West Side Story...

Well, long time no see...im back...and im ready to write all about my vacation...in a nutshell, it was okay...definetly not the best vacation ive ever been on...and ill tell y'all about why in this post and the next few ones...

the above picture is of the fale i slept in while in savaii...if you remember from the last post, we went to western samoa...its an independant samoan nation (unlike american samoa) and it mostly consists of two islands...upolu, the main island with the capital city of apia, and savaii, the biggest island but also the least populated and industrialized...we spent our first three days in savaii...in order to get to savaii you have to take a ferry ride from upolu...and, boy, did i get sick...i shoulda done a suzy and got some dremamine ready...i usually dont get motion sickness on boats...but this huge barge was rocky as all get out on the wavy, hour-long ocean ride...besides, i also felt like i was on some slave ship or some boat carrying illegal immigrants...it was very ghetto...people were packed like sardines...children and old people and everyone in between...and they were sleeping on the ground and sweating and puking...it was pretty nasty...and third-world...so i blame my woozy queasiness on the poor, overpopulated environment of the boat...but we finally got off the damn ship and landed on the beautiful, sunny, and tropical savaii...

as i was saying before i went off on that tangent, the above picture is of the fale i slept in...these were the little beach cabanas we stayed in while on the island...this was one of the best aspects of my vacation...i loved these things...it was kinda like camping but with a gorgeous ocean right outside your "tent"...the weather, with the cool breeze from the salty ocean, was perfect at night...and the bugs were not bad either...on the first night, i got pretty drunk and i didnt even put my mosquito net over me as i slept...partly because i passed out and forgot, but also because the blood suckers werent present...anyways, i adore the fales...and id totally do them again...if i ever go back to savaii (maybe with the family?) i so wanna stay at this place again...everything was clean and wonderful...including these rustic, soothing, and calmly tranquil beach houses...

those were just some images of the shoreline by our resort...look how pretty and blue the south pacific is...we did go swimming...though only once...we got rain for most of our vacation...but we did get a chance to sit and chill and splash around one day...the beach was fantasically sandy...unlike many of the beaches ive been to in american samoa, this beach was smooth and toe-massagingly warm and soft...that white deck was where we did much of our drinking, talking, and eating...i loved sitting out there at night and listening to the crashing waves...being surrounded by pure, natural blackness all around...with the sparkeling, imaginative stars above us....

some more fales (pronounced fah-lays)...

one reason why i was a little disappointed in the trip was because nobody fricken told me that western samoa, like much of the world, uses different outlets for electricity...i had no idea that i had to buy a transformer or adaptor if i wanted to charge up my camera...and, needless to say owning my neman luck, the first day i accidently left my camera on...now, most hotels will have transfromers for their customers...but of course, irresponsible, sucky, and indigent samoan hotels dont have transformers...so i had no camera power...and, accordingly, took very few pictures because i didnt wanna have a completely dead camera my whole vacation...so this is certainly the vacation ive taken the least pictures on...im usually a picture-taking, touristy freak, but i was slacking on this spring vacation...as i said before, i mostly didnt take pictures because i didnt have any camera battery juice...but i also didnt take very many because i didnt really have the opportunity...in other words, we didnt get to see that much...and ill explain that in a moment...

the above pair of images are of lisa's fale...pretty much the same as mine...but notice how she has walls...and i didnt...i only get a small fence surrounding my bedroom...i was scared of this at first...(bugs and lizards couldve had a field day on my face and ankles)...but it turned out to be fine and dandy...these fales were homes to samoans way back in the day...theyre all over the samoan islands (including american samoa)...and it was kinda sweet to experience old school samoa...and imagine what it wouldve been like in the days of no modern conveniences...i felt like a native, traditional sole...

another picture of my delightfully open and peaceful home on the beach...we should build these up at the land...though i suppose they wouldnt work up there, would they?...i mean, our mosquitos would destroy and murder anyone who slept in them...and its also just not the same without a brilliantly clear and gentle ocean ten feet away...however, maybe we could make them more suitable for wisconsin...with fire places and walls or something...just imagine, cheeseheads as samoans...sounds like a plan to me...

