Tālofa, Sāmoa!: Thank God for 'ava, mafutaga, and fa'aaloalo sāmoa

There are no fitting words for arriving in your new home. You have very little influence on the way it is or will be, but somehow you love it, you feel connected to it, you see the possibilities and the challenges almost immediately.

The night before leaving for Sāmoa is hard to describe. Our flight left 5am Feb 8, and I was too high on life to convince myself that sleep was worth it. I pulled my body from landmark to landmark, stringing together the memories I had created into one last all-nighter. The friendships I created in Honolulu fulfilled the parts of me that I had been meaning to work on most of all. The spontaneity, the creativity, the willingness, the laughs, the heated conversations, and the several hour-long walks where we’d end up on the far east side of Honolulu made for a week-long dream. I pushed myself to do things I had never done before, sitting on the beach for hours into the night speaking with these extraordinary people.
And so, I stayed up all night Feb 7 speaking to two men, Marc and Jesse, who were staying at the hostel. Marc was from Australia making his way back from a two-year-long travel experience, while Jesse was finishing up a thesis on the connections because physics and spiritual energy. I felt alight with energy that these two strangers gave me, praising the end of my experience with such positivity.

Arriving in Sāmoa was surreal, as every abroad experience seems for me. (For the record, it’s pronounced sA-mo-ah, that’s what the ¯ symbol is for, also known as the fa’amamafa). We were picked up from the airport, driven along the coast toward Apia, bought fe’e (octopus) from a roadside vendor, and were dropped at USP Alafua campus. I proceeded to leave my phone in the taxi van and it’s lost to me forever. Luckily it was little use to me here, but just so all of you know.
The drive from the airport always happens so fast. There’s too much stimulation to fully understand where you are, who you are, and that this place exists without your being there. That’s the weirdest part: there is a world outside of mine.
We had a drop-off the same day, where I went with my friend Amy into the middle of Apia and were told to meet at a restaurant at 6:00. I was welcomed into a village and a home, played with children, explored a church, played rugby with a group of men, and understood the city and its people on a whole new level. There’s plenty of damage from cyclone Evan, with flood zones covered by debris and trash and mud. What this drop-off taught me most of all was the generous, kind, and easy-going nature of Sāmoans. There are few places in this world where I could be so easily welcomed into someone’s house, church, or rugby game without so much as a question.

The time since then has been busy with learning fa’asāmoa (the Sāmoan language and culture); buying lavalava (a sarong type of cloth); meeting my adviser’s family; being fed a huge ceremonial welcome meal with fe’e, a DELICIOUS coconut sauce called palusami, talo (taro), breadfruit, and koko sāmoa (cacao drink); and meeting Pacific students at USP. That’s by far the most satisfying part. Surprisingly, there aren’t very many Sāmoans at Alafua but more Fijians and Tongans. I met a group of them a few days ago through Melonie, a Fijian on campus. We were able to taste ‘ava, a calming drink made from the root of the ‘ava plant.
It’s hard for me to describe the experience of tasting 'ava. Unlike drinking, there’s a ceremonial aspect to ‘ava drinking. We sat in a circle in a very particular order of people, listening to two men play guitar and ukelele while singing Tongan songs between ‘ava rounds. It’s a very calming effect and the whole experience, looking back, feels like a dream. They were so warm and welcoming, asking us how we were doing, and we ended the ceremony with a prayer thanking God for this experience and hoping we’ll be able to do it again. How beautiful it was to feel so included, so opened to a world I was unaware of two weeks ago. When I see them on campus, we have a sort of friendship that is unquestioned.

So, as my friends and family, you all should know that I’m feeling calm and comfortable in this new home of mine. We have a village drop-off tomorrow where my Sāmoan will be more necessary than it is in Apia, but the pure, gentle kindness of these people is unsurpassed by any I’ve known (even Minnesotans aren’t this nice). Island time, culture, and living is seeping into me and I’m looking forward to nestling in to this tropical atunu’u.

Mālō le aso ma lo alofa. ‘O le ‘ā ou toe sau!

Here are some pictures: