Three Samoa Moments

There are some moments that we have on a daily basis here in American Samoa that pass without much notice. Things that would be very out of place on the mainland and may be against the law, violate various moral codes and otherwise not happen. A few recent examples from last weekend.

I went over to a friend's house for a barbecue on Saturday. I did something unusual for the island, I showed up at the scheduled time. In the palagi community, no one shows up until and hour to an hour-and-a-half after the scheduled time. However on this Saturday, I was lounging around our house without much to do, so I opted to be punctual.

Being on time left me greeted with a few of my friends butchering the meal in their front yard. They were hacking apart a yellow fin tuna, a mahi mahi and a wahoo in the bed of pickup truck. The fish were still frozen solid, straight from the hold of a purse-seiner. So "hacking" literally means bludgeoning a knife/machete/cleaver through solidly frozen fish with a hammer or using a serrated saw to part the head or the tail from the body. Imagine someone trying to saw or hammer their way through a 30 pound ice block while trying to leave the ice block in a few specific sized chunks.

It was gross and bloody work, especially after the out layers of the fish started to thaw. The flies were everywhere, eating up all the stray chunk of flesh that were scattered all over the ground and the pickup bed.

After about an hour, they were left with a giant cooler overflowing fillets, steaks and other cuts of the fish and a massive mess.

This also served as a welcome back to one of our friends who left 8 months ago. He had arrived back on the Thursday flight and moved in with the good Doc. He was moving from his grad student life in San Diego to the lifestyle where you could be asked to gut a fish at in afternoon for your evening meal.

Another thing he got when came back was a beater, island pickup. It was previously owned by one of the attorneys on island. It had sat around for three or four months before its new owner got back to claim it. Let this be a testament to how hard the climate and air is on everything. The roof of the truck had rotted out in the months it was sitting here.

It rotted enough that there were large holes located where the windshield and the roof meet. With as much rain as we receive on Tutuila this is a problem. Once our intrepid grad student got on island, he set about fixing the leaky rook. First, this took the form of keeping the rain off the roof and the interior long enough to get it to dry off in the Southern Hemisphere wet season. No easy task.

This solution took the form of an umbrella stuck directly into the holes in the car canopy. A site I'd never seen before. The truck's new owner was starting to sand off the rusted sections of the truck roof in anticipation of bond-o/sealing the holes.

It's a testament to the corrosive powers of heat, salt and water how quickly metals break down in t his climate. I've had paperclips rust apart in my backpack in only a few weeks. A few months will lead to some extreme results here.

 The last of the uniquely Samoan phenomena that needed cataloging was the toad we encountered in the pool on Sunday.

Sara had already gotten in the pool at our housing complex when I noticed something swimming around the deep end. Turns out a cane toad had fallen into the water and couldn't make its way out. I had a bit of a moral dilemma about this situation. On one hand, the cane toads are an invasive predator that has gone a long way towards displacing a number of native reptiles, amphibians and birds in the environment. They are poisonous and have overrun the ecosystem around where we live. On the other side, a dead toad floating around the pool would probably decommission one of our few reprieves from the wet season heat. It's one of the few perks of living where Sara and I are. We regularly host a wide swath of our friends on hot weekends for cocktails and pool times.

With a little debate with Sara we opted to keep alive our escape from the heat and humidity. I fished the toad out of the water. He'll live to eat and reproduce. Sigh. Only in American Samoa do you need to fight these little battles on a daily basis.

Cyclone Garry was a Near Miss

We had another near miss with a cyclone this weekend. While the rest of the U.S. was celebrating MLK Day and the President's second inauguration, Cyclone Garry swept north of our island. The big concern was if the storm was going to turn south. The storm kept its easterly course and we never got more than a drizzle and some light breezes, despite warnings of 70mph winds and flooding. Next it looks like Cyclone Garry is off to the Cook Islands.

Holiday Evan

So Cyclone Evan went out with a whimper, at least here in American Samoa. Independent Samoa, didn't fair so well.

Cyclone Evan, after devastating Samoa, was aimed straight at American Samoa. However the storm stalled, and turned away from American Samoa, managing to wreck further havoc on Samoa.

We didn't know this was how it was going to shake out. So we boarded up our house and prepared to hunker down through the storm. Once reports of possible 130 mph winds started to come from NOAA, Sara insisted that our house wouldn't survive a hit like that and checked us into the Tradewinds Hotel. Under protest I went along with this and we packed up a few days worth of good and drink to head over to the hotel.

We ended up holing up with a Lord of the Rings marathon. We didn't notice much wind from the confines of the hotel room and couldn't get updates on the weather as the internet at the hotel was frustratingly unwilling to connect to our laptop. After waking up the next morning, we learned the storm had turned away and spared our island any real damage. With no reason to stay in the hotel, we had breakfast, used their gym for awhile and headed home.

