Amalau Camping

A little partied out from the preceding weekend, neither Sara nor I were sure we could muster the necessary enthusiasm for the Spartacus themed-party that most of the palagi community was going to this weekend. Thus, we jumped at the suggestion from our Aussie friends to go camping at the Amalau "resort" for Saturday night. Resort is used loosely, since the facility is little more than a collection of open-sided fales along the beach.

The campsite is on the beach in a small cove on the north side of Tutuila. The village of Amalau is on the hillside above the camp. This is easily one of the smallest villages remaining on the island. It only has three or four houses, all along the driveway in to the camp. That makes finding the camp a little challenging, since there isn't anything more a driveway and a few trashcans on the main road to indicate the presence of a the camp ground. On our own, Sara and I would never have found this place. That's the advantage of meeting some AmSam veterans.

The fales are little more than wood platforms with roofs and an electrical light in the middle. They were a prime place to hang out and read our books. We set up tents in the fales and used our memory foam mattress pad as a sleeping mat.

We showed up on Saturday afternoon and started setting up camp. We managed to work in some beer drinking, beach walks, cocktail hour, lawn bocce ball and barbecuing that afternoon. It was just like camping on the mainland, but it's on the beach in paradise.

We also forgot a few key items for camping, namely a pot and a barbecue. We managed to improvise a barbecue from a sawed in half oil drum. Not ideal for efficiency, but it let us grill our dinner and heat a pan for breakfast. The lack of a pot was a little more difficult. We ended up finding an old coconut that had be opened up and the contents drained. We ended up scrubbing it out and heating it on the grill. It took a long time, but we managed to make a pot of coffee in the french press and show our camp MacGyver skills at work. The coals ran out before we got to try it again, but next time we're going to work a little harder to remember the basics.

One of the highlights of the camping was our bonfire on the beach. Sara and I turned this into a bit of a ceremonial event. We had been trying to figure out what to do with our pallet since our shipment from the mainland arrived. We'd toyed with the idea of making some furniture from it, but once we figured out how many tools we'd need to purchase it didn't seem to make sense. With that plan blown up, we'd left the pallet in the corner for over a month. When camping came up, we knew we had a final use for the pallet - a beach bonfire. It was our symbolic cutting of the cord with our mainland life.

Sunday morning we were woken up by the local chicken population scratching around the camp for forage. The roosters were also making themselves known a little before sun up. Not ideal, as we'd been up late in the evening enjoying our bonfire.

The one negative to come from the weekend was on Sunday. When we woke up, the wind was raging hard at the camp. We'd hoped to go out to the Vatia tide pools, which were located at the point at the end of Amalau Bay, and snorkel back to the camp. However, with the winds whipping through hard, the visibility was shot. We tried to wait out the wind, but after a few hours of it being too windy to read a book we packed it in and made for home.

Saddle Sunset

Jay and I had discussed going up to the saddle between Rainmaker Mountain and Alava Ridge for quite some time. Last week after work, we finally made it a reality. We left the office, drove around Pago Harbor and stopped at a local convenience store to grab a couple of Steinlagers and some snacks (in this case, bread fruit chips and ahi poke).

We then drove up the super-steep switchbacks heading up to the saddle and pulled off to the side of the road. This view greeted us at the top along with a nice cool breeze and a much-needed dose of tranquility. A single Samoan man was sitting along the guardrail with us, but after a toothy smile and brief "malo," he left and began to walk down the mountain road.

As we sat there drinking in the view, we were greeted by flocks of tiny swiftlets, who were using their echolocation to wheel past us in crazy patterns, presumably to catch the insects swirling in the late afternoon light.

To our immediate left was an aspect of Rainmaker Mountain, which really shows you how steep some of the terrain is here. As we admired the cliffs, we also noticed some larger white birds flying in pairs with long white tails, which were unlike any we had ever seen. One of our many intrepid biologist friends later informed us that they were the aptly named tropicbird, though he seemed to be a bit distressed that he couldn't remember the Samoan name for it.

Finally, as dusk began to set in, we saw several large fruit bats, whose languid wing strokes distinguish them from anything else in the sky.

