Hi Everyone! So, as I believe most of you know, on July 15th I will be leaving to live in American Samoa for about 11 months. And you say, American Samoa? Where's that?! American Samoa is almost 600 miles northeast of Tonga (not that that helps you out much) about 800 miles ENE of Fiji. Still not sure? About 2000 miles NE of New Zealand, and 2500 miles SW of Hawaii. For anyone who's more of a generalist, well, it's not too close. To anything. Except the ocean! Samoa is made up of several small islands, the largest is Tutuila (also known as "The Rock"), about 50 square miles. The capital is Pago Pago (I believe pronounced Pahngo Pahngo, but it might but Pungo Pungo....I'll figure that out soon enough). It's about a 7 hour time difference from Boston.
American Samoa is an organized unincorporated territory of the U.S., which gives it the same status as Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, Guam, and the Northern Mariana Islands. If anyone knows more about what that means, I'm in need of hints! But basically, these territories supposedly have all the rights of U.S. citizens, but they cannot vote in presidential elections. They can vote in primaries, however. After a class in college on Puerto Rico's history and political status "in, but not of, the U.S.," you'd think I'd know more. But I do know it is very complicated and ends up in kind of a mess for some territories. For example, American Samoans are a huge diabetic population-- the food that we've exported to them is all junk. I think there is a documentary on how the U.S.'s actions with food exports have caused increased rates of obesity on a certain island in the South Pacific- not sure if it is American Samoa though. There is also Independent Samoa, also known as Western Samoa, which is a separate country but with a shared history. I'll let you all look up more of the history, as I'm still trying to learn it myself!
Believe it or not, I'm not attempting to get as far away from you all as I can. It just so happened, my unparalleled scientific expertise has been sought after around the globe, and I am needed at once to educate the minds of the future MIT students. Not quite. I'm going to be a volunteer teacher with a non-profit organization started by Harvard students in the 80s, called WorldTeach. If you are interested (my hope is that my experience will be so amazing and so well-documented in my blog that you will all want to apply), you can just google search WorldTeach. It's kind of like the Peace Corps, but with a mission of teaching (though volunteers generally get involved with many projects in the community, from public health to being sports coaches) and the contract is only 1 year. Decent advertising pitch?
Although I already know better than to assume plans will always go as hoped in Samoa, my placement is in Leone, on the west coast of Tutuila. Apparently Leone is an excellent place to live because, I've been told, it's one of the more rural locations you can get without being placed in the outer islands. The outer islands are about 60 miles east of Tutuila, all 3 islands together are collectively called Manu'a and have a population of about 2000 and not many resources, as you can imagine. It's really cool to look at the area on Google Earth, most of the outer islands is national park. So while I will have some access to things that we are all used to (in and near the capital), I do not think I will be totally surrounded by McDonalds and Samoan versions of strip malls (both of which do exist there). But electricity still does go out frequently in Leone, and it's still over an hour bus ride to the capital. This is the road west of Leone:
I'll be teaching science at Leone High School.
One of the coolest things I learned about living in Leone is that since Western Samoa is now officially on the other side of the international date line, Leone (being on the west coast) is literally the last place in the world to see the sunset each day! On another note though, Leone was also the hardest hit by the 2009 tsunami; they had literally no warning and several people were killed. There are still people in Leone living in FEMA trailers. If you just google search Leone, American Samoa, most of the pictures that come up are from tsunami damage.
I read a blog from one of the WorldTeach (WT) volunteers on the day of the tsunami, and it's terrifying, but she was on the outer islands and they did not see much damage. I'm also excited because the Fagatele (Fungatele) Marine Sanctuary is not too far (I think...) from Leone, so it'll be cool to check out any opportunities that may exist there!
Many of you may have also seen the 60 minutes documentary on Samoan football players. If you haven't, it's a great story and I recommend watching it here. I think one of the NFL players went to the high school I will be teaching at. A little blurb from wikipedia:
In 2010, the National Football League included a total of 1,696 players. Of those players, 28 of them were from American Samoa.[2] In the 2010 draft, four Samoans were selected in the first four rounds including Nebraska's Toniu Fonoti (second round, San Diego) and UNLV's Anton Palepoi (second round, Seattle). Out of those players, the best-known is Troy Polamalu, a native of Samoa who attended the University of Southern California. He has played for the Pittsburgh Steelers his whole career and has been on two Super Bowl winning teams, in 2006 and 2009.[4] With only 65,000 people living in American Samoa today, it has been said that a Samoan boy is forty times more likely to reach the NFL than a boy born in the United States.[1] University of Washington defensive lineman Tui Alailefaleula, a native of American Samoa, said "It's the sport we were born to play, football is the game where we can reach our goals and help our families."[1]
The group I will be going with will include 30 volunteers (22 women 8 men), and then we will all spread out throughout 4 of the islands' elementary and high schools- I think at my site there will be 4 of us. Out of the 30 people, there is an age range from 21-58, with 3 married couples. There are 2 people from the UK and 13 states are represented, and one of the volunteers has already done WorldTeach in Guyana and Tanzania!
Yes, I am excited! Yes, I am nervous. But what better time to go?! Didn't have much else planned after this summer, and I may as well continue my theme of going from snowy mountains of the northeast to tropical climate and back. I'll probably need to spend a year in Alaska or skiing at Whistler when I get back just to make up for it.
More later!
Alofa,
Sara
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