Fa soifua

It's never easy, but no one ever said it was going to be. I'm now alone - with Sanaa and Rina (two other palagi) - on the USP campus. The office is empty, the weather a bit hotter, our dorms eerily quiet. We dropped off the other 9 palagi at the airport last night after a re-entry discussion with Jackie. It was, obviously enough, an incredibly difficult goodbye as we scrambled to collect bags, pay for overweight luggage, and manage to get them on their plane to Honolulu. It was the first time we had been that far apart, Sanaa, Rina and I standing outside the departure lounge watching our counterparts move on from us, from this. Tears were obviously a part of the whole thing, as Samoans looked on at the palagi sobbing and hugging and ushering last words of you changed my life, remember that always.

Re-entry is always uncomfortable, and I'm anticipating it as I imagine those distant shores of my home island (because, if you think about it, we're all islanders ourselves). I felt the shock of re-entry after Sweden and Jamaica, but for very different reasons. And now Samoa. Although I've spent hours writing on this blog (waiting and waiting for this horrible internet to allow me to communicate with you all), there are parts of Samoa that have no words, but are more associated with feeling, with actual experience. There is the smell of the umu (the Samoan fire oven) that burns coconut husks. The smoke from the husks is unlike anything I've smelled. A sweet, musky, kind of tart smell. I wake up to it almost every morning. It burns on the side of the road, it fills my throat with flavor.
There are the people crowding the sides of the poorly paved roads. They wave and yell at anyone who passes. The buses honk hellos to their buddies on the street. They all wear their lavalavas, colored pinks and greens and blues. They play music from their phones, the Samoan songs soaked in techno beats and auto-tune remixes of Celine Dion and Adele. Their cell phone speakers blurt the sounds with muffled quality, but Samoans will take anything to gather around and join others. There are constant church hymns in the back, with the Samoan men belting their tenor so beautifully, complementing the Samoan women and their voices in flight, praising God in whatever domination happens to be celebrating that day.
There is the heat that I can grab with my hand. It sits in my palm like puddy. It coats my skin, fills my lungs, and exhausts my body. I've noticed sweat glands in places I never knew existed. My clothes and hair have a constant aroma of heat and umu and salt. My feet are caked in dirt from walking barefoot around campus, soles to grass. It's almost as if shoes are just one more layer of clothing that makes the heat that much more unbearable.
There is the rain. The rain that cleans you of all of this, settling the radio sounds and the smells and the heat for just one moment, drowning them out to the static of tropical rain. It's almost as if I had never hear the sound of rain before I came to Samoa, not true rain. Rain that soaks you like a hose, so you wait under the roof of a fale'oloa (little shop) knowing the rain will pass in some 4 minutes. It releases you from the heaviness for moments until it all starts back up again.
Most of all, I'll miss the stars. Unlike you'd expect, I often forget I'm on an island, because it's rarely relevant. I go about my day at a different pace, but only until night do I look up and see the stars bleeding in from a distance. They coat the sky like glitter, ranging in a dome above me and around my USP mountains. It is only when I see that night sky can I transcend the concentrated earth beneath me and realize the vastness that I am standing in. If I've learned anything on this trip, I've realized that an island and its people do not stop at the shores. Their lives (and often livelihoods as well) extend past the shores, reaching other islands like the roadways of the American Midwest reach small towns. The night sky changes my perspective for those few hours, winking at me on my two little feet on this little island in this vast ocean.

I can't say that I've changed, because I don't know how or why or when or if I would have anyway had I not washed up on this island. There's no point in naming it, it seems. There are parts of me that have relaxed, drooped in the heat, eyelids falling slightly lower than they usually have. I think my smile is more appropriate, drenched in sunlight and vitamin D. I appreciate things differently, not more, but just differently.

I don't know what it will be like to return home, probably hard at times, but so comforting at others. Samoa has settled in me, just as I've settled into it.

