Pese Video

Video of our pese performance got posted on You Tube. Hope this takes some of the sting out of the 49ers game from earlier today...

Pese Performance

Our big pese performance was last Friday. We had a midday practice (with last minute changes still being made to the songs we were going to be performing...grrr). At the end our rehearsal the AG told everyone to go home and relax for the rest of the afternoon. That sounded great, but with looming appeal deadline and motion deadlines, most of us attorneys were back in the office for the rest of the day. Once 4 o'clock rolled around we rallied up at Sadie's-by-the-Sea for some pre-performance libations and a bite of food. Our department was scheduled to be the second group to go on the third and last night of pese. After some grub and socializing it was time for us to get in uniform and head over to the field where we perform. I was worried about parking, as this was a big festival that I'd heard people discussing all year. Much to my surprise parking was easy and close and we were over and waiting as the first group of performers go on stage and started in with their singing.

Several large tents occupied the area in front of the stage. This played into the lack of crowds in front of the stage, most views outside of the VIP tent would be blocked. Most Samoans stay home and watch the performances on television. Only the VIPs who are invited by the governor are expected to be at the live performances. We gathered with the rest of the Department of Legal Affairs staff and watched the first group of performers take their turn in the spot light.

Eventually towards the end of the first performance we lined up in the back of the stage and prepared to go on-stage. We filed out, I ended up near the rear of the group (one of the advantages of being tall). Our performance started out with a speech by the Attorney General and the head of immigration, both in Samoan.

We then launched into our songs. We'd settled on an order and how they would be performed and it felt like a good performance. We received several compliments in the following days and people also told us they were impressed we were singing in Samoan. Looks like the broadcasts did focus in on us for our pese. We've also heard that there's video out there of us, we're working on getting a copy and will update accordingly.

Only in Samoa...

Sara and I took a quick coffee run to the McDonald's Drive-Thru (ironically one of the only places you can get a decent cup of joe on the island) this morning. In the line for ordering saw one of the odder moments that has happened tin front of us here. Someone was ordering their meal from the back of an ATV. This had us both laughing out loud.

Transportation on the island is pretty laissez-faire. It's frequent to see 5 or 6 people riding in the back of a pickup truck and aiga buses are colorful and loud substitutes for public transportation that often fill up to the point that new riders need to sit on the laps of people with seats. That said the sight of a four-wheeled dirt-bike grabbing a bite at McDonald's was new on us. Just another reminder that even though we've been here for 7 months this island will still find ways to surprise you.

Pese is in full swing

On my way back from High Court this morning, after arguing an interesting case, I was greeted with quite a set of sights and sounds in the atrium to the Executive Office Building. One of the government departments was in full rehearsal mode doing choir practice. It made for a livelier walk than usual back up to the office.

With the first night of pese scheduled to start tonight the American Samoa Government departments are doubling up on their practice time. This whole week there has been music echoing through the office building as well as long practices for our office every afternoon. Even at Court this morning the witnesses I had were bragging about last years' performances and talking up their shows for this year. Should be quite a festival over the next three evenings.

Sara and I were among the members of our office to help pick out the pese uniforms for the Department of Legal Affairs. This meant that we got to go to the fabric store pick the fabric that all the members of the Department would use to make their uniforms and then had sample designs knocked up by one of the local sewing shops for the men's and women's uniforms to show the rest of the office how to have their's made. It was classic group decision making, with several opinions pulling the print and design their own direction, but we were happy with the end product and are looking forward to seeing it on display at our televised performance on Friday.

Pese Practice has Begun

A unique Samoan cultural event has started to happen this week in our office. For an hour each afternoon, the whole office shuts down. All the employees filter out of their desks and head down to the lobby for Immigration. We then sit on benches and chairs pulled in from the Immigration Office. In the center of the room is a Casio keyboard. We then start practicing Christmas songs for an hour. In a few weeks our department (and all other government departments over the course of three evenings) will perform at the stage across the street from the legislature in front of the governor and the performance will be broadcast on TV. The name of this who deal is Pese.

As a person of limited musical talent, this is a bizarre use of my work hours. All but one of the songs we are working on are in Samoan, a language that has me struggling to say the name of the village I live in. Singing in it adds a whole other layer of difficulty. Not mention being asked to memorize lyrics has me wondering what I signed up for. Oh yeah and the lyric sheets we were handed out had several lines that we aren't singing. No one's bothered to explain this to us first-timers. We need to figure it out as we got or get yelled at in Samoan when the song leader takes umbrage with our signing. Worst of all, apparently the television cameras inevitably focus in on the palagi faces in the crowd. I'm sort of dreading this recital.