lisa sittin at the bar...i drank tons of vailima, samoa's home brewed beer, on this trip...too much...although, i never once got hung over or sick...despite the fact that this was a tropical paradise, it is still a poverty stricken area of the world...after all, its not like they get that much tourists...who do you know thats been to the samoan islands?...minus me, naturally...anywho, none of the bars, including the hotel ones, had any variety of drinks...practically no mixed drinks...youd be lucky to get a rum and coke...so vailima was our only choice...and it was cheap...i think lisa is drinking a tequila sunrise in this picture...she was blessed to get this cocktail...but it was like 16 tala (samoan currency)...and thats like 8$ american...a little expensive...

that bunch of pictures were of the restaurant/bar/lounge vicinity at our hotel...this is where we did our dancing and drinking and talking and eating...another facet that i enjoyed about this vacation was the hospitality and service that we got at this hotel...i guess its well-known for its old fashioned samoan kindness, generosity, and customer service...we got free breakfasts and dinners...and these werent gross, shoddy buffet-like meals...they were deliciously filling and lip-smackingly satisfying...omelletes and papaya and coffee and bacon and more for breakfast...and yummy bbq chicken and potatoes and salad and more for dinner...remind me to talk to you guys about some of the foods i eat on my trip...thats always the best part of vacation...the food...for example, heaven on earth is a chuck wagon cookout in south dakota...and tacos in tijuana...etc....ill discuss that in a post later this week...at any rate, the service at the resort was impeccable...whatever you wanted, there was a magnificent samoan waitress ready to accomodate your every desire...unless you desire a stupid ass transformer...

okay, so this picture brings back very vividly surreal memories for me...i dont want to turn this tragic encounter with death and sorrow into an anecdote...i hate when people do that...but i have to tell you this story because it had a powerful effect on me while on this vacation...we were driving down the road on our second day along the shore of savaii...it was me, lisa, and two other teachers that went on the trip with us...lisa and i were sitting in the back of the rav 4...it was storming...with a torrential rain, strong and misty winds, and dark, wild waves...it was pretty frightening as is...but suddenly we see a group of native samoan villagers running from the water and to the road...a man was carrying a dangling, limp body...our driver stopped and i instinctively got out of the car immediately...i figured it was a boy who had drowned in the ocean...i didnt see any blood on the kid...only awful blueness and shocking, heartbreaking flaccidity...they were speaking in samoan but the man and the boy got in the back seat as lisa and i got out in the storm...while we waited in a random, unknown village, with crying children and a frantic mother, the other two teachers took the child to the nearest hosptial...we heard later that, outrageously, the hospital had no resources to save the boy...the nurses didnt even have the education to do cpr...no one knew what to do with the boy...and we lost him...though i kinda think the boy was long gone even when i saw his body in the arms of the man...my heart dropped when i first glimpsed his lifeless limbs...and i had a sinking feeling from the beginning...the teachers eventually came back to pick us up...everyone was distraught and mournful at what had unexpectedly and swiftly happened...like all encounters with death, it was dreamlike...confusing and unreal and startling...i think, just like this boy's mother and father, i will always look at this experience like it was simply a dream...maybe its a defense mechanism...but its just too heartwrenching to believe it really happened...and my heart breaks when i think of how his family will never believe what happened in the ocean that stormy day...they will always know that it did happen...but theyll still feel it was just a dream...a nightmare theyll wake up from...some day...

this event had a profound effect on me for a few reasons...first, i dont want to turn this experience into an anecdote...i dont want it to become just a simple, exagerrated, amusing biographical account of an experience i had with death, ya know?...i dont want this child and his death to become a story i tell at parties...a punchline i tell for years to come..."oh, that reminds me of the time in savaii..."..."oh, tell the one about the drowned boy!"...like the heavily terrifying experience i had with chase in the river, how do i not become a human jukebox spitting out this anecdote to dine out on like im doing right now?...on this blog, have i already turned my experience into an anecdote...it was an experience...an experience with a real child...a human...who lost their life to the ocean...how do i hold onto that?...the enormity and humanity and veracity of that...without it becoming "oh, i remember this one time..."...i practically never tell the story of chase almost drowning in the river...and i think its because the realness and deepness of that experience can never be expressed through words or story-telling...and i also dont want the experience, like the one i had just the other day, to become an anecdote...i want to hold onto them tightly...and genuninely...so that they dont become replicating, inspirational accounts...however, how do i do that without forgetting about them?...