We enjoyed our Steinlagers on the guardrail and then took the switchbacks back down to Pago. It was an excellent way to wind down after a day in the office and an experience I'm sure we'll repeat in the coming months, at least until the rains hit....

Happy Birthday Sarah - Bling Toga Party

Here are a few context free photos from the bling toga party we threw for Australian Sarah's birthday.

Manu'a Flag Day Morning Paddle

Sara and I have been keeping up with our paddling group. We've been making a regular effort to go every Monday, Wednesday and Friday after work for the past three weeks. This last Friday was Manu'a Flag Day, so we had the day off from work. This led to our paddling group's decision to do a morning paddle, since most of us were planning on playing some sloshball in the afternoon.

One nice thing about the morning paddle was the pace was a little more leisurely than normal, as we weren't racing to get our trip up and back down the harbor in before darkness closes in. The extra time allowed us to take a longer route and stop for a little longer between legs. This let Sara and I have some down time to snap some photos.

The morning trip was also interesting, since the harbor as more alive with activity than it usually is in the evening. Instead of being just a few outriggers and the harbor patrol boats on the water, we were dodging fishing boats coming into port, large ships moving from the repair docks to the port and boats of all sorts heading in to the fueling station. Being a tiny, slow, man-powered canoe darting between these hulking commercial vessels, all of which (we hope) will adhere to a specific, on-the-water right of way system is like a gigantic game of chicken. Spending your days on land sometimes makes you forget how much of life on the island revolves around the things that come to the territory from the sea.

Paddling's been a good workout. It's a test of strength, endurance, technique and a zen like

quality to repeat the same series of motions hundreds of times. Every time out I feel I improve a little bit and find a new part on my body to get sore. Hopefully if I stick with it I'll start to resemble some of the Samoans who we go with, they are walls of muscle.

The hardest part of paddling is moving the boats to and from the water. The outrigger canoes are approximately 40 feet long fiberglass hulls, with the ama outrigger arm off to one side, which all-together weigh close to 400 pounds. The crew of the boat needs to flip the boat over in the water, without allowing it to fill with water and then carry the boat across a lava rock and coral covered beach, up to the lawn where the boats are stored on. After an hour paddling around the bay, this can be a difficult move, depending on how many people are there to assist with the carrying. In the end, it's worth the opportunity to get out on the water and get some physical activity in.

Manu'a Flag Day - Let's Play Sloshball

Friday was Manu'a Flag Day. Meaning that 110 years ago, this was the day that the Manu'a Islands cession to American Samoa and thus the US. Nobody here on Tutuila makes a big deal about it. The Manu'a Islands are pretty small, remote and difficult to get to, only Ta'u is large enough to get commercial flights. Next year we may try and get there for the holdiay and see if the population of 800 people gets up and does anything special to celebrate. The one things that gets anyone's interested in Manu'a Flag Day on our island is the government gets the day off work. With most of the Palagi community off, one of our coworkers hosted a wiffleball sloshball game.

The game was hosted at the other large government housing facility, Lion's Park. We showed up on time, which was about an hour before everyone else. Oh, Island Time. The version of sloshball played here is team pitch wiffleball and is played on a pretty small field. No gloves or cleats are used and pegging a runner gets the fielding team an out. Runners must open a beer at second-base, which conveniently is a cooler. The beer cannot be put down until the runner finishes the beer, this includes after the runner gets out, takes the field or even comes up to bat again, otherwise it's normal softball rules.

We were blessed with some excellent weather. The unprecedented dry spell that's been lingering over the island gave us blue skies and a dry field, other than a pregame squall that rolled over the nearby lagooon. The experienced players had stories about deep mud, rain outs and brutal humidity marring past sloshball games.

We played a little over seven innings. With our team staging a comeback from being down big early in the game before the it was called due to darkness. This was fortunate, since the game was tied when it was called and neither team could claim bragging rights for this competition of skill and beer drinking.

Once the game was done the event turned into a barbecue and party. Most people had a good time hanging out after the game. A few of the World Teach Teachers stopped by after their orientation. Most of them were being prepared to be shipped off to outlying islands in a few weeks. That would make for an interesting experience for a year.

Overall it was an unexpected success. We had a great time hanging out, and outside of some late night antics by some uninvited Samoan guests that ended the evening on a poor note it was a fun time for all. Hopefully we won't have to wait 5 months until someone plans another sloshball game.

Sliding Rock, at High Tide

In the aftermath of the fa'afaine pageant we went to, we made plans with an Aussie couple that we've been hanging out with to go to Sliding Rock. I'd been to Sliding Rock my first weekend on island, but Sara had yet to be. The place has a reputation for being many people's favorite spot in American Samoa, and deservedly so.

We started off the trip with a lunch at our house. We were shooting to get to Sliding Rock a little before what Ben, our Australian marine biologist, told us would be low tide. During lunch some of our neighbors dropped by. We ended up inviting them to join our expedition. So off we went to Sliding Rock.

Sara quickly pointed out that she had never been west from our house. Since work and the major villages and shops are to the east of us, we'd never yet gone towards that end of the island from our place. Time to open up another horizon. We got to Sliding Rock and parked up the coast, to avoid paying for parking.

We opted to hike to the tide pools along the shore, instead of taking the path through the forest. It was a bit of a scramble up and down the lava cliffs.

What really made it worth it was beach combing for seashells with a marine biologist on our walk out. He was able to pick out five times the shells my untrained eyes could. What had been previously just pretty shells to me were now being identified by genus and species for us. That alone was worth the trip.

As we were making the walk out, Ben started to pay more attention to the large waves rolling in. He was also a bit worried that the tide was not anywhere near low. Too late to do much about it.

The highlight of Sliding Rock is a series of tide pools, that are protected by a large wall of lava rock, which will occasionally let larger waves surge through to feed to pools. When we arrived there there were a number of Samoans wading and hanging out. We parked ourselves on some rocks near the cliffs that lead up to the forest and started to unpack our things. Sara and Aussie Sarah took it upon themselves to hop into some smaller pools that were a little downstream of the main tide pools. While they were relaxing and enjoying the smaller pools, Ben and I were unpacking and getting our stuff situated for an afternoon of hanging out. And then, disaster struck.

Ben and I were in the perfect spot to see it all unfold. A large wave came rushing through the saddle in the outer rock wall that holds most of the ocean out of the tide pools. It inundated the closer tide pool and overflowed into the second pool. The next wave in the set was larger. It too blew through the gap in the breakwater, since the first pool was still swollen full from the first wave, the wave carried straight threw to the second pool. A Samoan standing on the rock partition between the pools stood there like a deer in the headlights. The wave came through that spot at 4 feet high. He was washed down the rock slope on his butt into the second tide pool, which was filled with lounging his friends. The surge from the second wave overflowed the second pool.

The third wave in the series was even larger. It overflowed both pools and pushed everyone in them floating down through the series of tide pools, where the Sara(h)s were soaking. Ben and I looked on from our dry vantage point. There was nothing we could do to help our respective partners as they were being washed towards the pounding surf and lava-rock cliffs that would meet them at the end of the tide pools.

Both girls were swept up in the wave. Sara was carried to the next pool down before she could use her feet to dig into the lava-rock. When the water receded, Ben and I stood came over to survey the damage. Sara and Sarah were both scraped up after getting caught in the waves. They both had been dragged over a fair amount of lava rock.

They fared better than the Samoans. We talked with them after everything settled following the waves. Several of them had large cuts and scrapes that were dripping blood onto the rocks we convened on. They quickly packed up and headed out to clean their wounds.

We stayed, despite the injuries and ended up camping out a high rock outcropping that was above where the waves could reach. After looking at the water, it was nearing high tide. Our intrepid marine scientist got it wrong. Must be because those Southern Hemisphere types have it all upside-down. Since anything more than quick dips in the pool was not in the cards, we did some sunning on the rocks and hung out. One of our later arriving neighbors hauled a cooler of beer and some dominoes out to the rocks and we made an afternoon of it.

Just another afternoon in paradise.

Local Produce

Shopping at the market here is change of pace from home. Anything that's not grown on the island needs to come here via a shipping container, which is a long slow process. In the market, heads of lettuce are usually wilted and tired. Tomatoes and peppers need to be inspected for mold and rot. Broccoli tends to be yellow and sad. All are expensive and of questionable quality, if you can even find them at one of the larger stores.

