Blakey’s Picnic

May 21, 2011
Blakey Larsen, St. Paul, MN, a third year Peace Corps Volunteer, has a dual role of organizing gatherings. This one is for Group 83, the newest teachers who have been locked in a 1 ½ week training session and who are candidates for the Samoan Challenge. I thought it best to check them out and visa versa. No better way than a beach party barbeque

Cook, Robert Gonzales

Cook, Devon Childress

David Macmanie and Karen Corey with Karen's visiting parents.

A little poker after the picnic with the boys at Apia Central Hotel

Keke Pua’a (Pork filled cakes)

May 16, 2011

Keke Pua’a is banned from my office by the Executive Director. Anyone found eating one is fined. What goes inside these cakes is a mystery to me, but I must admit they are good.

Now the Executive Director is away and all the women can talk about is Keke Pua’a. There is Keke Pua’a everywhere.

War in the South Pacific

5/15/11

Greatly enlarged satelite view of Minerva Reefs, or the Republic of Minerva

Minerva Reef consists of two coral atolls in the South Pacific whose treacherous lagoon is sometimes used by yatchs avoiding storms. It claimed by two of the few countries in the South Pacific with standing armies, Fiji and Tonga. The Minerva Reefs have been part of Tonga for 40 years, but last year Fiji claimed them and sent its navy there to destroy navigation lights on the entrance to the lagoon.

Meanwhile, last week a Tonga navy vessel sailed into Fiji waters to take Fiji Lieutenant Colonel Ratu Tevita Uluilakeba Mara to Nuku'alofa. Mara was facing charges of plotting to overthrow dictator Voreqe Bainimarama.

Mara is from the Lau Islands, part of Fiji, but culturally and historically part of Tonga. In the 1850s one of his Tongan forefathers, Ma'afu'otu'itonga, a Methodist, waged war on the Fijian Seru Cakobau who was based on the island of Bau

Cakobau ultimately won and Lau became part of Fiji. Bainimarama comes from the Bau line.

However, the Lau Islands provided the leader crucial to modern Fiji: Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara was Fiji's founding prime minister and later president. The runaway colonel is his youngest son

The first broadside in the latest skirmish might well have occurred in 2009, when several yachts bound for New Zealand were chased out of Minerva Reefs' lagoon, a stopping point for those travelling here, by Fijian navy boats.

Minerva Reefs were claimed by Tonga in 1972 after the shadowy US Phoenix Foundation shipped in dirt and declared it a republic.

The late King Taufa'ahau Tupou IV loaded a ferry with soldiers, a convict work detail and a four-piece brass band and sailed the 500 kilometres to personally haul down the "Republic of Minerva" flag. As he raised his own banner, he declared it a Tongan island.

Fiji's Foreign Affairs deputy permanent secretary Sila Balawa said last year it objected to Tonga building structures on Fiji territory.

In November 2009 the Fiji patrol boats arrived in the lagoon and chased yatchs away.

The king claimed in it 1972. Since then we have been maintaining patrol and put up a lighthouse for the safety of seafarers," he said.

"We have developed a lot, and we are surprised at what is happening."

The Pacific Forum recognised Tonga's annexation of Minerva in 1972 but Fiji, which is now suspended from the 16-nation body, has not formally accepted it.

This all seem foolish but the reefs have taken on more significance as their possession gives rights to lucrative undersea minerals. South Korean, Chinese and Australian interests are seeking prospecting rights in the area.

Keep in touch with what is happening out here. Major wars have been started over less.

JICA

May 14, 2011
United States is not the only country, which sends youthful volunteers. Japan also sends their equivalent of the Peace Corps, called JICA. In some ways they perform many of the same tasks as Peace Corps, some are teachers, others do specific jobs with governmental agencies and NGOs. In other ways they are very different.

It is hard to say JICA is a volunteer organization for they are paid well both during and at the end of their service. They also can drive and are given motorbikes. The term of service is one year, rather than the 27 month Peace Corps tenure. JICA tend to be older than the twenty-something’s who make up the bulk of Peace Corps and have ongoing careers.

In many ways JICA are envious of Peace Corps, which they hold in high regards. They only receive two weeks of in country training before they go to their assignments. This means they have almost no feel for Samoan or Samoan cultures before they come to grabble with actually doing something. Japanese are notoriously poor English speakers, even though they are well versed in English reading and writing. This makes them even more isolated in this foreign land.

Since Peace Corps and JICA share some common experiences, it is only natural for the gregarious Americans to invite the Japanese to a party. We both try to decide whether to bow or shake hands, best to do both. Peace Corps prepare a truly American meal of tortillas, salsa and beer while JICA bring their food of numerous raw tuna dishes, rice, a kind of meat loaf, and some Japanese intoxicants.

Market basket day at Women in Business

5-13-11
Village women with fruit/veggie baskets in my office. My boss, Tina, wearing Sombero.

Two more work associates, Tilo with hat, and Elina.

One of the businesses the Women in Business Development (WIBD) organization, where I am assigned, promotes is organic fruit/veggie baskets. The village women bring them into my office area to fill orders WIBD have collected from more prosperous Apia residents.

