we were from. The tulafale, or high talking chief (who is second only to the alii, or high chief), whose name was Laoti, told us that he had been in Washington, DC, where Steve is from, two weeks before for a conference. He had also been to San Antonio before, but wasn’t really a fan. Another chief told me that he lived in Texas for a while back when he was in the army. Laoti expressed how grateful he was that we had come to help his village, and told us we should learn their card game, a Samoan version of gin-rummy. He said we should stop by from time to time to check in with them and then sent us on our way. It was a very cool little exchange and gave me a greater sense of a connection to the village. I look forward to playing cards with them this year.
Thursday, August 06, 2009
A meeting with the chiefs
Last night while we were hanging out at the local Mormon church playing basketball and getting acquainted with some of our future students, Steve met one of the village matai, or chiefs, named Moaga. He told us the matai meet most every night and invited us to come by that evening to meet them. When we got there, Moaga wasn’t there, but we told a man standing nearby that we would like to meet the chiefs and he led us over and introduced us. There were five of them sitting in a half circle in a fale, or open air guesthouse, by the side of the road. They spread out a grass mat for us and told us that we had to learn how to sit properly. We sat down cross-legged, covering as much of our legs as possible with our lava lavas (sarongs).
They asked our names and where we were from. The tulafale, or high talking chief (who is second only to the alii, or high chief), whose name was Laoti, told us that he had been in Washington, DC, where Steve is from, two weeks before for a conference. He had also been to San Antonio before, but wasn’t really a fan. Another chief told me that he lived in Texas for a while back when he was in the army. Laoti expressed how grateful he was that we had come to help his village, and told us we should learn their card game, a Samoan version of gin-rummy. He said we should stop by from time to time to check in with them and then sent us on our way. It was a very cool little exchange and gave me a greater sense of a connection to the village. I look forward to playing cards with them this year.
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