The Drum Maker

I saw lightning strike so close the other day that it blinded me. It was an afternoon in Savaia where my friend Aaron lives when a few of us had made our way to his neck of the woods via hitchhiking and lifts from ‘family’ friends. This extended weekend was rad because I got to tickle my adventure side and I also got to see where some of my friends live. I think that after seeing the quaint little fales a few of them live in that I feel every home out here is completely unique. Laura has this awesome fale in Tafatafa that is surrounded by huge black lava rocks that seems to be a perfect home for her. The words, ‘You Welcome’ are written on the inside as a greeting to her from her host family and I can’t stop finding the humor in that. Meghan has another cool fale behind a faleoloa in Siumu that once again seems perfect for her. I find it really interesting how each of us is put into such different places and the personalities of our villages seems to stay with us the longer we live there. I really like my home in Leulumoega and I love the people I live with. I think that living with two Japanese volunteers has been a wonderful bonus for my experience here and just as everybody else does, I have a very unique situation.

The weekend was really cool. I rode a crowded bus across the island with Laura and Lopi to make our way to the south end where our tour began. Over the next few days we would travel far west ending up at Return to Paradise Beach, which was actually the first beach I ever visited in Samoa many months ago. Aaron was helping four high school students from the states with a two week engagement they were privileged with. I think it was a really great opportunity for them to see a far off chunk of the world at a young age and I doubt they will walk away from this without taking something from it. This village was hosting a fiafia for the students and we were invited. It turned into a big dance party and I have to say that it was a good time. As they say, pictures are worth a thousand words so I think for this entry I will leave the details of this weekend in the pixels of digital photography.

The drum maker.. I miss my drums at home. Over the last few years of college, even extending back into my senior year of high school, I have gathered an impressive collection of drums. I have maybe four djembes, a toumbek, some bongos, a dhalk, and many more. With those I have fond memories of my room at the Trumbull house full of friends and strangers drumming loudly into the night. It hit me at the fiafia that this was a feeling I really miss. We spontaneously decided to perform our sasa from our last fiafia as a group and although it was sloppy and spur of the moment I think it was kind of fun. I got to be the drummer this time and I played this wooden cylinder drum with two sticks (I typically prefer hand drumming) and something about drumming for a room of people woke up a great feeling inside. So I’ve decided that I want to make a drum, maybe a few. I think I can start simple with the many coconut shell resources available and ideally it would be cool to carve out a piece of wood as a base. We’ll have to see how this story unfolds. Being stuck in my village all week unleashes strange behavior. Some weeks I feel like an animal, sometimes like a nomad, but other times I feel really motivated to create and I see between the lines of the ordinary and the surreal. One time I stared at this stain on my ceiling for perhaps a half hour and eventually it began to look like a human face. This became a picture I made many times until I was able to draw exactly what I saw in my mind. Something strange is happening lately. Just like being able to see the surreal in the ordinary I feel like lately I’ve been able to see the rhythms in the things we would normally consider silent. I haven’t felt this since Detroit when my friends and I would spontaneously drum or make beats on tables and cups. It is a form of communication and a language I feel that everyone can speak if they try. This time around I might be speaking that language to myself for a while but you never know.. maybe that spontaneity will one day wash up on the shores of this fair island.