Manu'a
Manu’a.
One of my goals or dreams in life was to live, or really, try to survive, on an island in the middle of the ocean. I wanted to learn how to fish and fend for myself. The reality is that if I were stranded on an island, I would probably die pretty quickly. So, Manu’a is as close as I will ever get to realizing this dream- and it’s perfect in so many ways for that.
The Manu’a five. We said goodbye to our 15 remaining friends on the main island, and took turns as passengers in the smallest plane I have ever been in, or seen (and I have twice been skydiving) over the great Pacific Ocean to the Manu’a island, part of American Samoa. The ride was easy- actually, one of the smoothest plane rides I have ever had. I even fell asleep for maybe 15 minutes of the entire 45 minute ride. All you see is Pacific Ocean, and then all of the sudden, Manu’a appears literally out of nowhere down below. The Manu’a islands consist of three small islands in the middle of nowhere: Ofu, Olasega, and Ta’u. Ofu and Olasega are called the twin islands, because they are basically two tiny, similar islands that connect with a bridge. One of the Manu’a five, Andrew, is living this year on Olasega. About a 45 minute boat ride from them, is Ta’u, which is my island. There are four of us here. I live with Kyle and Emily, in a wonderful house on the beach, in the village of Faleasao, a beach village, and one of the three villages on Ta’u. The fifth of us, Nell, lives two houses down in a homestay, but has her own sort of house, and spends most of her time with us at our house. Ta’u is really a surreal place. It is a world away from Tutuila (Am Sam’s main island, where I spent the first month) and a world away from the world. I think it is starting to become westernized slowly, unfortunately, but everywhere you go you can still see that for all of the years prior, this was a completely self-sufficient island. In fact, westernization is just so complicated for a place like this. Manu’a lives almost completely by the boats and planes now, which often don’t run but once a month. There are many stores in the villages here that stock the essentials and lots of canned goods (fruits, veggies, tuna/salmon, spam, corned beef), as well as tomato sauce, frozen chicken, cereal, beer, bottles water, sodas, crackers, boxed milk, etc., but how well they are stocked depends on when the last boat arrived. But no worries; in the meantime, people here catch fish and octopi to eat, and subsist on the hundreds of banana, papaya, coconut palm, tarot, lemon-lime, mango, and breadfruit trees that are the island. Living here is like living on a giant banana and coconut tree plantation. It is amazing. It is everything that is wonderful about tropical nature, minus the commercialization of it. American Samoa only exports tuna, and that only happens on the main island. Manu’a exports nothing, so we all run around here and basically eat whatever we want from our back yards. Ta’u is all mountain, formed from volcanoes, and half chopped off, so that the side of the mountain is flat. The one main paved road snakes forever around the 12 sq mile approx. island, connecting the villages of Faleasao (mine), Ta’u (main village where the high school is, and most of the inhabitants), and Fitiuta (where the airport and post office (located in a store) are). Walking on the road is beautiful, surrounded by trees and breathtaking views of the ocean; it is peaceful and serene. Everyone here has a pick-up truck, the transportation of choice in Am Sam, as it easily transports large numbers of people, and can handle atol inclines. There are two school buses that transport students and teachers from their villages to the schools. Dogs here are at a minimum compared to Tutuila. Chickens, you see every once in awhile. There are pigs here, but they keep to themselves and are scarce and usually in pens. The one animal that seems to be in abundance here is the mosquito. We are only in the dry, winter season, and I already look like I was in the African jungle and caught some kind of monkey-virus. Every day, I get more and more and more bites. There is no malaria scare here, but there is dengue fever (known as the “bone crushing disease,” whatever that means), which I do not want to catch. Because, there is a first aid building here, but it is not a real hospital, and there are no ambulances. For anything severe, you would have to be flown to Tutuila’s hospital. There are flights every day from Tutuila to Manu’a, but they are frequently cancelled due to weather or lack of passengers. And it is hot. And the only air-conditioned places I have found are at the high school’s library and computer lab. Relief from the heat here comes from fans, and the cool ocean breeze, and cloudy and rainy days, which unfortunately also bring mosquitos. So it is extremely hot and humid, but bearable. The school classrooms are the worst, but our house down the mountain is actually not bad. I think that technically American Samoa is considered to be a third world country (I’m not sure), but it’s hard for me to see. Some parts of Tutuila resemble what I imagine it might look like. But mostly, it just seems island to me. We have all decided that this is probably the only World Teach program that is in their country solely to fill the teacher shortage, and not for other reasons. There are many good teachers here, and you don’t see any slums walking around. It’s just island. So really, it is just simply a very developing country. Manu’a has ghosts, or any local will tell you. Less on our island, and more on the others, but still, you hear stories. And things that we do can anger the sea, anger the ghosts, pretty much anything you do that they don’t like, they will tell you that it angers some kind of person or object. Bells ring at 4:30am on certain Saturday mornings to call kids to practice. Everyone offers you rides in their pickup trucks (my new favorite activity- riding in the back!). This week, I was walking home from school and a man stopped to see if I wanted a ride to the village (always friendly). I politely refused for exercise purposes, and he jumped out and handed me a whole papaya, for no reason! I thanked him and it put a huge smile on my face. If that had happened in any other city in the world, someone jumping out of their truck on an empty road, the police probably would have gotten involved. And today as I was walking home, I was wishing I could find a yellow or green coconut (the juice is sweeter at that stage), and one appeared for me on the road; the one I opened myself. I sometimes think that if you ask for things on this island, they magically appear.