second, i felt terribly guilty after i heard the kid had died...i remembered that i do know how to do cpr...ive taken the training course every year for the past 6 years...why didnt i stay in the car and give the boy cpr?...would the boy have survived?...i keep telling myself that it happened so rapidly that i didnt have time to even think about this...the whole thought of me doing cpr didnt even flash in my mind in the extreme, bewildering 10 seconds that we saw the boy and watched him being carried off into the storm...it happened so quickly that i heard later that it wasnt even a boy...that it was, in fact, a dead girl...i keep trying to convince myself that the child was dead already...and that the situation was not only shocking and scary but also wholly in samoan (i had no idea what the parents and the teachers were saying to eachother)...i keep telling myself that it was smart of me to let them get the child to a hospital immediately...especially in a third-world community that doesnt have 911 or reliable ambulances...but no matter what i try to convince myself, i keep thinking that i shouldve done something...that, like everybody else that day, i failed the child...i shouldnt have panicked...i shouldve calmly done cpr...i shouldve stayed in the car with the kid...and maybe have saved him/her...

though, as i said, i dont want this to become a entertaining, manipulative blog entry of a story...but what do you guys think?...how do we truly hold onto experiences without them becoming cocktail stories?...how do we keep these experiences real to ourselves?...have any of you experienced the dreamy horror of death or the possible death of a child?...and should i feel responsible for the child's fate?...

(by the way, that picture that will always be my reminder of this event was taken while we waited for them to come back from the hotel...i just think the ocean looks dreadful in it...like it could swallow life and innocence whole...)

this is another picture thats sorta surreal to me...horses were all over savaii...which was amazing to me cause theres absolutely no horses in american samoa...anyways, this black horse was just standing here on the side of the road...and i took this picture before the incident with the child had happened...now in retrospect, i just think it seems very dreamlike...kinda ominous and illusory...

i briefly wanna tell y'all one big reason why i disliked this trip to western samoa...i just kinda wished i wouldve planned it myself...or i wish lisa and i wouldve known to seperate ourselves from the group...that sounds bad, but samoans seem to take a different kind of vacation than palagis...lisa and i wanted to do tons of things...we wanted to plan and fill our days with things to do on the island...but the samoans just wanted to chillax and do nothing...it was very frusterating and annoying...we didnt see any waterfalls or blowholes or lava fields or sliding rocks...we didnt even get to go up any of the mountains...we drove around the island but we didnt stop anywhere because none of the other teachers wanted to spend the money or energy to do anything...they just wanted to eat and drink and talk on the beach...thats alright for a little bit...but i think, when you go on vacation, you should see everything that the place has to offer...get your money's worth...ya know?...i realize that many people say they wanna go on vacation to relax and do nothing...but when does that ever happen?...at least with palagis?...i mean, we like to go out and see and do things...and we just didnt do any of that...so yeah...the vacation kinda sucked...i didnt get to see the island as much as i wanted to...and i sorta think if i wouldve went on the trip by myself or with friends i wouldve had a much better time...a more eventful vacation...with a million pictures to show...i actually became even more homesick while on this vacation...i just constantly thought what it wouldve been like with my family...or with suzy...or with my other friends...ive realized that vacations to the most beautiful places in the world cannot sugar coat people...i dont wanna sound mean...but the people i vacationed with were just not my cup of tea...

okay...that was just part one of my description of my trip...i dont think the next episodes will be as long...anyways, leave me some messages...what do you think of my savaii trip so far?...have you ever went on vacation with people that irritated the heck outta you?...love ya and miss ya...and i wish y'all wouldve been with me in western samoa...

-JOE

"Travel only with thy equals or thy betters; if there are none, travel alone."

-The Dhammapada