The umu

There are many moments during my time in American Samoa that I will look back on and laugh, cry, smile, or be thankful that I don't have to relive.  There are the grand teaching moments- like when students tell you they "never liked science until this year". There are the frustrating moments- when you finish teaching a lesson and a student points out (with the utmost confidence) "but none of that's true, Miss," simply because they hadn't learned it before or because their religious beliefs force them to put up a wall to block out any new ideas. Or when you have a doctor's appointment and you spend 2 hours getting and waiting there only to be called into the doctor's office to find there IS no doctor that day.  There are the hysterical moments- when you are trying to punish students for bad behavior but they keep making you laugh.  The ridiculous moments- men in fast food restaurants trying to set you up with their off-island son who is a marine and wants to marry a palagi just so that he doesn't have to deal with all the Samoan fa'alavelaves (giving of money and materials goods to families for weddings and other special events).  Or when you're watching oiled-up sixteen year olds dancing half naked at a school assembly and you think that it's totally normal.  The many endearing moments- when a student comes to you to talk about problems he or she is having, or when students stay after school just to teach you more Samoan, or when they ask you if you'd like to go fishing with them.  Or the "should I really be doing this?" moments- harboring "fugitives" (as well call them) in our classes because they got kicked out of another teacher's class.  Or getting up in front of all the parents and dancing to The Wobble at the senior prom, surrounded by my mostly-male marine science class, and having the boys teach me the Cupid Shuffle up on stage. 

I could go on and on through every emotion- we seem to hit them all at some point or another during our volunteer year in Samoa.  But after several months of teaching, being able to have a thorough lesson of my own was another great moment on "The Rock".  There are lots of things you can ask students about as a teacher and rather than getting a full-length, detailed lesson on what you are curious about, you get a quick, underdescriptive response that leaves you with many unanswered questions.  Especially with a language barrier, it's tough to get the full story. So one Sunday, I set out to find some answers about the infamous umu- through experience! I also got to share this experience with my Mom, which was awesome, because Mom also got to see a little clip of Samoan culture!

Sundays tend to be a quiet time for Kristina and I at the apartment.  "Aso Sa" meaning "Sacred Day" is a day meant for church, followed by the weekly to'ona'i (big lunch when all the family gets together after church) in the afternoon.  As you can imagine, the Sundays we don't go to church, get pretty boring (and aside from the singing, even the church days can be boring when they are entirely in Samoan). We read, lesson plan, occasionally go for a walk, but never run or go outside to do anything else.  The buses don't run, so there's not much you can do anyway. The village is quiet, aside from the beautiful singing voices that rise from all of the churches that surround our house. So it was nice to have something to look forward to on a Sunday, even if it was just for one or two hours.

Start with a fire- fueled by coconut husks.
You start really early in the morning before the sun comes
up and begins to fry your soul.  Also, Tau and Malo go to
church at 8, so they need to be done by then.

I woke up with Mom at about 5:15 on Sunday morning (this was the week her and Howard were visiting), and we walked across our yard to the back of the house where Tau and Malo, two awesome, hardworking men from Western Samoa who work for our landlords, do the umu.  The umu is the earthen oven that I had heard about and eaten food from all year; I had even been given vague explanations on how to "do the umu", as my students say, and I've helped do the saka on a previous Sunday morning (which is the same food but just boiled instead of cooked in the umu). But I hadn't seen the whole thing from start to finish.

Taro, breadfruit, and bananas laid out on banana leaves after it being peeled.

You husk the coconut by slamming it against this metal rod.
Then you still have another inner shell left to crack! 

Once you crack the coconut (with a machete), you must grate/shred all of the
coconut out of the shell, using a sharp, circular, razor attached
to a wooden seat for easy shredding.

Tau shreds the coconut while the fire is getting hot. He's so fast at it!

Tau wraps the shredded coconut in a string-like part of a plant (I forget what this is called) and you basically mash/strain the shredded coconut until it is creamy.

Malo does an excellent job of wrapping the palusami!
It's looks like a green version of the golden bags that you would
get in Thai restaurants, all wrapped up real cute!

Malo spreading out the hot rocks 

Breadruit, taro, bananas and chicken (in foil) on top of the rocks

More rocks on top, then palusami (onion, lime/lemon juice,
 and coconut milk, wrapped in a taro leaf, wrapped in a
another banana leaf) and faiai pilikaki (fish and coconut milk
in the coconut shell).