Our house sits on the sand- it is a very western house, belonging to our department of education coordinator, who lives on Tutuila. Many people there have empty houses here on Manu’a. We have our own fale (gazebo-like structure that every house has, here). Directly in front of our house is our village’s beautiful church. After that, is the ocean. There are not really any sand beaches in our village, but we can still swim here. There are a lot of rocks and coral, and many days the tides are rough, and you can always feel the current, so swimming is not like it is in FL or the Bahamas, but it is refreshing and beautiful. The village of Ta’u has sand beach that stretches for probably two or three miles along the village- it is amazing, and we spend a lot of time there after school, shell-collecting and just moseying along the beach. Our house opens up to a huge living room, then enormous kitchen area, with every possible kitchen appliance we could need here (no microwave,, but no one here really wants one). We have a large fridge, toaster, stove/oven, double sink, etc. There are several bedrooms, but only two usable ones, and a small bathroom with running water and a flushing toilet! We also have an outdoor shower and bathroom. Kyle has one bedroom and Emily and I share a room, which is huge and more than enough space for two of us. We actually like having another person in the room, because it is not as scary that way. Our house is cozy and perfect and very conducive to cooking, cleaning, living, and having enough space to spread out as well. We have dozens of banana trees in our backyard, and we often grab bananas to eat or freeze. We have a mango tree (for later in the year), tons of coconut palms, more than we could ever use, a lemon-lime tree, and a hot-pepper plant, apparently good for making sauces. Every night we all cook separate dinners. These days, I eat every night sautéed onions, mixed canned vegetables, sometimes canned salmon or tuna, and spaghetti sauce all sautéed in olive oil. We started out eating a lot of rice, but sort of realized that that would not end well for us by the end of the year, so we’ve cut rice out of our nightly diet. Emily is mostly a vegan, but has started eating fish while she’s here, because there is really no other protein source that she likes. She mostly eats veggies, peanut butter, etc. Kyle eats everything they have here, including the canned meats, which I refuse to try, usually smothered in cheese (shipped to the island from Pago), and still remains the skinniest person I have ever met. We have too many snacks- chips, sweet fruits, canned fruit, peanut butter, honey, crackers, etc. Emily likes to bake, so often we have little muffins to snack on. Even so, the people of Manu’a are substantially thinner and healthier than the American Samoans on the main island. There is a lot more manual labor and self-subsistence here, plus more natural foods than processed. We are all terrified of gaining weight while we are here because of all of the starchy and sweet foods! But for now, our eating seems to balance out with our walking around the hills and swimming, and more importantly, the sweating. Emily is also teaching Nell and I pilates and yoga, so that is a new thing for me. I also have been cooking every night, which is awesome. I used to cook a lot- in college, in France- and then I stopped cooking in New York for four years because there was so much amazing take-out and small, unusable kitchen spaces. But I love it. I love cooking every night. My mom asked me if I miss restaurants (there are no restaurants or any places to buy prepared food anywhere on the island). I don’t, really. I do love eating out, but this is just fun. Our other food source is our neighbors. At least twice a week, someone brings us a huge pot of something to eat, usually some kind of canned corned beef dish, which although I love, will not allow myself to eat while I’m here, or sometimes delicious fish and chicken dishes. We often receive tarot and breadfruit, and other native dishes, often with coconut in them. We like being helped, but at the same time, we always have too much food, and not enough people who eat it! It is very hard to say no to people here, and although everyone speaks English, there is an almost uncrossable culture barrier. They treat is like their children, and therefore they treat us as children, and don’t want us going hiking by ourselves, etc. That is something we have been getting used to. I am very glad to not be in a homestay, because there really is no such thing as privacy here. Everyone is family, and apparently that includes little kids popping up at your window on a Saturday morning at 8:00am, peering in. Everything you do, every day, is sent over the “coconut wireless.” If we walk on the beach on Thursday, all of our kids bring it up to us on Friday (“hey, you were walking on the beach yesterday, right?”). As we walk through town, kids yell “hello Ms. Marlin” through windows you can’t see in, so you don’t even know which students are yelling- but they are there, and watching. So therefore, we can’t really afford to do anything offensive, and we try every day to live that way. That being said, the people in Manu’a are way more laid back about rules than the people in Tutuila. Everyone here is very independent and concentrates more on living than on rules. No swimming on Sundays is probably the only one everyone listens to.