Wintertime in Samoa

5-12-11

Two sheets required to keep warm during a Samoan winter.
St. Nick hangs in my house confused. He lost his bearings when the North Star disappeared over the horizon.

South of the equator it is wintertime. This is the time of year the aboriginals in Australia named a "Three Dog Night". Here in Samoa it is a two sheet night.

It’s the Culture Stupid

May 7, 2011

For those who have never worked in a foreign country, it is difficult to imagine why there can be so much misunderstanding between two people from different cultures even if they can speak the same language and seemingly agree on certain points. Let me try to elaborate.

After three frustrating weeks of trying to come up with a plan for my project, “The Samoan Challenge”, I finally had a meeting with my Samoan sponsoring organization, “Women in Business Development” (WIBD). I presented a very simplified program of providing a basic framework and letting Samoans develop it further in their own way. This would meet The WIBD’s objective of a program maybe workable in rural villages, the Peace Corps objective of having volunteers participate in a significant health project, and my objective to get rid of 5,000 pink wristbands.

WIBD said my plan was the plan they wanted last year! They blamed the Peace Corps for making last year’s program too complicated, leading many participants and Peace Corps to simply bail out. Also, WIBD was not aware all Peace Corps then and now in Samoa were teachers, usually unfamiliar with the complicated politics of village life, and not Village Based, as Mary and I.

When I brought this up to the Peace Corps staff, they were amazed at how after so many meetings with WIBD, they had never expressed any concerns about the program’s direction, nor even after WIBD attended the training of Peace Corps, and did they not know that all PC are primary school teachers?

Another case study was when explaining to a Samoan woman that after my Peace Corps job in Samoa, I was returning to the States and going to marry a Samoan man and an American woman. What she heard and thought for quite a while was “I am going to marry a Samoan man”. This really didn’t upset her because in Samoa “Fa’afafine, man-woman” are quite acceptable, so my marriage might be strange, but not out of the realm of possibility. She was relieved to learn, a Fa’afafine I am not.

Still another case study was this past week when I sat for an entire day’s program with thirty WIBD employees. WIBD had hired two women from New Zealand, one with multiple educational degrees and the other a psychotherapist to conduct a training session. I asked the educator what she wanted the people to walk away with. She rambled on about something to do with team building and the evils of office gossip.

One of the exercises was to break into four groups and work together to build a tall giraffe out of newspaper, tape, and string, an exercise familiar to anyone in a western organization. One of the most successful groups was the one which approached the task in a typical Samoan manner. They selected a leader, in this case an older man amongst the women, and followed his decisions. The women in his group were quick to point out that their leader was very good in listening to their ideas, but he made the final decision which they accepted. Everyone in that group felt their giraffe was the best, which it was. The educator gloriously wrote many words on a whiteboard expressed during the ensuing discussion and espoused how everyone should work together in some vague democratic manner. She then took a picture of the almost blacked whiteboard. She totally missed how Samoans actually do work together.

Another exercise was to discuss what you found difficult about yourself (presumably work related). I said “It was the man in the mirror”, leading to a quick suggestion that I should break the mirror. Anyway several of the women broke down in tears as they revealed typical office problems, the psychotherapist listening with empathy and care as she encouraged even more to be reviled in this group of work associates.

I had to contain myself even more when the consultants put a bowl of chocolates in the middle of the circle during the “difficulty” segment. On top of that, they exhorted the group they were to take just one when their turn came for a candy. It was like putting raw meat in front of hungry lions. There was no understanding that in Samoa take one, means one handful.

The task before me was even further complicated during lunch. Here I was working for probably the most health conscience organization in Samoa to reduce obesity and promote “natural, organic foods” when trays of the most delectable and greasy food were served. In true Samoan fashion, people heaped piles of stuff on their plates. When finished with one plateful, they heaped on seconds. The only food left over was the cucumber, asparagus sandwiches. I sat there wondering if even my sponsoring organization was capable of participating in this project I am supposed to do.

The final segment had to do with gossip and the destructiveness thereof. The Samoans are masters of gossip. It is one of the reasons they can sit around in a circle for most of the day. In fact, Samoans have different words to discuss different types of gossip. They are light years ahead of us. Whereas Gossip might be very destructive in western decision making, it is not a big deal in Samoa where the decision is made by one person, not by a vote, regardless of what appears to be happening. I had to laugh as the consultants efforts educate about the evils of gossip actually fed the flames of future office gossip. I laughed even harder when at the beginning of their program they had everyone agree that whatever was said during their program not to be discussed outside of the room. What planet did they come from?

Eureka! We have a failure to communicate here.

Indeed, thinking you are both on the same wavelength is difficult even in your own culture, but extend that to a different way of thinking and interrupting the same word, you get a feel of why so many efforts of world peace, understanding, and aid end in failure. This Peace Corps stuff is hard work. The temptation to write off your efforts as falling upon dumb aboriginals is your own failure to realize the ignorance and shortcomings of the man in the mirror.

Somehow I have to learn how to operate in a culture with little or no feedback, thus reinforcing my notions of progress when there isn’t any, and Samoans have to grabble with my directness and lack of formal protocol, thus reinforcing their notions of my rudeness when I simply want to meet a deadline to get things done. I guess that is why the project is called,” The Samoan Challenge”.