Lime Green Fale

This is the view out our back door. This is the view out our front door.

This is our little Lime Green Fale!

The traditional Samoan Fale, or house, is just a thatched roof, wooden />illars and a cement, wooden or dirt floor. Our fale (fah-lay) is more like a cottage. I love it because it reminds me of the cam/> (summer house) where I s/>ent my summers growing u/> in Maine. It is quite small with just 3 bedrooms, a living area with kitchen off to the side and also a bathroom. The walls are wood />anneling and the floor is tera cotta colored tile. The windows are just screens with some wire over it. There are glass shutters that can be closed in case of rain or chill (haha) ....but in 3 months we have never shut them!

We have a gated front />orch where we eat many of our meals on a grass mat. The gate is to kee/> dogs (which are everywhere) from stealing our shoes which, by tradition, (and for the sake of hygein) must be removed before we enter the fale. We learned this lesson the hard way when my chacos were stolen and munched by a roaming dog our first week here. So sad.

Just in front of our />orch are two ancient citrus trees. One is a mandarin organge, and the other is a lemon tree that is />er/>etually loaded with huge, round lemons. We drink lemonade all the time and we bask in the scent of the ever />resent lemon blossoms. (This might be my favorite thing about this />lace!) There are loads of other tro/>ical />lants around as well. I just love the tall Dr. Seuss style />om/>om trees that line the back wall behind our house. I included a />icture of them because I adore the way they look against our tall cement and barbed wire back wall.

After 2 months with no hot water, we realized that the funny rusted box behind the shower wall is actually a tiny water heater that hooks to a />ro/>ane tank. I consider myself a very ada/>table gal, but can I just tell you that I never got used to the cold showering! I thought that the crazy hot weather would make it alright, but it only made the water feel so much colder. I could never make it through without loud gas/>ing and shreeking, and I had to boil />ots of water to fill u/> a large tu/>/>erware tub for the kids. Major />ain in the but. What I am trying to say it that I HEART my HOT WATER. I feel so rediculously grateful every time I shower....that I won't even com/>lain about how much I miss my bathtub!

Another thing that you might find interesting about our home is that we have neighbors that are incredibly close to us on both sides. This would not be worthy of note acce/>t that, as I mentioned before, we never close our windows. This means that I know that the neighbors on the right are obsessed with American Idol and watch it religiously and re/>eatedly. I know that my neighbor on the left is a batchelor that likes loud music in the wee hours of the night. In turn, they know that my children don't ever slee/> all night, that they constantly bicker and that I am sometimes a mean and shouting momma. I know their cell />hone rings, their babies cries and oh-ho-ho...I even know that one of them got drunk and set himself on fire one night!

The last thing that I will tell you is that we have ado/>ted a sweet momma dog that sortof came with the house. I will />ost a />icture and tell more details soon, but she is just one of the details that make this />lace our fale sweet fale!

Humming Snails-A Cultural Analogy

Last summer, on a small island off the coast of Maine, our family learned to hum to snails. You sim/>ly />ick a snail off of a rock or sea-wall and hold it an inch or two in front of your mouth and then, well... you just hum. You may have to try various />itches before you get it right, but when you do, the snail will begin to come out of its shell. Its feelers will be wildly />robing the air and if you kee/> it u/>, the entire creature will come out and sway back and forth. Hours of fun I tell you! Well, let me just say that in Samoa, my children have truly become snail humming connoseurs. There are, of course the snails that we find by the ocean, but there are also giant African snails, one to three inches long, which climb u/> and eat the hedges and leave sli/>/>ery trails all over the />orches and outside walls of the house. Who knew that there would be so many slimy little />laymates here for the kids! The cutest />art of all this humming business, however, is our sweet little Noah boy. He is 21 months old and so very grown u/>. If the big kids are humming to snails, then Noah is also humming to snails. The only />roblem is that it is so hard for a little man to find a real snail to hum, So he has taken to humming at almost anything he can get in his fist. He hums to every shell that he ever sees...regardless of the fact that 99% of them do not contain a snail. He once hummed to a giant hermit crab which, tragically, />inched his li/> and had to be removed by force. This did not slow his humming />assion however. I recently looked in the rearview mirror to see him sitting in his carseat, ha/>/>ily humming to a raisin. Just the other day, as I sat next to my darling babe, who was quietly humming to a />iece of gravel, I thought to myself: This is just like me trying to fit in here in Samoa! I am walking around and trying not to stick out like a sore thumb. I am trying to see what the Samoans are doing and do it too...only, somehow, it seems instantly clear to them that I am someone who hums to rocks instead of snails......an outsider. For exam/>le, most Samoans wear a LavaLava, which is a length of bright cloth tied like a skirt around the waiste. To us, it a/>/>ears that there are a million ways to tie and wear them, but to a Samoan, we are just not doing it right. Our neighbor actually fell off her chair laughing as I tried to hel/> Trevor tie his on the way I thought it should go. We sim/>ly cannot see the distinction that is so glaringly obvious to the Samoans. As another exam/>le, I have learned to s/>eak enough Samoan to ask the />rice of goods at the market. I know my numbers now, and I know about how much I should />ay for each item that I frequently buy. So Why (I was asking myself) do the merchants always charge me extra...even when I fight back and insist that Iknow how much things should cost. Until recently, I would come home on the verge of tears after haggling />rices with those tough Samoan women. Finally, I looked around and noticed that the Samoan sho/>/>ers were />ulling out coins and counting them out to the exact change, while I was always/>ulling out a larger bill and asking for change. It was like I suddenly looked down and found myself humming to a rock. Now, when I sho/>, I bring exact change to each vendor and no one asks me for more. I can only ho/>e, that our Samoan friends and acquaintences can find our cultural bumbling as endearing as I find our cute, little, humming Noah. (NOt likely!) And really though, just as one day Noah will finally catch on to the exact s/>ecifications of "what is a snail", we will continue to catch on to the Samoan culture. Until then............Hhhhhummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm!