I feel so productive every day, coming home, sometimes swimming, cooking, lesson-planning, doing other various things, cleaning. Every night we watch some sort of DVD together on our laptops, usually either a movie or episodes of Sex and the City or Friends, while lesson planning in the living room. I really do love our life here. There are problems between the roommates (nothing serious), and I don’t think I will ever be best friends with them, but we have fun, and are generally respectful and productive as house-mates. I know that not every roommate experience can be perfect or so much fun, and I’m grateful for what I do have here, and how much I am learning from each of them. Luckily, Kyle is a second-year teacher, so it is useful to be able to ask him questions, as a first-year teacher.
Our school: Manu’a High School, home of the Mighty Segaulas (a bird that looks like a parrot- I have yet to see one), the only high school on the Manu’a Islands, and the sixth high school in American Samoa. It is a small school, but great, and well-equipped, or as much as you can expect from an island in the South Pacific. They have an extremely Americanized school system. There is high-speed internet (which was just fixed after three months of being down), a computer lab with Macs, high-speed printers, a great library, and mostly great classrooms. It still boggles my mind how they get the internet to work out here. However, the day the net was fixed, our cell phone service died. So, I think this year might be some kind of trade-off. The grounds are beautifully maintained, and you can see the ocean from the hill. The developing country aspects are under the surface. Textbooks from 1992 and 1995, and not nearly enough for each student to have one. No chemistry wash stations, which means chemistry with no experiments, and almost every supply, including school lunches, has to be shipped from Pago Pago. The first week of school, the school was closed to students for a day due to the fact that the boat never came with the lunch food for the kids. The kids here are so similar to kids in America, it’s scary. There are a lot of behavioral problems, but mostly the kids are unbelievably sweet and cool, and just amazing without even knowing it. They are funny and smart, and talented. Every single student is a star volleyball player (the only sport they can play here, because of the slanting landscapes), beautiful singer, great dancer, and good artist. They are mostly all good at math and science. Even with English as their second language, almost everyone here speaks great English. You cannot even imagine what their voices sound like when they sing- they harmonize every song (they sing every morning a prayer before class starts); the boys have deep voices, and the girls have high, angelic voices. They could probably win any choir contest in America, but will never have a chance to compete. They sing here in school and mostly in church. And the kids have an enormous amount of responsibilities outside of class as well. Once home, they either have church practice, chores, or sometimes both, plus all of their homework. Their only escape is volleyball. They have so many responsibilities at home, that I heard they prefer to be at school; what an opposite situation from the states! Prayer and church are a huge part of life here in American Samoa, and there is no separation of church and state.
There are troublemakers and it is very hard to keep the classes quiet during the day, but I really love these kids! Days can be frustrating and long, but the smart ones shine through, and the goofballs come and hang out with you between classes and at lunch and yell to you from across the schoolyard. The kids here actually remind me so much of the kids I went to high school with in Miami. They have so many of the same personality traits, and they even sort of look the same. I am one of two junior class advisors, and this week we got to participate in a 9/11 remembrance activity and general pep rally. Our classes practiced routines and songs for a week, and today we got to see them all perform. I was SO proud of my juniors- they were amazing! Although, they came in last in the pep rally, it really still gave me a chance to get to know some of them outside of my classes. My classes. I have four preps- according to my ex-teacher brother, this means I have to plan for four completely different subjects- Algebra I (2 sections), Algebra II, Geometry and Precalculus. I am feeling extremely overwhelmed, as a first year teacher. According to Ben and Kyle both, in the states, teachers never really have more than two preps, and sometimes only one. On top of that, I offer unlimited tutoring/homework help to my students, which they often take me up on at home around 8pm. I love it, actually. The volunteers are also being forced to participate in an after-school tutoring program called Upward Bound. We also want to do SAT tutoring for the juniors and seniors trying to go to American Samoa Community College (ASCC) or a few off-island to a four-year college. The kids here are not at all ready to do well on standardized tests. Our principal is actually pretty amazing and apparently has completely turned around the education system here. The only problem is that the system has only recently changed. Newer, better teachers have only begun recently to come to Manu’a. Therefore, my kids are actually pretty great at what I teach them in class, but cannot do so many fundamental, basic math functions that they should have learned in elementary school and middle school. It makes every lesson go much slower, because I insist that they know those things. There is a huge disconnect between the expectations of the principal here, and what is actually possible in a developing country. They strive to be on the same level as mainland America, but do not have the teachers or the resources or the textbooks to make it happen. I think there is a lot of pressure on us volunteers, as if we are going to change everything in one year. As my dad has to remind me every week, change like this happens gradually, and it may take years before the education functions as it should. But for now, my classes are fine. I get confused sometimes as to which class I taught certain concepts to. I have started giving detentions, and I am generally a strict teacher, but forgiving sometimes. I was told by everyone to run a tight ship straight away, and I am doing that. Teaching is rewarding, but frustrating and exhausting. Having to be “on” that whole time, with different classes… I don’t really understand how real teachers do it. How did my brother do it at an inner city school? How has my mom done it for so many years? We have it very easy here in a lot of ways, and in others not so easy. The not so easy I’ve already described. The easy: we have block scheduling (amazing concept!), which means that every Wednesday and Friday I have a 90 minute planning block, with 45 minutes on Mondays. They also have 15 minute breaks between each class here, which gives me plenty of time to collect my thoughts. We have textbooks (though few, and old), but so many developing countries don’t have any school supplies. We have every school supply necessary to teach (no extras, but more than enough of the essentials). My classroom is fantastic, tons of space and a huge chalkboard. I have my own computer that now has high-speed internet! The room gets very hot, and there is only one small ceiling fan, but I’ve pretty much gotten used to it. After school, we sort of split up, or sometimes walk together. The walk home from the school to our village is about 35 minutes, mostly downhill, with about 10 minutes of incline walking. The walk is beautiful (but it rains randomly), and passes through Ta’u, so often when we walk, Emily and I will stop on the beach to collect shells. Emily walks every day. I walk about half of the time. Our principal, Diana, gives us rides whenever we need, and often takes us to the stores on the hill. School is pretty much our life right now, but we also have tons of time in the pm to be productive and unwind. We are usually in bed by 9:30pm, and the bus arrives every morning around 7:00am.