All covered with big banana leaves

...and then covered with carpet to keep in all the heat.

About 45 mins later.....

take off the mats, take off the dried leaves....

......Umu!!

.....Put it in hand-woven baskets and share!

There are a few other small steps in there...but you will never know unless you ask me!! It was so nice to be up really early in Samoa before it gets hot, and being back there where they do the umu reminded me of camping trips- waking up and finding Mom or Dad outside cooking breakfast over an open fire early in the morning.

What I loved about this one-to-two hour experience was finally getting to be a part of a Samoan tradition myself, rather than just hearing about it through my students. Of course, I still don't know all the exact words to say for certain steps or ingredients.  But these small insights into island life, like being invited to sit under a tarp, drink some iced tea and eat some papaya and just chat for a while with some Samoans, or learning to weave a basket out of palm fronds, have been some of the most memorable.  It is those times that remind me that this year has certainly been a two-way exchange of ideas, customs, and traditions- and that while we are the "faiaogas" (teachers) from off-island, this tiny rock has undoubtedly shown us a new perspective and shared quite a few things about its people with us palagis as well.

Samoan music

I wanted to share what kinds of music have been popular on-island since I've been here, since that's been a big part of not only the assemblies, dancing, and singing that goes on the classroom, but also my experience in general.  Some of these songs have also taken their hold on the mainland, but these are some of the things that will always make me think of Samoa.


-The American Samoan version of "Gangnam Style". The song is the same, but the video is made on-island and I've met the guy in it multiple times. I've also been to most of the places in this video!
-"Pretty Little Teine"!  The Samoan Version of Justin Bieber's "Baby".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8EmI5wonkHE

-"Fika mai le pese"- kind of like a rap battle, I think. One of my fav Samoan songs to listen to.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GI5t3xlBx94

-One of my students shared this video with me of Samoan firefighters somewhere off-island. It illustrates perfectly what some of the dance performances here have been like.

-"Azonto", which has been HUGEEEEE all year and is finally just dying down. My students ROCK at dancing to it. Funny, because it's from Ghana. So we had a geography lesson about where Ghana is. Which included the fact that Jamaica is indeed NOT in Ghana, and that Jamaica is an island in the Caribbean.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTUIlOudlHI

-"Cheerleader" is HUGE right now. It's the new Azonto, so everyone is walking around blaring it on his or her speakers at school. I have super cheeky students who grab my arm as I walk by their desks and start singing, "When I need motivation....." and serenade me to it. Ohhh Samoa.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_NVUZNsh2E

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8STgy58k2U&feature=player_embedded

It will have you singing, "Pretty lil teine, seki a oe" forever!!!
(Pronounced "tay-ney, sec-ee-ahhh oi"
Translation: Pretty little girl, she' so awesome/cool.)

Enjoy! Manuia!

Aiga buses

Aiga buses (pasi) !!!  We've thought this word was spellled "busi" all year, and just learned that it's actually "pasi", not "busi". But considering Samoans do not differentiate between their B's and P's, things can get confusing real fast. Some students cannot tell the difference between "poops" and "boobs", "pitch" (as in the name of the movie that Samoan students have watched 55 times since it came out "Pitch Perfect") and another word that rhymes with it.....; the list goes on and on.

some of this blog has been inspired by/parts have been taken from a past world teachers' blog some years ago, with my own editing.

Aiga means "family" in Samoan.  The aiga buses are driven by any member of a family who can buy/remodel/make a bus, and the money goes to the family rather than the government or a private company.

Aiga buses are "seki a" (sec-ee ah) (=cool/awesome) for a few reasons. They are all made out of the front of a pickup truck. Samoans somehow attach the rest of the bus to the pickup truck cab. The inside of the buses are usually entirely wood and the roofs are made from long, curved pieces of wood, which are beautiful (and weirdly remind me of cabins in Vermont, haha!)  They have simple plastic windows that you slide up when it rains. 

The inside and the outside of the buses are quite elaborate. Each gets a crazy paint job and a name or some kind of slogan scrolled across the side. These can be anywhere from "West Side",  "God is Awesome", or the American flag. Some have public service announcement-type advertisements with pictures or photographs about ocean safety, driving safety, drinking & driving, etc.  The inside cab of the buses are decorated with everything- crazy fuzzy zebra or leopard print fabrics, tassels, lights, boas. And about 20 pine tree air fresheners hang inside some of them, haha!