After cleaning up our cyclone preparations, we were left with a Thursday off from work on a sunny day. We opted to hang out with our friends and celebrate a holiday in honor of Cyclone Evan, which is the best possible way the storm could have gone.

The only damage we received was that we didn't get The Hobbit into our movie theatre on Friday. As a stout Tolkien nerd, this was some serious damage. I had to wait until Wednesday to see it. I guess you can't win them all.

Waiting for Cyclone Evan

All government offices and schools were off at noon today. So I'm back at the house waiting for Cyclone Evan to roll in. 

We buttoned our house down as well as we could last night and this morning. Weather stripping across the doors, all our outside furniture moved in, our beer resupplied, the garden moved into a corner under the deck. We're as ready as we're going to be. Winds for the storm are supposed to ramp up high, but the worst of it is supposed to hit our neighbor Samoa. 

My plan's to watch a Lord of the Rings marathon until we lose power. Then it's reading by headlamp and playing board games. Sara would prefer to decamp and hole up in the Trade Winds Hotel for the next two days. We're waiting on the 3pm weather update to decide. We'll keep you posted if the internet stays up.

Cyclone Season

Living on a small island near the Equator can be lovely. It can also be hot and humid. When those two things combine with a low pressure system it can form a tropical cyclone. It looks like we have our first one bearing down on our little island. Based on early reports, it supposed to be a Category 1 (winds 39-63 mph), about on par with a Tropical Storm in the U.S. National Hurricane Center Scale. Not a devastating storm, and it also looks like it is only going to be a glancing blow to our island. But it adds up to more extreme weather than a mild California kid like me is used. Should make for a couple of interesting days.

Island Fever

The island has been wearing on Sara and I recently. We haven't been off-island since October. With (relative) stress at work ramping up with trials for both Sara and I pending for next week, we've been feeling the need to get away from paradise.

Late last week, Sara took the initiative and got us tickets to (Western) Samoa, to the island of Savai'i. It is a large, minimally populated island. We're eager to get there.

Especially after the last few days. We sweated our way through another hot, humid few days. Last night, Sara found a mass of fire ants battling with termites in one of our extra bedrooms. After spraying the bugs and only getting a few bites, we were able to fight back the invaders.

This morning, we cleaned and ran some errands. I spent the morning trying to figure out what the ghastly smell in our bedroom was. After cleaning my dresser, closet and bedroom, I started to clear the rugs to our deck, only to find the source of the stink, a rotting rat corpse. It was well along its way to decomposition. After pulling the dead rat from between the deck boards with a long handle garden hoe and hosing off the maggots I was able to chase the stink from our bedroom, with only the slightest amount of dry-heaving.

The rest of Saturday was spent cleaning, on errands and watching a sevens rugby tournament. Yeah, I'm ready to get off-island too. Can't wait until Thursday.

Wet Season Television Habit

Sara and I have been spending a fair amount of time during the wet season cooped up in our house. After about a month of this we broke down and ordered a TV from Walmart (one of the few retailers that will ship stuff to American Samoa through the mail). Prior to this we were watching movies on one of our laptops, which was far from ideal. A 13-inch screen is not how you're meant to see most media. Once we ran through the DVDs we brought with us to the island, we started branching out by trading DVDs and digital files with people in order to feed our entertainment needs.

We reeled through all five seasons of HBO's The Wire over November, December and January. Once we finished with the mean streets of Baltimore, Sara and I needed to find new shows to continue to feed our pop culture habit.

Freaks and Geeks went too quickly to tide us over for long. It only lasted us a few evenings and a sick day. With another series down, we continued to scrounge for things to keep our minds and eyes busy.

We reeled through the first season of Game of Thrones with a group of palagi, Sara and I were already big fans of the books the show is based on (which we have been actively foisting upon our group of friends here in American Samoa). We did regularly scheduled viewing parties on Sunday evenings, and are eagerly awaiting starting these up again when the second season starts on April 1st.

Our Boardwalk Empire viewing parties started up after finishing up with Game of Thrones and needing something to fill to void in our social calendar. We've been watching them with a group of paediatricians from the hospital on Tuesday evenings. We just did a marathon session to finish season 1, not sure when we're going to start up again with season 2.

Sara and I have also been piece-mealing along with some pulpier/trashier shows in the form of seasons 1 and 2 of True Blood and season 1 of RuPaul's Drag Race when we have an evening with nothing going on. We've also been keeping up with the series we were watching on the mainland, like Archer and Project Runway.

I've also been working through Star Trek: The Next Generation, during the evenings after Sara goes to sleep (yay, needing less sleep). I've nearly finished season 3. Need to keep by nerd credentials up while I'm here.

So as you can imagine, with this many shows, we spend our evenings without plans and weekends when the weather recommends us from going outside (either from too mush rain or skin searing sun) on the couch. As much as I enjoy the media, I'm ready for the dry season to come back and let us get outside a bit more.

Northside Paddling Adventure

In early January, we opted to join a large group of our friends for a kayak adventure. We met up at Coconut Point, everyone was dragging ass (as usual...), but eventually we got loaded up and going.

