After spending an extended stay in my new village, I’ve finally touched base with my new roommates from Japan. Ryuta Takeda works as an agricultural studies teacher here and my other roommate, Miyazaki, works as a home economics teacher. There are a lot worse things out there than living with a Japanese gardener and a Japanese chef! On a bit of a concerning note, I came walking down the main path from my village to my secluded home by the school and I was suddenly surrounded by a pack of nasty wild dogs. They’re like demons. They circle you and their faces are terrifying. Typically this type of situation is avoided by shouting, “alu!” (go away!) and throwing rocks. The act of picking up a rock usually does the trick because the dogs know what is coming but for some reason I choked. They were closing in on me when suddenly one of my students who lives in a local fale came running outside hurling a series of well-aimed stones at the demons causing much yelping and panic. When I first got here I would have felt bad about this but your mind eventually changes once it gets real. Something comes over the dogs at night and it’s almost like they become werewolves. That night I lay in bed listening to the awful noises the demons made from under the moonlight. From now on I am much better prepared for such encounters. So yeah. These days I’m groovin’. I really enjoy my school and the people I work with. I’m bad with names but there is this one guy who is an aged surfer who knows all of the breaks in Samoa. There is another guy that also surfs who acts as my counterpart that would be considered scary to look at by conservative standards for he is covered with tattoos on every part of his body including his hands and the side of his face. He really is a great guy though and I think the two of us are becoming good friends out here. My dining room has become a pretty rad place to center myself. It looks a bit like an art studio with drawing and painting supplies spread out everywhere and random bits of art that I’ve created laying around. Yesterday I built thirteen computers out of spare parts lying around and declared the storage room of our school to be our new computer lab. This village is a bit bigger than Ma’asina and integration is a much more tedious task whereas I can walk into any fale in Ma’asina and be well taken care of. My friend Bob from Peace Corps and I took it upon ourselves to sit at an ‘ava circle the other day without knowing anybody there. This, as you might imagine, is an excellent language experience. Outside of Apia, people talk fast and are not as sympathetic to those who do not understand the language. With only a few embarrassing errors I managed to slide through the typical conversation of, “do you have a girlfriend? Do you want one?” I like to respond, “Yes, I have one on Upolu, one on Savai’i, one on Apolima, and one fa’afafine (cross dresser)” This usually gets a few laughs and something like, “wow, you’re really out there man.” I think I was stung in the foot by a centipede too. Something got me then took off like a coward but it was dark and I didn’t get a close look. I’ve been giving it a lot of thought and frankly I’m quite torn these days. 49.5 percent of me wants to continue forever down a humanitarian volunteer path traveling to places like India and Africa so I can donate all of my energy to the good of humankind. 49.5 percent of me wants to go down the path of the experimental explorer who vanishes into the wilderness of the world and finds himself in extremely dangerous situations and lives to write a book about it. The other 1% wants to live on the beach and draw pictures. The point is that I feel a fire from within and as I approach one quarter of a century of age I simply refuse to stop. My only fear is to end up like one of the many weirdos that I’ve met along the way who are so out there that they are annoying and they no longer have any sense of reality (sorry James, you’re odd.. I love you but you’re pretty out there). I suppose I’ll probably find a common ground between my three options. Regardless, Samoa is my home now and I am very happy here. The sun is falling over the ocean as it does every night and a beautiful rain is falling on my roof. The mountain behind me has vanished meaning that it is going to be a stormy night. Cheers from Leulumoega!
Rockin the 'ava with Lop-nugs
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