One fun component of all this is Sara and a few of our friends were tasked with choosing the fabric and design of the matching uniforms everyone from our department will wear for the performance. This meant that we went to the fabric store picked out a fabric that had a large enough amount to make shirts for the men and pulatasis for the ladies. The four people on the uniform committee had to debate and compromise their way to one fabric and design they could settle on. To ensure the printed fabric wouldn't run out, the rolls of it were placed on reserve. Our next task was to take the fabric to a sewing shot across the street and started having them knock up the samples that we can show the rest of the office the design. We were measured and the design was described, we'll be modelling the designs on Monday for the office.

I never thought I'd be using my law degree to entertain quite in this way. We'll hopefully be able to get some video of the performance to post...

Halloween and Melbourne Cup

Monday started out a little different from a usual week. Sara and I were walking up the stairs toour office when we saw the Commissioner of the Workmen's Compensation Commission and one a member of her staff. They were carrying several large tin trays of food up to their office. After engaging in a little conversation, we were invited to come by their office at 11 for lunch. I said I would come if my trial that was scheduled for that morning didn't go.

Turns out the attorney for the plaintiff couldn't reach his client and therefore got the trial taken off calendar. This was the third trial date set in this case, sigh. Litigating in Samoa can be a little frustrating, but with my morning freed up, I was able to get back to the office much earlier than I anticipated. After using the rest the morning drafting discovery responses, I chatted Sara and suggested we go over to the Workmen's Comp Commission Office in the Executive Office Building.

We walked down the stairs and over to the WCC and came in and said hello to the staffer at the front desk. She welcomed us in and had the Commissioner come out and greet us. The Commissioner's husband was also there (who also happens to be the judge I was in front of earlier that morning).

Together we walked over to another department and were greeted to a number of government employees in costume starting to set up some 6 huge tables for food. We were introduced to the crowd, many of whom were in costume (and a large percentage of those were dressed as doctors or nurses, a statement on how the scariest thing in AmSam is the hospital), and were welcomed to their lunch. After a few pictures and fielding some requests for me to take pictures with the young ladies who work in that office, we were ready for the meal. Each person there had brought a large tray of meat or platter of dishes. There were several portions of pig, corned beef, pizzas, chicken, fish and chow mien. Sara and I were whisked to the front of the line as "guests."

Being the finicky-diet-people that we are, Sara and I had to work hard to put together a full plate of food we could eat. Selective picking at the chow mien and macaroni and cheese we were able to serve up our plates. We then sat down at a counter that usually handles HR issues for the American Samoa Government employees and had our lunch. I had to bite my tongue a little, since I ended up sitting next to the judge that I'd appeared in front of that morning, no ex parte communications can sneak into the conversation. We enjoyed our meal and managed to slip out before we were piled high with take-out trays filled with more food. It was an unexpected Halloween surprise and let us put off eating our left overs until the next day.

Later that day, our Aussie friends invited us over to their house. They told us to be there at 4:30 sharp. The timeliness was necessary since we were gathering to witness the running of the Melbourne Cup. We headed out of the office at four and drove out to Coconut Point for the event. There was a $5 buy-in for the race. With 24 horses scheduled to run, each of us there got to pick two horses out of a cap with the winning horse paying out $25, 2nd place $15, 3rd place $5 and last place $5. We drew lots and settled in for the race. With such a large field, it made for some relatively entertaining 3 minutes of racing.

It came down to a photo finish, by the tip of its lip Dunaden won the Melbourne Cup. This netted me 1st prize, as I'd drawn that horse as one of my two horses from the pot. This gave me another win in my streak. Not bad, I'll take it, hopefully some of this luck will carry through to the trials I've been having.

For the rest of the evening we were treated to some Samoan Halloween celebration. We've heard horror stories about bus loads of kids from all over the island being trucked into the government housing for contract workers. There are also incidents of teens pushing their way into people's houses to get candy. Out at Coconut Point it was pretty mellow and most of the kids' costumes were adorable. Plus they all sang "trick or treat, trick or treat, give me something good to eat, au mai si, o'u lole fa'amolemole, Happy Halloween." It made for a nice evening out on our Australian friends' porch.