I've posted this picture before of a
Leone bus showing it's Lion Pride!!!

 

Riding a bus is quite an experience. In the morning and afternoons the buses get super packed. The seats/benches are tiny and 2 small people could fit nicely; however they expect 2 Samoan sized people to fit! This usually means that the person in the aisle seat is basically just squatting and holding onto the seat in front of them while the bus zooms at the island-wide speed limit of 25 mph over HUGE potholes and around dogs, chickens, children, and around the crazy switchback curves of the island coast, literally feet from the Pacific Ocean. Bus drivers don’t always stop picking people up once the seats are full. There is a distinct seating hierarchy. Men move the back to make room for women, and the young move to the back to make from for the old. Once a bus is “full” kids move onto an adult’s lap. Once that has happened, teenagers move to each other’s laps. Finally new riders stand in the aisles. Sometimes bus drivers choose to drive right by high school students (you can tell because they wear their school's uniform) because people under 18 only have to pay a quarter, and the drivers would rather take adults who pay about a dollar, depending on how far they are going (though we still haven't really figured out the rates.... we just always give a dollar. Sometimes it should be less and sometimes it should be more, but very few buses have their fares marked and those that do never make sense.  I try to always have dollar bills because if I give them a 5 dollar bill and expect change, they sometimes only give me $3 back). 

Thankfully, there are many Leone buses so we usually don't have too much trouble catching a bus.  If we lived any further west, however, we would need to take the Amanave buses (of which there are only 2). So at the end of the day, you see the Amanave bus pass and everyone from beyond Leone the whole way up to Amanave has to fit on that bus, or take a Leone bus to Leone and hitch a ride further through ATL (the Amanave To Leone crew).

Another thing to consider in your bus ride is what time the tuna factory workers get out.  After a whole day canning tuna, their clothes have a pretty bad stench to them, so one tries to get on a bus back before the shift change in the afternoon. Otherwise, you will have a smelly bus ride and be sticking your head out the window like a dog to get some fresh air.

Aiga buses are famous for blaring Samoan music or home-remixed mashups as they drive around. Rocking out with reggae-style music with the wind in your face can make for a great de-stressor, and it is only a $1 to ride!  Once you get past Nu'uuli the rest of the road is right on the water-which is so clear you can even see sea turtles swimming from the bus!  Sometimes we just get on a bus on a really hot day just to cool down. It's one dollar for some time with all natural air conditioning.

West Side Pride

Before winter vacation, our school had the Leone Taumafai Swing Choir Christmas Performance at Lee Auditorium in Utulei.  I had never thought some of my crazy, disruptive, unmotivated students in class could be SO focused and passionate about something until I saw them singing for the Christmas show!!!  I honestly was holding back tears during like half of this show.  Leone has the BEST Swing Choir on island (and I'm not just saying that because I'm biased...it's a fact).  I'm so proud of them- and mad props go out to Pati Pati for leading them!!! WeSt sIdE rEpReSEnT!!!!!

Leone Taumafai Swing Choir Christmas Performance

They got a little rowdy during an amazing remix!

We also had our christmas performance... the Western District Choir..... where we sang Samoan Christmas songs on TV & for the governor..... here's what some of the music I had to learn was like....

Kristina & I in our Christmas Choir puletasis

more Leone teachers reppin West side

FiaFia/Tausala Day

 Picture this: Seniors in high school, dancing in front of the guests (their families, friends, teachers), while getting dollar bills thrown at them, tucked into their clothes, or smacked onto their sweaty bodies.  Now take it a step further....the boys are shirtless, oiled up, and after they finish their Samoan dancing, dance dirty.  While the girls dance, the boys lay down on the cement gym floor in front of them and let the girls stand on them while they dance.  Girls run around the dancers to collect the money.  Now you have Tausala Day at Leone High School.  It was a few weeks ago, on a Saturday, and it was QUITE an experience.  I've seen them dance like this before at assemblies, but Tausala Day is where all the seniors perform in groups based on village.  Some of my students are so talented when it comes to performance!!!! I was impressed.  The videos from it are hysterical, especially when some Leone alum grabbed us WorldTeachers and had us up dancing with them.  My students got a good laugh of that as well, seeing their teacher up there shakin her groove thang.  I threw some bills at my students (despite feeling a bit like an older woman at a male strip club....) and carried on.  Oh, and of course, we got fed there. This is Samoa, after all.