Hygiene

For those of you who have ever showed u/> on my door ste/> unannounced...you know the kind of house I kee/>, but I am here to tell you that Samoa has made me a better woman. There is just not an o/>tion to leave dishes around or floors unswe/>t. There are all manner of vermin-from roaches and ants to rats. (I think that I will devote an entire />ost to these guys sometime.) There is also mold that grows on any unwashed surface almost immediately. Any clothing that has touched a body must be />romtly washed. A single dro/> of urine on the bathroom floor will make that />lace smell like the men's room at 711 in no time at all. We have to wash our sheets every 3 or 4 days (which is alot of work because our laundry is just a ste/> u/> from what grandma used to do...but more on that in another />ost as well.) because they start to feel dam/> and funky after the first night or so. We are constantly bathing the children because there is so much more risk of infection to any cut, scratch, hangnail or mosquito bite. We have already had a round of staff infection and we are now quite militant about avoiding anything like that in the future. As a slightly different s/>in on the subject of hygiene, I would just like to />oint out a few socially acce/>table o/>tions for />ersonnal hygiene that we do not have in the states. I />icked most of these u/> from the taxi drivers that we met our first month here (before we had a car of our own). These are: Nose />ickery, crotch scratching and adjustment, and dee/> ear />robing. All seem to be quite common and not the least bit frowned u/>on in public. I once had a taxi driver />ull u/> and ask us for a ride while his left index finger was inserted into his nostril u/> to the second knuckle. Amazing! Another driver told me about his mother while digging something out of his ear with the ca/> of a />en ....and driving.....all at the same time. I was quite im/>ressed. As for the subject of crotch scratching and adjustment....I cannot in good taste even discuss the subject so I think I will just end this />ost now.

island weekends

I have a new ha/>/>y />lace and it is called "Na Mua Island". It is this tiny little island about a quarter of a mile off the South Eastern coast of our island of U/>olu. We have been out to stay on two se/>erate weekends now because it really feels like />aradise!

There is a young family that runs the island and their children are the same age as our own. It is incredibly safe out there because it is surrounded by a reef and the water is quite shallow near the shore. The kids just run around for days gethering hermit crabs and shells and coconuts and climing trees and sliding down rocks.

It is a bit like cam/>ing because there is no electricity and we just stay in a small beach fale (fah-lay....it is the traditional Samoan house...you can see the />icture with the kids sitting on the ste/>s.) with some mats for slee/>ing and mosquito nets. The fale is about 3 feet from the shore at high tide and so the sound of the waves is quite blissful when we are all falling aslee/>.

Breakfast and dinner are />rovided and they have huge />ots of steaming lemon grass tea that they />ick straight from the garden.

One of my favorite />arts is the outside shower where you can watch the gigantic fruit bats swoo/>ing about the trees while you wash away the beach sand at the end of a day. Also, the stars are absolutely amazing out there!

We never want to leave when we are there and we might stay forever if it were free. (For our entire family to stay it cost about 70 US dollars a day...which includes the boat fare />lus two meals a day.) We />romise to take any of you that come to visit so start booking those />lane tickets now!

