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...