Senior who actually just arrived from Western Samoa
and is attempting a football scholarship, workin his dance moves

One of my seniors- Ioane (John)

  

student representing the Tongan community

Some of my seniors from Aoloau also known as "Alaska", since it is up on the mountain and "cold".
They joke that there is snow up there.  The video of their dance is priceless.

Learning the Fa'asamoa

Kristina and I recently woke up around 5:45 on a Sunday to learn how Samoans do the most important things: make food!  We thought we were going to help with the umu (Samoan earthen oven), but they didn't end up doing umu that day.  Instead, we learned how to husk a coconut and make it into coconut cream, how to weave a basket (this will still take some time to learn......), and most of all, we learned why Samoans start doing this stuff around 3am, not 6am.  The sun is up by about 6:30, and it is MUCH more manageable to get these tasks done in the dark than in the blazing fireball that is the Samoan sun.   They also need to get everything ready before church around 8am.  Tau taught us how to do all of these things and we definitely want to wake up earlier another Sunday to practice this stuff more and learn how to cook umu.

making coconut cream!

while I was going cocoNUTS (hehe) kristina learned how to weave a basket!

gettin the good stuff :)

We went to church with one of my students in Nu'uuli around 8 and were there for a HUGE to'ona'i (lunch). We got chicken, cocoa Samoa (which is literally the best thing ever but I don't get how people drink it in a place that is soooo hot!!! It would be PERFECT after a long day of skiing. It's the best hot chocolate I've ever had), panikekes (basically fried dough but with bananas in it), taro, oka (raw fish in coconut milk with spices), and a ton of other food. (We were supposed to go to ANOTHER lunch afterwards but we begged them and told them we were so full we were feeling sick). 

Valentine's Day

Feb 13th & 14th were especially disappointing days with my students.  I just felt totally unappreciated and worthless, like I hadn't taught them anything- including manners.  After I gave my seniors Finding Nemo candies (because we share the love of Finding Nemo and we've been watching it in class), they left the wrappers all over the floor and would NOT share ANY of the supplies I gave them to make Valentine's Day cards.  They were the first period of the day and all of the supplies were gone by the end of their class, and there was nothing left for my other 4 periods of classes to work with.  Not to mention, all of my classes had just been disastrous in terms of teaching the few days prior.  I had also put some bible quotes about love on the whiteboard and asked students to write about them for extra credit if they chose not to take the time to make valentines. After all of my explanations about SHOWING that you care about someone and not just TALKING it......my students were running around the room stealing supplies from each other and not listening to a word I had said.  I was defeated on Valentine's Day.

BUT THEN..........

Last block of the day today, Friday, before a long weekend, one of my quieter students came up to me as the bell to get out of school rang.  He always gets his work done and works really hard (but might be somewhat of a troublemaker outside of school.... not quite sure but I've seen his antics at the rowdy assemblies....).  He is probably about 6 feet tall and is a football player (or was for most of the season until some....circumstances).  He told me he had a Valentine's Day card and after a fairly lengthy back-and-forth convo about who it was for and when he was giving it to them since it was the day after Valentine's Day I figured out that it was for me and he was sorry that it was late. 

We shared a laugh about our miscommunications and he told me to wait to read the card.  I read it after everyone left my classroom, and without writing all of the contents of the card on this page, I will explain the gist of it by one of his phrases, "I can't explain it in words".  There was a lot more to the card, but I don't want to spill everything on my blog, and it wouldn't mean as much to anyone reading this as it did to me when I read it.  But he had also PROVED it (as he mentioned in his card) through the work he always does in class.  It's as if he had taken the bible quotes (likely, since he is very religious) and reminded me how he put them into action. I hadn't realized the effect my students' words would have on me once I saw them in writing- especially if their words were backed up with evidence. Also, because he's a senior it meant even more to me coming from a mature soon to be adult who has his head on straight. This one card, this one student, had made my whole week turn upside down with just a few words.  I now know why people decide to teach and continue to teach throughout their lives.  I get it!

Me and some of my biology class on Valentine's Day