We have only been here three weeks, tomorrow, but it feels like months! Our weekends have been productive. We’ve been to barbecues, been on hikes over the mountain; last weekend, Kyle went night-spear-fishing (girls can only go during the day), and we attended a Sunday school dance next door, with some of our high school students. It was SO much fun and I got to dance for hours to island pop music, often tailored to us, like La Bamba was dedicated to us. Dances here almost always have live bands, which I love. Every Sunday morning we attend church. As an atheist, being in church actually doesn’t bother me at all. Religion has never really meant all that much to be, and less in my later years, so going through the motions is easy. Not going to church here would raise more questions than we are able to answer. Plus we get to hear the beautiful voices of the choir. Sundays are rest days here. You cannot swim and you basically can’t do anything- we use them as catch-up days when we can be productive, but only around the house. We also usually are brought feasts of food on Sundays. People here just kind of eat and sleep. Labor day weekend, Andrew hopped a boat full of pirates named Denzel Washington and Tom Cruise, drunk as skunks, over to our island to spend the weekend. We had a lot of fun, and then when it came time for him to return to Olasega, to teach at his middle school, he was stranded due to the weather. He ended up here until Wednesday- who knows what they did at his school. We collect tons and tons of shells here. My favorites are these purple ones, and cream-colored spiral ones. I’ve also started to collect seaglass. Last weekend, one of my awesome students, Luo, taught me how to open a coconut properly. Tonight, I opened my first coconut (husk and all) using a butcher knife and my bare hands and muscles, and was able to extract the coconut water into a jar, before cutting into the delicious meat. It is SO much fun to be able to do these things! Everything I am experiencing here is exactly what I wanted this year to be. I could not have tailored this year any better than it turned out.
I have had several realizations in the past few weeks. The first is that this will probably be my last year abroad. From now on, if I live abroad, it will be for a few months only. If I love it there, I will stay longer. But somehow signing up for these programs makes me feel trapped- if you know me and my commitment phobia. I’m excited for the year, and time is already flying, but I think this is my last before-known year-long program. Second, I don’t think I want to be a teacher. I never did, and then last month I had the epiphany that my calling in life was to be a teacher. Then I started teaching, and like everything else I am ever interested in, it faded quickly. So, I am frustrated again to have no life path. That being said, I am getting things out of my system, and trying things I have always wondered about. I have always wanted to see if I could teach math. I have always wanted to try. Now I will have. I like it, but I don’t love it. Third- I miss New York this week. My first month and a half here, NY and the USAO were almost out of my mind. Then this week I started to miss them- mostly my old office. I cannot believe still that I am not a part of that anymore. I get updates and “miss you” emails from my coworkers, and I would give anything in those moments to be back there going on starbucks runs with them. They were my everything in NY and I probably will never have that much fun again at a job, with coworkers. I miss the attorneys and the magesticness and closeness of the office. Noone here really cares about my stories from the craziest, most interesting office in the country. It’s like all of my memories are still in that office, and the outside world just doesn’t care. If I could zap myself there for an hour, once or twice a month, I would be happy. I knew it was time to leave, and I do not want to be a paralegal forever, but I will miss it forever. I still think it is the best time I will ever have in a job, even if that is depressing to think about. It was amazing. That job was stressful and brainless. My current position is brainful, demanding and exhausting, but not stressful.
Life on Manu’a is all island, all of the time. There are several things every day that make you stop and think how lucky you are to be here. There are also several spots on the hill that are my favorite- spots where all you can see through the trees is the Pacific Ocean, forever. Those views remind me of where I am, and how far removed we really are from the rest of the world. It’s like a beautiful reality check. Every view is breathtaking, whether the ocean, or the lush cliffs, towering over the villages. Time is flying, which in my view, means there are things here weekly to look forward to (usually my planning periods), and I can’t ask for more than that. So, for the people in Miami, when you see a coconut, think of me. For the people in New York, when you are near the Brooklyn Bridge, think of me in my cubicle there. And for everyone else in the world, think of me in the sun, somewhere below the equator. I am thinking of you guys all of the time!