I leave for Auckland tonight with Sanaa. We'll make our way from Auckland to Rotorua to Wellington, and I'll bus back up to Auckland before flying back to Honolulu. I think what will surprise me most, other than the grocery stores and their unreal amount of options, is the people. Islanders treat you differently. Us palagi have our own way, and it's bound to move me.
I'll move from New Zealand to Hawaii for a few days. This transition will most likely help me understand these changes in a way that I wouldn't be allowed if I returned straight home. Just as I move through time zones, moving backward with time, I'll be able to move forward with change, with adjustment, with environment.

I'm thinking of you all as I move on from this part of myself, taking with me what I can. I've been thinking of it in a way similar to luggage. You pack what you can - keep those parts of you that are most relevant and important and memorable and moving. But because I'm only allowed 23 kilos in my checked baggage, there is bound to be some things that get dropped or lost along the way. Such is the nature of something so confusingly beautiful.

See you all soon.

Fa soifua, tele alofa,
Elsa (aka Elisa or Elsafern)

Some recent thoughts

It’s never easy to describe, getting ready to leave a place that has so genuinely become comfortable to you. I think it hit me the other day when I was riding the bus into town, when I looked out the window and saw pigs, chickens, and barefoot children roaming the sides of the roads, congregating at the faleoloa to buy ice cakes and Coke. I realized how usual it was, no longer striking to me and my palagi eyes. Hearing church hymns in the backdrop of every scene, the heat so pervasive it enters your very bones, and the techno remixes of such familiar songs as "My Heart Will Go On" (as a side note, I’m not sure Celine Dion is aware of how popular she is in this part of the world – I’ve listened to more Celine than in my entire life).

I’ve become even closer with my Pacific friends, and I’ve been mentally mapping all the countries that I now have friends (or in some cases, family) to go to, to stay with. I’ve come to know pieces of lives so different from my own, but they now seem so familiar.
Since I last updated, USP has had a campus social (beer, wine, and dancing), and I’ve gone out with an ever-growing group of Pacific friends that has come to include Samoans, Tongans, Cook Islanders, Fijians, and of course us good old palagi.

Sorry that I’ve been so distant from my blog as of late, but I’m sure most of you were able to understand where I’ve been. After getting back from Fiji, we entered our ISP (independent study project) period, where we are given a month to carry out independent research which we will write a 20-30 page paper out of. I’ve focused mine on something similar to what I did in Jamaica, collecting Samoan women’s narratives of their experiences with pregnancy and childbirth. I’ve added to my mental collection of stories some of the most empowering and saddest stories I’ve ever heard.
Right now, I’m in the process of writing, and this Friday marks the due date of our project. I’m thrilled to be done with it. Unfortunately I haven’t given my research quite as much attention as it probably deserves due to my interest in socializing and playing around the campus and Apia. I guess that’s a good thing though, right?

I have so many feelings, so many thoughts about what this place means to me that I’m not sure they can be recorded right here, right now. I leave May 18th with Sanaa to depart to New Zealand for a self-directed tour around the north island, starting in Auckland. I’m still eager to go to another place, explore different corners of this shrinking world, but there’s an emerging part of myself that I know I’ll be leaving behind on this little island of the Pacific.

When did I become so Pacific? Something inside me has really turned, as I guess it was always meant to. There isn’t any real part of me being jerked home – other than my excitement to see family and friends – because I really think I could carry out a good portion of my life here. I’m not sure I expected to be this attached. Considering how many ups and downs I’ve been through, you’d think I’d be itching for some serenity, but I guess I can find that anywhere in the world can’t I?

There is still so much of this island that needs exploring, but alas, there will never be enough time in this life to see it all. Hopefully this weekend I’ll rent a car with my friend Sa to drive around the island (since it only takes about one hour to drive across). We won’t be hassled by buses so we’ll be able to see more in less time, hopefully coming back at night to play with our friends in Apia.

So here is a piece of my scattered mind as I come to a close on one of the most intense experiences of my life.

Love to you all, see you soon enough.