Umu and Breaker's Point

Our friend left a few weeks ago. He finished his bird surveys for the National Park Service and got to spend a weekend relaxing and hanging out before returning to Hawaii and then on to the mainland for Burning Man. We were dismayed to see one of our good friends on the island go. Last week we ran into one his Samoan coworkers. We'd met her a few times and joined our friend for an umu at her house. It was one of our best times hanging out with a Samoan family in their own home. One of her nephews just graduated from UC Davis and his mother, who owns the super market where we shop, was telling us about his process for applying to law school. This is omething Sara and I are intimately familiar with.

This week, while shopping at the market, we ran into Visa, our friend's Samoan coworker. With the National Park Contract over, she was working at the market. We chatted for a bit and she invited us to join them again for their Sunday umu. Umus are the traditional Samoan feasts that are done every Sunday with the whole family in attendance. The food preparation starts before dawn. A fire is started behind the house, with rocks added to retain the heat. When the flames die down, the food is added to the coals and it bakes for four or five hours. Traditionally the food was wrapped in banana leaves. Consumer culture has shifted this to aluminum foil, but the cooking technique remains the same.

Traditional dishes at a Samoan umu are taro, breadfruit, palusami, faiai fee (octopus cooked in coconut milk and ink), oka, pork and fish. Less traditional, but very common are rice, fried chicken, Kool-Aid, beef ribs and ice cream.

We showed up and the kids were chasing around a remote control car that the church had handed out. The 8 or 9 boys were quickly demolishing the toy. In the time we were there it got stomped on, the tires fell off and it was driven off several large drops. The boys kept themselves pretty occupied with the car until it was run into the ground. The girls, even down to ages 7 or 8, were working in the kitchen. Eventually the boys were put to work bringing out the food and using fans to keep the flies from beating the people to the feast. One boy of about 10 brought out a mask that resembled Frankenstein's monster. This frightened a 2-year-old girl, who would remount her wails every time the mask would reappear until she was allowed to wear it and then it stopped being a problem.

An umu is like having Thanksgiving dinner every weekend. We were treated to some amazing food. the guests we were served first and it is considered disrespectful not to take a full plate and finish it. Sara and I were quickly stuffed on breadfruit dipped in palusami. I tried the octopus, which was very good. All of this is was served on their covered front porch.

The best part was the community and the view. Their house over looks the beach in the village of Alega, and has a spectacular sight in Tuaga Rock. Next time we visit we'll remember to get pictures.

Once we were filled with food and packed up with leftover palusami and breadfruit we set out to hike the companion hike to Blunt'sPoint: Breaker's Point is at the mouth of the Eastern side of the harbor. We pulled off at the trail head and had to contend with a few street dogs barking at us. A few stern words and we were able to walk on through. Once we hit the trail, it climbed steadily through banana plantations until we reached a small plateau. Here the trail branched two directions, Sara explored the one to the right and I took the one to the left, a minute later we met again in the middle and showed each other the gun placements that we'd found.

Both guns were similar to the ones we'd seen at Blunt's Point. They were large bore guns that had been pulled off a warship at the beginning of World War 2, when the navy base in the harbor needed to be fortified.

What remains of the guns has been long left to rust and the unrelenting climate of the tropics. The bunkers beneath the guns have started to flood and have several inches of standing water at the base of the stairs. Not having anything more than sandals on we didn't opt to explore the passages. The hike was pretty short, with just a single steep section. But after that quantity of food, we needed to balance ourselves out with a little activity.

This little side trip didn't last too long, as the heat of the day soon chased us back down the trail.

Village Fisheries

Despite the fact that we almost exclusively write about our recreational activities, Sara and I do actually go to work on this island. Our day jobs keep us pretty busy from 7:30am to 4pm, the bruising schedule of working in a Samoan government office. It's a rough life in the tropics, but someone needs to live it.

So after a pre-trial conference this morning, I got to get away from the office/dungeon that most civil litigators are confined to for a little bit to statutory explanations for conference the at the Department of Marine and Wildlife Resources ("DMWR"). DMWR is implementing a program where the coastal villages can set up their own marine reserves and establish their own fishing regulations that both the village and DMWR enforcement officers can enforce. I got asked to attend this meeting by one of the Samoans I met at the talofa barbecue I went to last weekend for a departing member of DMWR.