Much, much, much love from somewhere in the middle of the Pacific Ocean,
C
One of my goals or dreams in life was to live, or really, try to survive, on an island in the middle of the ocean. I wanted to learn how to fish and fend for myself. The reality is that if I were stranded on an island, I would probably die pretty quickly. So, Manu’a is as close as I will ever get to realizing this dream- and it’s perfect in so many ways for that.
The Manu’a five. We said goodbye to our 15 remaining friends on the main island, and took turns as passengers in the smallest plane I have ever been in, or seen (and I have twice been skydiving) over the great Pacific Ocean to the Manu’a island, part of American Samoa. The ride was easy- actually, one of the smoothest plane rides I have ever had. I even fell asleep for maybe 15 minutes of the entire 45 minute ride. All you see is Pacific Ocean, and then all of the sudden, Manu’a appears literally out of nowhere down below. The Manu’a islands consist of three small islands in the middle of nowhere: Ofu, Olasega, and Ta’u. Ofu and Olasega are called the twin islands, because they are basically two tiny, similar islands that connect with a bridge. One of the Manu’a five, Andrew, is living this year on Olasega. About a 45 minute boat ride from them, is Ta’u, which is my island. There are four of us here. I live with Kyle and Emily, in a wonderful house on the beach, in the village of Faleasao, a beach village, and one of the three villages on Ta’u. The fifth of us, Nell, lives two houses down in a homestay, but has her own sort of house, and spends most of her time with us at our house. Ta’u is really a surreal place. It is a world away from Tutuila (Am Sam’s main island, where I spent the first month) and a world away from the world. I think it is starting to become westernized slowly, unfortunately, but everywhere you go you can still see that for all of the years prior, this was a completely self-sufficient island. In fact, westernization is just so complicated for a place like this. Manu’a lives almost completely by the boats and planes now, which often don’t run but once a month. There are many stores in the villages here that stock the essentials and lots of canned goods (fruits, veggies, tuna/salmon, spam, corned beef), as well as tomato sauce, frozen chicken, cereal, beer, bottles water, sodas, crackers, boxed milk, etc., but how well they are stocked depends on when the last boat arrived. But no worries; in the meantime, people here catch fish and octopi to eat, and subsist on the hundreds of banana, papaya, coconut palm, tarot, lemon-lime, mango, and breadfruit trees that are the island. Living here is like living on a giant banana and coconut tree plantation. It is amazing. It is everything that is wonderful about tropical nature, minus the commercialization of it. American Samoa only exports tuna, and that only happens on the main island. Manu’a exports nothing, so we all run around here and basically eat whatever we want from our back yards. Ta’u is all mountain, formed from volcanoes, and half chopped off, so that the side of the mountain is flat. The one main paved road snakes forever around the 12 sq mile approx. island, connecting the villages of Faleasao (mine), Ta’u (main village where the high school is, and most of the inhabitants), and Fitiuta (where the airport and post office (located in a store) are). Walking on the road is beautiful, surrounded by trees and breathtaking views of the ocean; it is peaceful and serene. Everyone here has a pick-up truck, the transportation of choice in Am Sam, as it easily transports large numbers of people, and can handle atol inclines. There are two school buses that transport students and teachers from their villages to the schools. Dogs here are at a minimum compared to Tutuila. Chickens, you see every once in awhile. There are pigs here, but they keep to themselves and are scarce and usually in pens. The one animal that seems to be in abundance here is the mosquito. We are only in the dry, winter season, and I already look like I was in the African jungle and caught some kind of monkey-virus. Every day, I get more and more and more bites. There is no malaria scare here, but there is dengue fever (known as the “bone crushing disease,” whatever that means), which I do not want to catch. Because, there is a first aid building here, but it is not a real hospital, and there are no ambulances. For anything severe, you would have to be flown to Tutuila’s hospital. There are flights every day from Tutuila to Manu’a, but they are frequently cancelled due to weather or lack of passengers. And it is hot. And the only air-conditioned places I have found are at the high school’s library and computer lab. Relief from the heat here comes from fans, and the cool ocean breeze, and cloudy and rainy days, which unfortunately also bring mosquitos. So it is extremely hot and humid, but bearable. The school classrooms are the worst, but our house down the mountain is actually not bad. I think that technically American Samoa is considered to be a third world country (I’m not sure), but it’s hard for me to see. Some parts of Tutuila resemble what I imagine it might look like. But mostly, it just seems island to me. We have all decided that this is probably the only World Teach program that is in their country solely to fill the teacher shortage, and not for other reasons. There are many good teachers here, and you don’t see any slums walking around. It’s just island. So really, it is just simply a very developing country. Manu’a has ghosts, or any local will tell you. Less on our island, and more on the others, but still, you hear stories. And things that we do can anger the sea, anger the ghosts, pretty much anything you do that they don’t like, they will tell you that it angers some kind of person or object. Bells ring at 4:30am on certain Saturday mornings to call kids to practice. Everyone offers you rides in their pickup trucks (my new favorite activity- riding in the back!). This week, I was walking home from school and a man stopped to see if I wanted a ride to the village (always friendly). I politely refused for exercise purposes, and he jumped out and handed me a whole papaya, for no reason! I thanked him and it put a huge smile on my face. If that had happened in any other city in the world, someone jumping out of their truck on an empty road, the police probably would have gotten involved. And today as I was walking home, I was wishing I could find a yellow or green coconut (the juice is sweeter at that stage), and one appeared for me on the road; the one I opened myself. I sometimes think that if you ask for things on this island, they magically appear.