Thus, since arriving on island, Sara and I have been doing our best to eat and cook the local items. The local produce lining the shelves is decidedly different in the tropics than it is back on the mainland. 2 pound bags of japanese eggplant, chinese long beans, taro and yams can be had for a dollar from roadside stands. If you want the convenience of a store, you'll pay $1.50. Pineapples are $3-5 each, 10 pounds of husked coconuts are $5 and 5 pounds of green bananas go for $1. And that's if you're too lazy to find a tree to pick them off yourself.

From this abundance of island-grown food, Sara and I have been experimenting with new items and trying to figure out how to cook with them. Our first attempts have centered around a bunch of green bananas we picked up at the outdoor market. The locals use them much the way potatoes are used on the mainland. They're boiled for approximately 10 minutes to start the cooking process.

After that the peel gets pulled off and then the inside is prepared in a variety of ways. Thus far we've seen them sliced thin and deep fried, like a potato chip; julienned and fried, like french fries; and stewed in coconut milk.

We boiled them and made home fries with them. They are surprisingly good with just salt and pepper. They made some excellent filling for breakfast burritos or as sides for dinner.

The bananas are very starchy and lacking the sweetness found in bananas back on the mainland. We are going to try several more variations on this going forward. They're good right off the stove and the leftovers also make good lunches to take into the office.

After finishing off the bananas, we went for a basket of taro root, mostly since we wanted the basket they were displayed in at the market. Once we got home, the taro was safely transferred into an old Vailima box and the basket made of palm fronds is holding magazines on our coffee table.

Our first go round with taro was a little trying. We scrubbed as much of

the dirt and roots as we could off of the outside of the taro root. Next step was to boil the root until a fork would easily slide into the body of the root. Once cooked we cooled the roots in the fridge. Our next task was to skin the taro root. It didn't want to take the easy way out and use a vegetable peeler, like a sane person would. I thought this would remove too much of the purple outside part, which in my mind has more of the flavor. After two hours of peeling the slimy, mostly cooked taro root, I managed to get several pounds of taro prepped. Next time it's going to be with a knife or a peeler. - There's a reason our ancestors invented tools.

After all that peeling I wanted nothing to do with the slimy texture of the taro. I opted slice the taro into rounds, season them with some olive oil and curry powder and bake them. This crisped away the slimy exterior and gave a nice caramelized finish to the outside of the taro. Once baked, they make excellent snacks and go great with ketchup.

We're going try a similar batch this weekend with Cajun seasoning. Should be some good eating.

Fa'afafine Pageant

Samoan culture overall is very conservative. Church attendance in American Samoa is near 100%. The missionaries that came over to the islands were ruthlessly efficient in instilling their values to the Samoan people. Women still have very traditional roles in family life. Gays are not tolerated. The men hold very patriarchal positions in both the tribal government and the home. So it is quite unusual to have something like the fa'afafine as a part of the Samoan culture. Fa'afafine or "Fa'afas" are a sort of third gender here in American Samoa. They are biologically male, but for either division of household labor purposes or based on the effeminate traits of the child growing up, are raised as female. They wear women's clothing and fill womanly roles in the house and society.

They are also a gray area in the black and white traditional Christian morality that Samoan culture paints about gays. Since a fa'afafine is not considered male or female, they are able to court either males or females without rankling societal norms.

My daily life had introduced me to a few fa'afafines, but they mostly registered as a curiosity more than a something I'd given much thought to. That is until paddling last Wednesday. One of our team captains mentioned that she was selling tickets to the Miss Flowers Pagaent, a fa'afafine beauty pageant being put on at a hotel near our house. Not having any Saturday evening plans, we bought tickets and rallied a few of our friends to join us for the festivities.

The pageant was slightly more serious than a drag queen show, but only slightly. The festivities started off with the actual (female) Miss American Samoa doing a dance and warming up the crowd with some banter. Things were then turned over to our MCs, a few island personalities that were lost to Sara and I. The evening was

then in the hands of the fa'afas. They treated the crowd to traditional beauty pageant staples like promenading in formal gowns and swimwear competition. There were also some less typical aspects, like one category that had the competitors model outfits they made out of flowers and other local flora. There were a few spectacular dresses made from orchid flowers, it made the ulas which are a regular part of local life look pale in comparison.

