Last days on Samoa

Thursday & Friday, October 22-23, 2015

We ate our breakfast at the hotel and met the manager as we were about to leave.  He was probably in his 30’s and was an American from Kansas.  He is not a member, but hires members to help run the hotel as he is the manager.  It is called the Savaii Lagoon Hotel.  He ended up in Samoa because he had worked here with the Peace Corp and married a local girl.  We got a glimpse of his wife and children.  He has been here long enough that he speaks Samoan fluently—sounded just like a native and spoke rapidly.  He knows all the people like Elder Fata that come over often and stay at this establishment.  He says that the only thing he misses about Kansas is his family that live there.

Above and below: This is the second room they put us in.  The twin bed on the left had the only good mattress, but it was a pretty room.  And the view of the lagoon was seen from our balcony, which was equally shared by those in neighboring rooms.  They had no closet or drawers, but a place to put a suitcase with hangers up above.  There was no TV, but then I don’t watch it anyway—no time.  The air conditioning worked, and even though things were backwards, they had hot showers (if you figured out that it was on the wrong handle).  There was a shelf in the bathroom that was attached to the wall upside down—the ‘hold up the shelf’ pieces were on top, creating little divisions for our stuff…cute…and the handle on the sink faucet was ‘righty loosy’ and ‘lefty tighty’.  We could see tropical fish by just standing on the bank and looking down. 

While visiting with Elder Lata, he began telling us his shark story, showing us his scars.   When he was about 17 or 18 he was diving and spear fishing with his friends.  He saw the shark coming and it swiftly grabbed him on the arm.  There was a long fight, with Elder Lata putting the shark between his legs and using his free arm, trying to stab at the gills.  They rolled round and round till he got the shark to let go and swim off.  I guess you can imagine that he isn’t fond of swimming in the ocean.  I wondered about Sister Lata’s fear of snakes, but she said it was only from stories that she had heard as a little girl about others who had encountered them, not from any personal experience.  They were both born here but moved to CA in the late 60’s.  Their 5 missions have all been serving here in one capacity or another. 

After we left we traveled along the coast till we arrived at an LDS College named Vaiola, which means ‘living water’.  It is actually a high school, partly a boarding school, can be expensive, and includes both members and non-members.  The ‘colleges’ here are actually high schools.  The school was started in this spot inland and up towards the hills in the early 1900’s because the LDS members were not accepted by the general population.  They left because they weren’t treated very well and probably couldn’t get into the schools below.  The entire area had been settled by 100% members of the church, and the village, which is next to the school, is still populated only by members.  Elder Fata said that the members have 97% attendance, which is unheard of elsewhere.  He found out that the Stake President expected everyone to be in church and told them he’d fine them if they didn’t go or didn’t have a good excuse not to be there.  Elder Fata told him that he ought not to do that, but to ‘teach them correct principles’ and let them decide for themselves whether or not to attend.  We came to this area to see if they needed rain catchment tanks, but it appeared that almost every house had one.  This community, because of their early isolation, became completely independent, and still are.  They grow their own food and raise their own crops.  But the school is sought after because it is such a good one.

 

Above and below: Vaiola means ‘living water’.  The college is self-sustaining.  They even grow their own lumber for building and for wood shop.  On the right is part of the campus.  The housing here is for teachers.  I sent a picture of the head master earlier, a church leader and head of the college.  There are several large water tanks, and a place to buy petrol (diesel) also.  They have cattle and other animals and several crops and fruit trees, so they don’t have to leave the area for anything unless they want to. 

We soon departed for the ferry and returned to the office, then took the car to our hotel.  We took a quick swim and shared a good dinner.  I was exhausted by 11 PM after working on our reports before meeting the others on Friday.

We arrived at the office at 8:30 AM and went over our project visits and resolved some of the problems that we had with some of them and also some of the spring development requests.  Afterwards we attended a turnover ceremony for an area water project where 15 poly tanks were donated to families in the area and where the people paid for and built the bases and attached the rain gutters and pipes to the tank.  In Africa these turnovers lasted for nearly an entire day.  We enjoyed this short 1-hour ceremony.  We sat in one of the ‘guest houses’.  It was quite pleasant.  Fata wore his lava lava and a flowered shirt as he was not officially heading up the turnover—he leaves that to the Bishops and Stake Presidents in the area.  They prayed and sang and prayed again and a few people spoke, like the Chief.  A TV crew was there and heard that the ceremony would be on TV so we saw it later (all in Samoan, brief glimpse of Jim and I).   They interviewed and filmed a few people for the story and took pictures.  They put me in the middle of the general picture—I have no idea why.  Lata’s have been instrumental in making sure that they don’t feed us and to keep the ceremonies short, so I only had to suck on a straw in a coconut.  They gave us leis and wrapped the posts in leaves and flowers so it looked pretty.  They cut a ribbon on one of the tanks where they had attached balloons.  We went back to the office, I helped Elder Fata with a church site he needed to know about, and then we took Lata’s and another gal in the office to lunch (Chinese) and returned to our hotel to work on our reports again.   Tomorrow we depart for the airport at noon.

On the left is the committee chairman, on the right, the Stake President

This group are members of the committee and recipients with Stake President,  the Bishop in blue suit and Lata’s.