The talk sounded a little on the legal-nerd end of the spectrum, just the kind of thing for an attorney on the environmental kick back on the mainland. The meeting turned out to be interesting in a few, non-legal ways. The whole events started with a buffet breakfast, I caught more than a few looks for not eating a big plate from the available food. I didn't realize it was going to be catered and had a meal before commuting into Pago Pago. The meeting then kicked off with a hymn sung in Samoan and was followed by two prayers, also in Samoan, led by different members of the group. The group of village mayors, or matais from the participating villages, then gave reports on the enforcement they had done in the last year as a part of the program. This whole presentation was, also in Samoan, so I gathered little outside of there were a lot of "thank you's" and they referred to the "rules" a bunch. Knowing only about two-dozen Samoan words will hold you back in this context.

After these presentations I got up and did my presentation on the rules, the first part of the program to be in English. This was followed by a break for brunch, which consisted of a buffet of the left overs from breakfast along with some rice, beef stew and meat pies. Again, I caught some looks for turning down a soda and a big plate of food at 10:20 in the morning. Participating in Samoa events is calorie intensive.

The DMWR enforcement officers then did more explanations of the fisheries program and some specifics from the regulations, again, also in Samoan. I had an easier time following these talks, since they had power point slides with the code sections and many of the legal terms had no practical Samoa translations so there would be acronyms and legal terms mixed in to the explanations.

This session went OK until the end. The events started to get side tracked when the matais started asking about creating village specific regulations. Most of the sought regulations involved closing the fishing to non-villagers. Unfortunately, I had to be the bearer of bad tidings and make it clear that any regulation passed by the village had to apply equally to the villages and outsiders. This upset some of the representatives. Apparently excluding everyone else seemed to be what most of them hoped to achieve. Sigh. Sometimes the hardest thing about being an attorney is telling people "no."

I hopefully conveyed it clearly enough to convince them that's not what the fisheries and marine sanctuary program was about, but a number of the representatives were still up in arms by the time this portion ended. Hopefully these hard feelings were smoothed over by the large lunch, I dashed out before the 3rd buffet of the morning got too far underway. The Samoans running the event caught me in the hallway when I was talking to a few biologists who work for DMWR and gave me a take-out tray piled with food. They must have assumed I was in dire need of food, since it was heaped with beef chow mien, battered and fried chicken, pork stir-fry, a fried banana, rice and two soft drinks. Too much food and most of it that's not in my diet. I ended up gaving it to one of the Samoans I work with.

We'll see if this program is a success, since these villages really are the front line for protecting these natural resources.

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.

Random Moments

A few random occurrences from today:

Sara and I saw a sea turtle at lunch.

I picked up a custom sewn Hawaiian shirt from the little Indonesian sewing shop.

We had a staff meeting to talk about the two month ordeal to get us new office supplies.

We snorkeled in the lagoon by the hospital, the visibility was bad, so we watched some Samoan Cricket, aka kirikiti while waiting to dry.

We learned that Brownie likes Tikka Masala leftovers.

We had a 3 inch long praying mantis on our front porch.

There also were two toads inside our screen door.

Sara and I tried Cuttlefish flavored chips and they are awesome.

Ended the evening with a Wayne's World plane landing moment at the runway by our house. (Looking up at the Milky Way and down the runway was unlike anything we've ever experienced.)

Just another day in paradise.

Monday - LMS Girls School and BBQ

To assist in my new Kiwi friend's plans to recreate one of the original European structures on Tutuila, a group of us headed out to the old London Missionary Society's girls school that was built here in the late 19th century. It's an old, abandoned structure that served as a school for over half a century on the western edge of the island. Just west of the village of Leone (one of the larger towns on Tutuila, that had received extensive damage during the 2009 tsunami).

The building was condemned in the 1990s (after having been converted into apartments), as the he structure was not well maintained and started to fail. As of now the building is well past saving. The floor in the 2nd story had collapsed in several rooms and the surrounding jungle had moved into the structure. A bamboo forest and overtaken the courtyard and several plants had taken root in the wooden floors that remained on the top floor. My Kiwi friend had been here previously 4 years ago, at that point the top floor had still been intact through the whole structure and he had been able to take detailed measurements of the building. This trip was meant to pick up some of the measurements and details he had neglected to take previously.