Our house sits on the sand- it is a very western house, belonging to our department of education coordinator, who lives on Tutuila. Many people there have empty houses here on Manu’a. We have our own fale (gazebo-like structure that every house has, here). Directly in front of our house is our village’s beautiful church. After that, is the ocean. There are not really any sand beaches in our village, but we can still swim here. There are a lot of rocks and coral, and many days the tides are rough, and you can always feel the current, so swimming is not like it is in FL or the Bahamas, but it is refreshing and beautiful. The village of Ta’u has sand beach that stretches for probably two or three miles along the village- it is amazing, and we spend a lot of time there after school, shell-collecting and just moseying along the beach. Our house opens up to a huge living room, then enormous kitchen area, with every possible kitchen appliance we could need here (no microwave,, but no one here really wants one). We have a large fridge, toaster, stove/oven, double sink, etc. There are several bedrooms, but only two usable ones, and a small bathroom with running water and a flushing toilet! We also have an outdoor shower and bathroom. Kyle has one bedroom and Emily and I share a room, which is huge and more than enough space for two of us. We actually like having another person in the room, because it is not as scary that way. Our house is cozy and perfect and very conducive to cooking, cleaning, living, and having enough space to spread out as well. We have dozens of banana trees in our backyard, and we often grab bananas to eat or freeze. We have a mango tree (for later in the year), tons of coconut palms, more than we could ever use, a lemon-lime tree, and a hot-pepper plant, apparently good for making sauces. Every night we all cook separate dinners. These days, I eat every night sautéed onions, mixed canned vegetables, sometimes canned salmon or tuna, and spaghetti sauce all sautéed in olive oil. We started out eating a lot of rice, but sort of realized that that would not end well for us by the end of the year, so we’ve cut rice out of our nightly diet. Emily is mostly a vegan, but has started eating fish while she’s here, because there is really no other protein source that she likes. She mostly eats veggies, peanut butter, etc. Kyle eats everything they have here, including the canned meats, which I refuse to try, usually smothered in cheese (shipped to the island from Pago), and still remains the skinniest person I have ever met. We have too many snacks- chips, sweet fruits, canned fruit, peanut butter, honey, crackers, etc. Emily likes to bake, so often we have little muffins to snack on. Even so, the people of Manu’a are substantially thinner and healthier than the American Samoans on the main island. There is a lot more manual labor and self-subsistence here, plus more natural foods than processed. We are all terrified of gaining weight while we are here because of all of the starchy and sweet foods! But for now, our eating seems to balance out with our walking around the hills and swimming, and more importantly, the sweating. Emily is also teaching Nell and I pilates and yoga, so that is a new thing for me. I also have been cooking every night, which is awesome. I used to cook a lot- in college, in France- and then I stopped cooking in New York for four years because there was so much amazing take-out and small, unusable kitchen spaces. But I love it. I love cooking every night. My mom asked me if I miss restaurants (there are no restaurants or any places to buy prepared food anywhere on the island). I don’t, really. I do love eating out, but this is just fun. Our other food source is our neighbors. At least twice a week, someone brings us a huge pot of something to eat, usually some kind of canned corned beef dish, which although I love, will not allow myself to eat while I’m here, or sometimes delicious fish and chicken dishes. We often receive tarot and breadfruit, and other native dishes, often with coconut in them. We like being helped, but at the same time, we always have too much food, and not enough people who eat it! It is very hard to say no to people here, and although everyone speaks English, there is an almost uncrossable culture barrier. They treat is like their children, and therefore they treat us as children, and don’t want us going hiking by ourselves, etc. That is something we have been getting used to. I am very glad to not be in a homestay, because there really is no such thing as privacy here. Everyone is family, and apparently that includes little kids popping up at your window on a Saturday morning at 8:00am, peering in. Everything you do, every day, is sent over the “coconut wireless.” If we walk on the beach on Thursday, all of our kids bring it up to us on Friday (“hey, you were walking on the beach yesterday, right?”). As we walk through town, kids yell “hello Ms. Marlin” through windows you can’t see in, so you don’t even know which students are yelling- but they are there, and watching. So therefore, we can’t really afford to do anything offensive, and we try every day to live that way. That being said, the people in Manu’a are way more laid back about rules than the people in Tutuila. Everyone here is very independent and concentrates more on living than on rules. No swimming on Sundays is probably the only one everyone listens to.