We headed out to Fagasa, one of the few villages on

the north side of Tutuila. We pulled up to the small

boat ramp that one of the National Park marine biologists (who was leading the trip) regularly launches from. He introduced us to the matai, in Samoan chief, who lives next to the boat ramp. He was lounging in his lava lava and happy to meet us, since we are friends with the National Park guy, who he considers family. He offered to watch our cars if we parked next to his house. We moved the cars, unloaded and launched.

The paddle out was great, there were some large swells in the open water, once we got outside the mouth of Fagasa Bay. It was a beautiful way to see the island and it was great to out with a large group exploring the otherwise inaccessible North side of our island.

We paddled several coves to the west and ended up landing in Sita Bay. The route into the Bay was a little dicey.

To reach the beach, we needed to paddle in the ava, which is a narrow channel in the reef. The channel mainly serves as the drain for the basin of water that builds up behind the fringe reef as waves break over the reef. As a result, the ava has a strong outward current. This is further compounded by the waves breaking over the shallow reef. This is challenging, more so if you're not comfortable in a kayak. A number of members of our trip were rookie kayakers, so we had varying levels of panic following our paddle up the gullet of the ava.

Sita Bay was a cool place to explore. Our Samoa friend caught several coconut crabs and taught a few of us how to identify their burrows and how to grab them so as not to lose a finger to their claws that can crack coconut shells.

Sara did her usual seashell hunt and came away with some great shells, which is a great advantage to infrequently visited shores.

After a little rain, we launched back out to sea and continued west to Fagafue Bay. Most of our group landed here, but Sara and a prosecutor from our office did not want to brave another ava, so we decided to paddle back to our starting point. It was a beautiful day and stoked my fire to spend so more time kayaking while we're here.

Wet Season Doldrums

I want to say I've been remiss in updating the blog due to all the excitement and adventures we've been having. The reality is not that thrilling. The (fairly mild, according to the veteran members of our community) wet season has us firmly in its grasp. Days where we're not in the office are spent either beating the heat or hiding from the rain.

The wet season in American Samoa is the Southern Hemisphere tropical summer. Instead of the warm dry weather of California's Mediterranean-summers, we treated to maximum humidity all the time, searing sun and frequent heavy rains. Also, most tragic, we lost our trade winds from the south that would cool our side of the island. You wouldn't think a little sea breeze could make such a difference, but it makes a world of difference. Even during the dry season a little activity would work up quite a sweat. Doing the dishes or sawing through a piece of wood would leave you dripping, the difference now is that it's particularly difficult to cool off. In the dry season a little down time and some ice water would do the trick. These days you're sitting on the couch with your shirt off, with a fan pointed directly at you and slugging ice cubes and cold beverages and it still takes hours before you cease to soak thedorm furniture in salty water.

Sara and I still make an effort to get out and be active, but there is much more picking our spots. Instead of a hike and a snorkel every weekend, we're lucky to get a weather window to do either. Too many weekends have been spent on the couch watching movies to hide from the sun. Last week we had a cloudy and drizzly Sunday, so a group of us took another hike up Mount Alava. This was the best hiking I've done in months, mostly due to our avoiding the sun until the last little bit of the down hike.

Now that it's March, we're supposed to be on the up swing out the the wet season, but it can't happen soon enough in my mind. I'm ready for the heat to be slightly less and the breeze to stir our palm trees once more.

Christmas in the Tropics

It's been a little disconcerting to experience my first Southern Hemisphere Christmas. The weather's been hot and humid, with regular rainstorms giving way to the searing near-equatorial sun. Most weekends leading up to the holidays have either been too stormy to get out and do much or too hot to be out in the sun. So we've run to cover for the last few weeks.

Further social gatherings were fast and furious in the weeks leading up to the holidays. The Bar Association party was memorable as was the Legal Affairs office party (a special tip of the hat goes to Blake and his dancing...). However as the 25th approached more and more of our small palagi community began to catch the flights back to the mainland and home for the holidays.

About the time that Christmas Eve rolled around, our group of friends was severally reduced and we invited the crew we still had around over to spend the holiday at our house. Sara and I were happy to share one Sayles household family tradition with all of our friends, cioppino. For those of you who haven't experienced it, it's a traditional Italian fisherman's stew that has a long history in the San Francisco Bay Area.

In the days leading up to Christmas Eve I was stunned to see good, cheap dungeness crab in a few of the markets here on island. While it was frozen, I wasn't going to let an opportunity like that pass us by. The rest of the shellfish was easy to find and swordfish stood as our whitefish. Then I was stewing the broth from the shells and trimmings in my brew pot on the stove. It was a full days worth of work to gather, prep and cook the ingredients, but once that tomato-y was ready, it all was worth it. Despite the fact that 90 degrees and rainy is not the normal temperature for hot soup, it helped make the holiday feel a little more like home in Northern California.