First Week in American Samoa

As expected things here are so different. I can't wait to share everything with all of you out there. I’ll be posting something new every week until I start repeating myself (at which point someone should mail me a plane ticket home).

There are so few non-Samoans here. I find this really refreshing. American Samoa receives a lot of U.S. assistance (take me for example) but most probably because non-residents can’t purchase land this small little island remains the sole property of the Samoans. Where else can we say that natives in the U.S. still own their own land? Sure I stand out---a white, young(ish), female, so of course, everyone stares and at first this intimidated the heck out of me!

Living in Portland so long one becomes used to blending into the background, people don’t look at you directly unless they want something or you make an effort to get their attention. It’s not considered rude. I think it’s a way of maintaining privacy in a city. In Portland people even wear clothing that camouflages them: dull black, green, and brown that blends nicely into the landscape and cityscape. In Southern Oregon it was somewhat different a mixture of small town, “hey we know you” with still the ability to maintain some anonymity.

Here it is really the small town feel. Having grown up in Mt. Shasta, I know what it’s like and how things work in a small town. I’m not sure if everyone really knows everyone else here, but there is definitely that sense. Walking the streets when I first got here before the hospital rented me a car, I got more male attention than I was comfortable with. I’ve never been any place where that’s happened to such an extent. It’s not something I’ve had to consider so thoroughly. I don’t think I would ever be in true danger and no one makes lewd remarks or approaches me, but it’s overwhelming, unwelcome attention. And of course, I don't want to avoid interacting with people in public because that makes me feel unwelcome. I find if I don’t make eye contact and ignore the younger males (which seems rude to me, but I think is the proper way to interact) and only smile and greet women and older adults I feel much more welcome and get a warm response.

There is A LOT of gossip. Those of you that work in the health care field know about gossip, well it is 100 fold here. I am a stranger and already I know more about people than I am comfortable with. Word travels fast on what is called the Coconut Telegraph. I’m going to do my best to stay out of the main headlines on this particular version of Samoa CNN.

Ana in Human Resources, a gracious hostess and superb representative of the hospital, let me in on my new title here on the island over a meal at a local Chinese Restaurant. She insisted I order and not knowing what she would enjoy and too fatigued after my second day in Samoa to think to hard about food, I simply chose the dinner for two that all Chinese places have. What followed was sooooooo much food a family of six could have eaten well and come away satisfied. I was embarrassed by the volume and sent Ana home with the majority. I quickly learned to assume that all food orders would come “Samoan”-meaning large, large, large! But I digress.

My new title was palangi. As she described it, when Caucasians first showed up, the Samoans thought they came from Heaven and the name palangi meant, “fell from Heaven.” When she first told me this I couldn’t help but guffaw. “Yeah, right,” I said. “I am sure Samoans today really think we are heaven-sent.”

Later reading Paul Theroux’s novel that Polynesian’s love to hate, The Happy Isles of Oceania: Paddling the Pacific (I think I’ll post my own review once I’ve finished reading it), I enjoyed his explanation of the concept of the palangi:
“It meant ‘sky-burster.’ In the seventeenth century, Tongans and Samoans believed that their islands lay in a great and uncrossable ocean. The story of a long overseas migratory journey was conjectural in Tonga and absent in Samoa, where the local creation myth described how they had risen from a knot of twitching worms in the soil of their islands. So when the first Europeans appeared in this part of western Polynesia . . . the only possible way for them to have arrived was from the sky, exploding from the heavens.”

In truth, I do feel as if I have exploded out of the sky and landed in this beautiful and unknown place. And so, my blog from American Samoa will be entitled Palangi Post, where I get to tell all of you what it’s like living here from my palangi point of view. Hopefully, this will help me to connect to all my loved ones so very far away as I get to know new friends here in American Samoa.


Next Week: LBJ Tropical Medical Center (ladies in the hall in lava-lavas (sarongs-instead of hospital gowns), roosters in the courtyard (or being carried away by boys for dinner), expired gloves in the drawers (only size 8s seem fresh), but where at least 5 lovely Samoan babies are born a day . . . ).