Memorial Day Weekend - Friday-Saturday

The weekend was packed, everyday brought a new adventure. Starting out late last week, one of my coworkers informed me that there was a dying tradition for new pulangi arrivals on the island to throw a barbecue within their first week on island. Not being one to deny tradition or refuse a beer fueled event, I accepted the gauntlet. Thursday I sent out emails to the list serv that links the (mostly) contract ex-pat community in Tutuila. On Friday and Saturday, I spent some time day planning and gathering supplies.

Part of the challenge with starting from zero in a household in a new place is not having the basics. Everything you need requires a trip to the store. Your usual routine of stocking up on the items you know you recently ran out of and grabbing one or two special items because they were on sale or specifically needed no longer exists.

This situation gets compounded when even kitchen hardware and gadgets fall into that same situation. For example, I don't have a cooler on island (I shipped two on my pallet, but the pallet is still in transit and likely won't arrive for several weeks). Coolers are expensive in American Samoa. The cost of retail items here is almost directly related to how much they cost to ship here. The biggest driving factor in shipping freight overseas is the volume, not the weight of the cargo. Coolers, being large, bulky items that don't nest or pack close are costly. A standard backyard barbecue friendly cooler costs over $100 here.

Thus being cheap and inventive rather than a solution-focused consumer is often the best solution when making purchases on the island. For this BBQ, the chosen method to keep drinks cold was a plastic bin some my kitchenware set came in. The grill I used was a rusting heap that had remained from a prior tenant on my back porch. A few grocery runs and I'm set to host an event.

We set up at the pool area of my housing complex. I'd been warned people would show up late. With a 6pm start time, no guest who lived outside the housing complex came before 7pm. Everything here happens on "island time" even the pulangi. Despite the late start, approximately twenty people showed up and hung out until around midnight. The BBQ went well and I was glad to meet some more people. Definitely the right way to start off my social gatherings here in American Samoa.