I feel so productive every day, coming home, sometimes swimming, cooking, lesson-planning, doing other various things, cleaning. Every night we watch some sort of DVD together on our laptops, usually either a movie or episodes of Sex and the City or Friends, while lesson planning in the living room. I really do love our life here. There are problems between the roommates (nothing serious), and I don’t think I will ever be best friends with them, but we have fun, and are generally respectful and productive as house-mates. I know that not every roommate experience can be perfect or so much fun, and I’m grateful for what I do have here, and how much I am learning from each of them. Luckily, Kyle is a second-year teacher, so it is useful to be able to ask him questions, as a first-year teacher.
Our school: Manu’a High School, home of the Mighty Segaulas (a bird that looks like a parrot- I have yet to see one), the only high school on the Manu’a Islands, and the sixth high school in American Samoa. It is a small school, but great, and well-equipped, or as much as you can expect from an island in the South Pacific. They have an extremely Americanized school system. There is high-speed internet (which was just fixed after three months of being down), a computer lab with Macs, high-speed printers, a great library, and mostly great classrooms. It still boggles my mind how they get the internet to work out here. However, the day the net was fixed, our cell phone service died. So, I think this year might be some kind of trade-off. The grounds are beautifully maintained, and you can see the ocean from the hill. The developing country aspects are under the surface. Textbooks from 1992 and 1995, and not nearly enough for each student to have one. No chemistry wash stations, which means chemistry with no experiments, and almost every supply, including school lunches, has to be shipped from Pago Pago. The first week of school, the school was closed to students for a day due to the fact that the boat never came with the lunch food for the kids. The kids here are so similar to kids in America, it’s scary. There are a lot of behavioral problems, but mostly the kids are unbelievably sweet and cool, and just amazing without even knowing it. They are funny and smart, and talented. Every single student is a star volleyball player (the only sport they can play here, because of the slanting landscapes), beautiful singer, great dancer, and good artist. They are mostly all good at math and science. Even with English as their second language, almost everyone here speaks great English. You cannot even imagine what their voices sound like when they sing- they harmonize every song (they sing every morning a prayer before class starts); the boys have deep voices, and the girls have high, angelic voices. They could probably win any choir contest in America, but will never have a chance to compete. They sing here in school and mostly in church. And the kids have an enormous amount of responsibilities outside of class as well. Once home, they either have church practice, chores, or sometimes both, plus all of their homework. Their only escape is volleyball. They have so many responsibilities at home, that I heard they prefer to be at school; what an opposite situation from the states! Prayer and church are a huge part of life here in American Samoa, and there is no separation of church and state.
There are troublemakers and it is very hard to keep the classes quiet during the day, but I really love these kids! Days can be frustrating and long, but the smart ones shine through, and the goofballs come and hang out with you between classes and at lunch and yell to you from across the schoolyard. The kids here actually remind me so much of the kids I went to high school with in Miami. They have so many of the same personality traits, and they even sort of look the same. I am one of two junior class advisors, and this week we got to participate in a 9/11 remembrance activity and general pep rally. Our classes practiced routines and songs for a week, and today we got to see them all perform. I was SO proud of my juniors- they were amazing! Although, they came in last in the pep rally, it really still gave me a chance to get to know some of them outside of my classes. My classes. I have four preps- according to my ex-teacher brother, this means I have to plan for four completely different subjects- Algebra I (2 sections), Algebra II, Geometry and Precalculus. I am feeling extremely overwhelmed, as a first year teacher. According to Ben and Kyle both, in the states, teachers never really have more than two preps, and sometimes only one. On top of that, I offer unlimited tutoring/homework help to my students, which they often take me up on at home around 8pm. I love it, actually. The volunteers are also being forced to participate in an after-school tutoring program called Upward Bound. We also want to do SAT tutoring for the juniors and seniors trying to go to American Samoa Community College (ASCC) or a few off-island to a four-year college. The kids here are not at all ready to do well on standardized tests. Our principal is actually pretty amazing and apparently has completely turned around the education system here. The only problem is that the system has only recently changed. Newer, better teachers have only begun recently to come to Manu’a. Therefore, my kids are actually pretty great at what I teach them in class, but cannot do so many fundamental, basic math functions that they should have learned in elementary school and middle school. It makes every lesson go much slower, because I insist that they know those things. There is a huge disconnect between the expectations of the principal here, and what is actually possible in a developing country. They strive to be on the same level as mainland America, but do not have the teachers or the resources or the textbooks to make it happen. I think there is a lot of pressure on us volunteers, as if we are going to change everything in one year. As my dad has to remind me every week, change like this happens gradually, and it may take years before the education functions as it should. But for now, my classes are fine. I get confused sometimes as to which class I taught certain concepts to. I have started giving detentions, and I am generally a strict teacher, but forgiving sometimes. I was told by everyone to run a tight ship straight away, and I am doing that. Teaching is rewarding, but frustrating and exhausting. Having to be “on” that whole time, with different classes… I don’t really understand how real teachers do it. How did my brother do it at an inner city school? How has my mom done it for so many years? We have it very easy here in a lot of ways, and in others not so easy. The not so easy I’ve already described. The easy: we have block scheduling (amazing concept!), which means that every Wednesday and Friday I have a 90 minute planning block, with 45 minutes on Mondays. They also have 15 minute breaks between each class here, which gives me plenty of time to collect my thoughts. We have textbooks (though few, and old), but so many developing countries don’t have any school supplies. We have every school supply necessary to teach (no extras, but more than enough of the essentials). My classroom is fantastic, tons of space and a huge chalkboard. I have my own computer that now has high-speed internet! The room gets very hot, and there is only one small ceiling fan, but I’ve pretty much gotten used to it. After school, we sort of split up, or sometimes walk together. The walk home from the school to our village is about 35 minutes, mostly downhill, with about 10 minutes of incline walking. The walk is beautiful (but it rains randomly), and passes through Ta’u, so often when we walk, Emily and I will stop on the beach to collect shells. Emily walks every day. I walk about half of the time. Our principal, Diana, gives us rides whenever we need, and often takes us to the stores on the hill. School is pretty much our life right now, but we also have tons of time in the pm to be productive and unwind. We are usually in bed by 9:30pm, and the bus arrives every morning around 7:00am.