The building is noted as being a good example of Victorian Colonial architecture. Growing up with a contractor/architect father and spending several summers working construction has left me with a deep appreciation of architecture and built structures. I couldn't refuse an opportunity to see what the historical architecture that graces our small island.

I was also able to climb up into the second story masonry portions of the building. The wooden portions showed extensive termite damage and many had collapsed. The original ceilings were 14 feet on the first floor and almost as high on the second. All the rooms had large vents to allow the air to flow through the building and keep it cool. Even with all that building volume and ventilation, you could feel the heat of the Equatorial sun beating through the tin roof.

I'm glad I made the trip, based on the rate the vegetation is taking over, there won't be much left of the structure in another decade or two. I'm glad I could see a little of the history before it's reclaimed by the rain forest.

This is the Kiwi, draftsman taking field measurements on the column details and the foundation. It was also fun to assist him and use a few of the skills I learned helping my father over the years. It's not often that knowing how to sketch and draft a building in the field comes in handy. Hopefully our measurements will get turned into a reproduction of the building down the road.

The markings of the London Missionary Society, who built this school, are still visible on the exposed wood. Some of the legacy of the strong influence that missionaries exerted over the Samoas at the turn of the 20th Century.

We also met a mother from the local village and her two sons at the site. They came to investigate who was poking around the ruins. We introduced ourselves and she proceeded to start telling us the local legends of the structure. Apparently the old girls school has taken on quite the reputation as a cursed/haunted place among the local residents. The local mother, was actually very afraid of the place and she came to warn us of the demons and curses we would incur by being there. She actually screamed at her two boys on a few occasions when they were making enough noise to catch the attention of the spirits that haunted the place.

She also mistook us for the Ghost Hunters TV show production crew, apparently they are on island right now and were potentially going to shoot an episode at the abandoned girls school. The highlights of the curses the woman warned us of were that women who wear red hibiscus flowers in their hair, near the site, are cursed by the former headmaster of the school and if you eat from the mango tree located near the graveyard, you will get possessed. Needless to say we immediately went to find the graveyard and old headmaster's residence located further up the jungle hillside. We however didn't find any ghosts or edible mangoes. Though the Kiwi did his best to screech like a ghost the whole hike up and back through the swampy forest.

After returning from our trip to the girls school, three of us did a jog/walk out along the coastal cliffs west from the Freddy's beach housing complex. Along the shore there were some spectacular lava cliffs. Along the route I was happy to be shown some of the local features live an explosive blow hole driven by waves, a cliff jumping spot, a flat picnic rock and a few mean spirited dog packs. I also discovered my fitness was not what it used to be, a four mile run/walk should not give me such fits. Especially the last quarter mile sprint after some rest. Time to commit myself to regular exercise, otherwise I may end up with the physique of the native Samoans.

The second part of my day was spent getting to see a part of the local Samoan culture up close. On Sunday, on a walk along the beach/cliffs near where I live I met a few cousins having beers under some of the trees. After joining them for several beers, a rainstorm, and a little bit of conversation on the local history I ended up hitting it off with my new Samoan friends. We ended up hanging out for several hours and I got to know Lawrence and his cousin Abraham well. Before we parted ways that evening, they invited me to a barbecue on Monday. Wanting to branch out and meet some people outside of the contract worker community I readily accepted.

The barbecue was in a fale located in the front yard of Lawrence's family's home. One feature of the barbecue I had not anticipated was sharing it with the family's father, mother and grandmother, who are all deceased and entombed in aboveground graves inside the fale. Memorial Day takes on a new meaning when you spend it with the dead. Especially when the father's tomb had a glass window in it, so you could look in on the coffin.

The food was abundant and the company was great. Lawrence's whole family welcomed me in and never stopped pushing food on me. It was like having every member of the family acting like an Italian mother, making it difficult to refuse plate after plate of food offered. They have a large house where several of the siblings all live together. The only ones who don't live at home are either living off island or with spouses. Several aunts, cousins, nieces and nephews were there. It was an all afternoon family event. We talked the afternoon into evening, had a few Vailimas and I was sent packing with a huge plate of food. It was one of the most generous gatherings I ever had the pleasure to experience and they are ready to welcome us back when Sara arrives. This is the Samoa I am ready to spend the next two years experiencing.