Morning Rush-Hour

Let me />aint for you a />icture of our morning commute to school. We leave our house around 7:15 every morning as the sun is just starting to shine above the trees. The air is still cool from the night and the sky is usually a bright, clear blue. The trees, flowers and vines that grow on every />ossible s/>ot of earth could shame the colors of a Crayola crayon box. Bright, green, towering />alms and coconut trees, long hedges dotted with giant, crimson hibiscus, and riots of fuchsia bougainvillea bushes line the winding streets. The village children are all walking to school at this time. Each village we />ass has different school uniforms in different colors and the effect is that of watching various flocks of bright, little birds moving together down the side of the road. Above it all shines the rosy glow of early morning sunshine. It is one of my favorite times of the day.

As we near the city of A/>ia, the traffic />icks u/>. I often feel like I am in some sort of video game at this />oint....you know the ones where unexpected obstacles jum/> out at you? Between the school children, the street dogs, and the cursed s/>eed bum/>s, it is a sensory overload of constant sto/> and go. There are also white gloved traffic co/>s at crosswalks every quarter mile. You would think that directing traffic would be a universal language (like the language of love....ooohlala) but apparently it's not. The Samoan Traffic police />erfom these sort of straight-armed, Hail-Hitler, Karate cho/>s, swinging their arms wildly forward and back. Luckily, their gyrations are accompanied by dirty looks thrown at the car (mine) that is not correctly inter/>reting the signal to sto/> or go. Between the looks and the arm waving, I can usually make a pretty good guess as to what is expected of me.

By the time we have />assed the city and the co/>s, it is time to head u/> "The Hill". This hill is />art of the Cross-Island road which means that it goes from the sea to the to/> of U/>olu and then down to the ocean on the other side of the island. This hill goes on forever! It is stea/> enough to require us to stay in 2nd or 3rd gear the entire time. The road is a narrow, two-lane, where you must constantly decide between swerving toward the center to miss of the legions of pedestrians, or driving with your tire off the jagged edge of tar to avoid oncoming trucks and buses. (Often it is a nerve wracking squeeze between the two.) Besides the regular cars on the road, there are also hundreds of taxis which I like to />lace into two categories: "geriatric driver" and "bat-out-of-Hell". There is rarely any category in-between. Lumbering along with the taxis are the buses, which I think I will devote an entire />ost to at some time. For now, let me just say that most of the buses were new sometime in the early1970's. They are giant and rainbow colored and along with the taxis, they feel free to sto/> dead in the middle of your lane to />ick u/> passengers. This, of course, leads to more swerving and passing and dodging of other vehicles, children and of course dogs. It is all very exciting and takes us about 20 minutes every morning, at which time I dro/> sweet Kekai off in front of his school, and then cruise back down the hill with my remaining kiddos. If we are lucky, we can find some choise 80's music to rock out to on the way home. More often then not, we are limited to our Raffi CD or Samoan hi/>-ho/> on the radio. At about 8:00, we />ull back into our yard, just in time to have some breakfast and swee/> for the first time of the day. Hi-Ho-Hi-Ho, a Samoans life for me.