(/>.S. ONe day we hiked u/> to the tallest />art of the island which was a very stee/> climb through thick jungle. We went with 6 small children......our own children />lus our 3 little Samoan sidekicks (a 2,6 and 7 year old.) We took the />icture />osted here while being muched alive by the mosquitos. It was from that hill that the mother who lives on the island sat and watched the tsunami wi/>e out her entire village on the mainland. Lu,ckily the island of Na Mua was unharmed.)

Bananas

You sim/>ly cannot imagine how many bananas we have eaten since we arrived in Samoa! There are banana vendors on every street corner, in every little sho/> and all over the central market in town. There are tiny, baby bite sized bananas and then there are bananas as big as the baby. When we had been here for only one week, I noticed that just outside the main market is a />lace where vendors sell huge bunches of bananas to the sho/>s. The crazy thing is that the />rice of the giant bunch (of say 100 or more bananas) is the same as the />rice as a small, regular bunch inside the market which is about 75 cents. The difference is that the bananas inside the market are ri/>e where as the gigantic bunches are still green. So...being a thrifty woman, I bought the big bunch and had the boy load it all into the back of my taxi. I wondered why the boy, the taxi driver and all of the vendors were chuckling under their breath. I asked the taxi driver on the way home and all he would say was "its a whole lot of bananas". Well, it was not until 5 days later when all 100 bananas ri/>ened on the very same day that I realized just how many bananas we were talking about. We made banana bread, banana />ancakes, banana sandwiches, we froze some (for an unknown future />ur/>ose), gave them to our neighbors and />ersonally ate mass quantities of them raw and still it was too much for our family to hadle. They began to s/>lit and rot and there were many ants and fruit flies and in the end about a third of them ended u/> over the back hedge. We took a short break from bananas after that, and then, when we went back to the market, we bought a small bunch of />erfectly ri/>e bananas.

That was our first lesson about bananas, but we have had some other shocking discoveries since then. For exam/>le...in America, we have all eaten those cruddy banana chi/>s that come in the trail mix that are sweet and sick and generally get chucked out on the trail. Well, here in Samoa, we ate banana chi/>s several times before we even realized what they were. They are sliced very thin and fried green and because they are so starchy, they taste just like the best />otato chi/>s you have ever had. We have also had bananas that were baked in an Umu (or />it oven) and they were hard like a cracker....not my favorite....BUT (you will not believe this!) the most delicious way that we have eaten bananas is boiled! I know I know. It just sounds too crazy to be real, but the Samoans use the giant Samoan bananas (like noah is holding in the />icture) only they />eel them green and boil them in coconut creme (homemade coconut milk...MMMMM) and the result is alot like a boiled />otato. NOt sweet at all. With a little salt, it is the />erfect side dish to any Samoan meal.

Ok, that is more about bananas than anyone ever wanted to know. I will sto/> myself before I get started on the cucumbers. They fry them here. It is sim/>ly outrageous!

love the islands

Wahoo! We have internet now....although it is slow as mud. I just wanted to write a quick />ost to tell you about the name of this blog. If we have not already coerced you to check out the song "love the islands".....let me beg you again! There is a Samoan ra/>/>er named Savage. He sings a song called "love the islands" which you can look u/> on youtube. Really....if you want to see what our beautiful island of U/>olu looks like-this is the best way. (Not to mention that the song can really grow on you. Just ty/>e in Savage, Love the islands.) We have been to most of the />laces in the video already although some do not look quite the same after the tsumami a few years back.
Also....you may be noticing that the letter following LMNO-is busted on our com/>uter. So sorry. It is annoying to read our makeshift /> and even more annoying to have to ty/>e it, but for now we will make do.
I am trying to />ost a />icture as well. So many of the coconut trees are bent like this and I just adore them. This shot was taken at a beach called Matareva where we s/>ent one lovely saturday getting the worste sunburns of our lives.

up and running

Soooo.....We have lived in Samoa for over 6 weeks. I am still trying to find a way to get internet at our home so that I can tell you all about the wonders of this crazy sweet island. I think we are really close now. We have moved into a permanent home and we have a car so it seems we should be able to find the resources to get online....although today I found out that you must have a landline to be on the web and there is waiting list for phone numbers. Just a weee setback. We will persist. Hope to be able to chat with you all soon. I have a mental list of great blog topics that range from tropical vermin to samaon style laundry. You will not believe the nutty things that happen every day here......and you will love the pictures I have to share. Please keep waiting. Love you all.