We have only been here three weeks, tomorrow, but it feels like months! Our weekends have been productive. We’ve been to barbecues, been on hikes over the mountain; last weekend, Kyle went night-spear-fishing (girls can only go during the day), and we attended a Sunday school dance next door, with some of our high school students. It was SO much fun and I got to dance for hours to island pop music, often tailored to us, like La Bamba was dedicated to us. Dances here almost always have live bands, which I love. Every Sunday morning we attend church. As an atheist, being in church actually doesn’t bother me at all. Religion has never really meant all that much to be, and less in my later years, so going through the motions is easy. Not going to church here would raise more questions than we are able to answer. Plus we get to hear the beautiful voices of the choir. Sundays are rest days here. You cannot swim and you basically can’t do anything- we use them as catch-up days when we can be productive, but only around the house. We also usually are brought feasts of food on Sundays. People here just kind of eat and sleep. Labor day weekend, Andrew hopped a boat full of pirates named Denzel Washington and Tom Cruise, drunk as skunks, over to our island to spend the weekend. We had a lot of fun, and then when it came time for him to return to Olasega, to teach at his middle school, he was stranded due to the weather. He ended up here until Wednesday- who knows what they did at his school. We collect tons and tons of shells here. My favorites are these purple ones, and cream-colored spiral ones. I’ve also started to collect seaglass. Last weekend, one of my awesome students, Luo, taught me how to open a coconut properly. Tonight, I opened my first coconut (husk and all) using a butcher knife and my bare hands and muscles, and was able to extract the coconut water into a jar, before cutting into the delicious meat. It is SO much fun to be able to do these things! Everything I am experiencing here is exactly what I wanted this year to be. I could not have tailored this year any better than it turned out.
I have had several realizations in the past few weeks. The first is that this will probably be my last year abroad. From now on, if I live abroad, it will be for a few months only. If I love it there, I will stay longer. But somehow signing up for these programs makes me feel trapped- if you know me and my commitment phobia. I’m excited for the year, and time is already flying, but I think this is my last before-known year-long program. Second, I don’t think I want to be a teacher. I never did, and then last month I had the epiphany that my calling in life was to be a teacher. Then I started teaching, and like everything else I am ever interested in, it faded quickly. So, I am frustrated again to have no life path. That being said, I am getting things out of my system, and trying things I have always wondered about. I have always wanted to see if I could teach math. I have always wanted to try. Now I will have. I like it, but I don’t love it. Third- I miss New York this week. My first month and a half here, NY and the USAO were almost out of my mind. Then this week I started to miss them- mostly my old office. I cannot believe still that I am not a part of that anymore. I get updates and “miss you” emails from my coworkers, and I would give anything in those moments to be back there going on starbucks runs with them. They were my everything in NY and I probably will never have that much fun again at a job, with coworkers. I miss the attorneys and the magesticness and closeness of the office. Noone here really cares about my stories from the craziest, most interesting office in the country. It’s like all of my memories are still in that office, and the outside world just doesn’t care. If I could zap myself there for an hour, once or twice a month, I would be happy. I knew it was time to leave, and I do not want to be a paralegal forever, but I will miss it forever. I still think it is the best time I will ever have in a job, even if that is depressing to think about. It was amazing. That job was stressful and brainless. My current position is brainful, demanding and exhausting, but not stressful.
Life on Manu’a is all island, all of the time. There are several things every day that make you stop and think how lucky you are to be here. There are also several spots on the hill that are my favorite- spots where all you can see through the trees is the Pacific Ocean, forever. Those views remind me of where I am, and how far removed we really are from the rest of the world. It’s like a beautiful reality check. Every view is breathtaking, whether the ocean, or the lush cliffs, towering over the villages. Time is flying, which in my view, means there are things here weekly to look forward to (usually my planning periods), and I can’t ask for more than that. So, for the people in Miami, when you see a coconut, think of me. For the people in New York, when you are near the Brooklyn Bridge, think of me in my cubicle there. And for everyone else in the world, think of me in the sun, somewhere below the equator. I am thinking of you guys all of the time!
Much, much, much love from somewhere in the middle of the Pacific Ocean,
C