The spring box

Tuesday, October 20, 2015

Gee, I am so tired of eating.  As we traveled back up the hill again so that the guys could walk up to a spring box, we had a little snack in the car—big mistake.  When we arrived, we got a large banana leaf bowl and inside was taro made into what they consider a dessert.  There was so much of it in the leaf that I almost gagged just thinking about it.  I thought it was roasted meat.  Imagine my surprise when I discovered that it was sweet.  Sister Lata said that they harvest the taro, beat on it a while to remove the starch (it is a bit like potato) and then grate it.  They wrap a chunk of it in a leaf and roast it in the coals; then they add the sweet stuff—perhaps brown sugar—even dripping it onto the coals.  It wasn’t too bad, except I could only down 3 pieces.  They also had cut off the top of a coconut, so I tried to drink some of that.  Luckily they don’t get too offended if you don’t eat much of it, but to the Lata’s and Elder Fata, it was a real treat.

Taro dessert in those very large leaves.  Doesn’t it look like meat?   

    

Elder Fata in is regular clothes ready for the grueling hike.

The house we were at was one of our church branches.  The chapel was open air with wooden benches, but some of them were padded nicely.  They had two blackboards and a podium.  Off to the side I could see two offices, and I remember one was the clerk’s office and the other the Branch President’s.  The toilets, we discovered later, were not outhouses but flush toilets, a big surprise because we thought they couldn’t possibly be Western style, but they were.

The open air church, with the family living behind the church. The outdoor toilets for the church that actually flush…

While Sister Lata and I sat around after the meal, all the guys went up for the hike to a spring box.  They drove on, and then got out to walk.  The truck was completely full of large Samoans.  There were 3 squeezed in the backseat and even more jammed in the truck bed.  I had Jim take my camera so I could see it through pictures.  I was so disappointed that I couldn’t go, but 1, my foot was really bothering me; 2, they wouldn’t have let me go anyway; 3, there was no room for me in the truck.

Jim said that they walked up an overgrown path so thick with jungle foliage that it grabbed their legs.  It was also hard to walk because you couldn’t see the actual placement of your foot so you were never on flat ground.  Then they walked through the stream and then even up the stream.  Finally they arrived at the spring box, part of which is developed, but the water overflows the concrete box and they said it leaks at the bottom.  Two communities want to access the spring.   Jim said it would have to be engineered and rebuilt, perhaps taking the box a little further downstream from the old one.  There was a ton of water coming out of there.

         Elder Lata forging the stream.   

                                                                      

The present spring box development, needing a fix.

After they returned, I saw that Elder Fata’s pants were wet way up on his thighs.  He said that he fell 5 times on this journey!  I still feel cheated that I couldn’t go.  Instead I visited with Sister Lata who had no desire to hike.  She is deathly afraid of snakes and never wants to venture into jungle-like terrain under any circumstances. 

Afterwards we took a couple of the men with us who showed us some of the area where they want to pipe the water to, then dropped them off and departed for the office.  It was actually cool way up on this mountain.  It was so surprising to see how different Elder Lata looked in his regular clothes—just one of the guys--but he couldn’t be wearing his suit in those conditions, but I hardly recognized him today.

 

We got home just before 4 PM; Jim took a swim, I worked, felt exhausted from literally doing nothing; finally I drug myself to the pool and found that it was slightly cooler than a bathtub, and yet so refreshed me.  We ate a wonderful dinner that we shared (we are both tired of eating) and came back to work and to get to bed early.  Tomorrow we meet at the office at 6 AM to get the ferry to another island.  We’ll be staying there overnight, but get to keep our belongings in this hotel (yes!).  Off to another adventure tomorrow.

Love, from Samoa