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  Vaie'e, Samoa Western
Monday, July 3, 2006

Samoans are like Welshmen-they sing spontaneously, beautifully. When we first arrived at the village of Viae'e where we are staying now, we were welcomed with an impressive traditional ceremony. The men were sitting on woven mats in a large pole house. Tattooed chiefs gave long speeches in an unintelligible language while a coconut shell of ava passed around--all very fearsome and grand. When the talking was done, the women of the village carried in food for us. Traditional food on plates made of leaves-fruit, taro, whole roasted pigs, along with fresh coconuts to drink. While they were serving, they commenced to sing strange, clear melodious harmonies which brought me close to tears. They all do it, even the littlest ones sing in parts, on the least occasion.

The beauty of this place is almost beyond description. The village (some 400 souls) is a scattering of houses along a road by the lagoon. Some traditional pole houses (fales) roofed with palm leaf thatch or corrugated iron, some modern houses, light and airy, which would be highly prized in, say, Florida. There are broad green lawns and extravagant gardens of exotic colors. Hibiscus is counted as a weed and a row of sticks driven into the ground for a fence will, in time, sprout and become a hedge.

The people are most agreeable and generous. Our volunteers are quartered in with various families around the village, where we are fed to bursting and given traditional clothes-I have hardly worn trousers since we got here-and our other needs are cheerfully and assiduously attended to. We are a great curiosity to the village, with our strange, foreign ways. It is hard to go anywhere alone, and we are all known to them by name and so greeted everywhere.

The Samoans are, to a man, devout Christians. There are churches everywhere, and everyone attends on Sunday, sometimes twice. Every evening at dusk a bell (an old oxygen cylinder hanging in a frame on the village green) rings and all must retire to their houses for half an hour of family prayers. Their Christian faith seems to do them no harm, not making them disagreeable as it does in the US, and there is little or no denominational strife. Our family happens to be Catholic, so each Sunday Jan and I are transported a short distance to the next village-there being no Catholic church in Vaie'e-in a very well traveled Suzuki for which such a trip must be counted as a miraculous event.

Our food comes fresh from the sea, or from groves of coconuts, taro, papaya and other produce which lie in the hills behind the village, or from small families of pigs and chickens which live amicably in the yards of the villagers. There are also little stores (our family keeps one) from which canned goods, rice, milk, etc. may be obtained. The island being so small, an hour or so on the bus brings one to the city of Apia, in which almost any palate can be catered to, although imported delicacies are expensive. For those who care for such things there is bottled ale, locally brewed and quite respectable, and said to be a legacy of the ancient German occupation of the islands. There is also an interesting and subtly flavored vodka distilled from coconut milk.

Life is not always idyllic however. We toil 6 hours a day in classes, mostly studying Samoan. Our class of four meets in an open fale a few hundred yards from the shore. We find it increasingly difficult to keep our eyes on the chalk board and not on the fishermen out in the lagoon. The afternoon classes are the hardest as we have just had a large meal and the weather is always around the 80's. When classes are over at last we can go and bathe in one of the spring-fed fresh water pools which are built at the edge of the sea.

Life is very steady here. People rise early and go about their work. The untitled men, most of the men in the village, work in the plantations in the mornings until it gets too hot. The kids go off to school. There is a primary school in Vaie'e and a secondary school in the next village. Schooling is required through age 12 or 13. The women, of course, have plenty to do all day. Our mother works all day breaking up bulk goods that are delivered to the store into smaller amounts for sale, keeping the books and looking after the cash box. Two of our older sisters work the store in between other tasks and our 9 year old sister works the store after school.

The people that live in our house are: Fepuleai, 73, the matriarch who is a village chief and has no natural children, So'o an unmarried cousin, Vito, a son adopted from Fepuleai's brother, his wife Tina and their four small children. Fepuleai is also raising the 2 year old son of an adopted daughter who lives in Australia. T.K. will live in Samoa until he is 5. A niece, Veronika and her family live across the road. She spends a lot of time at our house and does most of the cooking. Two of her sons are going to school in Apia and come home some weekends as money is available. The other son, 9 year old Puna, hangs out at our house a lot.

Travel is easy as there is a constant stream of taxis and buses going from village to village and to Apia. There is little traffic in the village apart from passing busses and taxis, as few of the families own vehicles. The road is mostly used by people on foot, pigs, chickens, dogs and the occasional horse.

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