The talent part of the competition was also pretty wild. There were a number of lip synched dance routines, one stand up comedy act which was unfortunately in Samoan, and a rendition of Whitney Houston's "I Will Always Love You" that ended with the fa'afa singing it giving birth to a mannequin's head. It was a pretty wild event.

All the fa'afafines were representing different sports clubs from the island. Another part of the competition involved them doing a turn on the runway while wearing the sports gear for the club they were representing. It was pretty obvious that just about all of them had not participated in the sports they were chosen to represent. The one representing the football team had the right idea: she dressed up as a cheerleader instead of throwing on a helmet and shoulder pads. This was a decidedly better option than the one representing volleyball, who sent an errant ball off into the crowd.

After the winner had been crowned, Sara, our Hawaiian friend and I were able to go up on stage on get pictures with the competitors. They were friendly, eager to engage with us and very sweaty.

Here's the local news coverage of the event:

http://samoanews.com/viewstory.php?storyid=28180

Overall it was a great evening.

Aunu'u, Finally

Determined to finally make it out to Aunu'u, Sara and I headed out there on the 4th of July. American Samoa doesn't have much in the way of organized celebrations for Independence Day. They spend most of their national pride on Flag Day in April. It's more of a "dependence day" celebration, since it's celebrating the anniversary of when American Samoa joined the US as a territory at the turn of the Twentieth Century.

Instead of sitting around and barbecuing, we opted to use the holiday to explore and make the trip which had been denied to us before. we drove out to the East side of Tutuila to the wharf that serves as the access point for catching boats over to Aunu'u.

Aunu'u is a small island about a mile from Tutuila. About 400 people live on the island and there's a constant ferry of boats going back forth between the wharf on Tutuila and the little harbor on Aunu'u. We caught one of the ferries, along with a few locals and some boxes of supplies. It cost a dollar and took about 15 minutes to navigate the waves and the channel between the islands. Supposedly if it gets too rough the shuttles stop running. That would make life on the island quite interesting.

Once we de-boated on Aunu'u we were greeted by two boys, Cruise and "Raiders." They offered to be our guides on the island. Not one to turn down help, we took them up on their offer.

We started by taking the road which circles the island. It's a coral track that runs along the beach. The first sight they showed us was a bee hive in the middle of a mango tree. This picture is as close as we dared get, but if you see into the hollowed trunk, it's a mass of honeycomb and bees. It was a pretty cool sight. It was also one that we never would have seen without our guides.

We next stopped off in the wetlands which make up much of the middle of Aunu'u. The wetlands are mostly used as taro fields and tilapia ranches. This area is supposed to be quicksand, but we didn't see anything sink in, so we'll need to take our guides' word on that.

We next hiked up to the rim of the crater. Much of Aunu'u is the remains of a extinct volcanic cone. This is the view from the rim looking South towards the other end of the crater. Much of the slopes of the crater are farmed for bananas. We saw a few of the farmers along the hike out.

At the far end of the crater, there are some spectacular rock formations. Cruise told us a local legend that the one pictured here used to be a woman, her lover is the other rock that is across the small bay from her. We were also sternly warned not to go swimming here, but that fishing was supposed to be good and there were some tidal pools that are nice to hang out in at low tide. Seeing as we were here at high tide and wanted to catch the boat home before they stopped running at 5pm, we didn't linger too long.

We also didn't linger because our guides informed us that the place was haunted by spirits. A few times on the way out we were hushed and told to walk closely together. Not seeking to be visited by ghosts, we acquiesced to our guides' instructions. However, a surreptitiously thrown rock into a nearby tree spooked the kids and helped affirm their belief that several long stretches of the trail were haunted.

The hill we hiked to make our way of the crater was what I would term a short and shallow graded hike. Our guides were winded after a short ascent, so we were instructed to stop and wait at a few different spots. Living on a small island and a Samoan diet was not doing these kids any fitness favors.

We finished our hike back at the little village we started. We'd done a little figure 8 around the two wetland/lakes on the island and saw it all in less than 4 hours. I'm sure we'll head back on a day when we have more time to stop and enjoy the swimming holes.