A Samoan Conference

04/03/08

Today, I was a guest at a conference held by the Ministry of Communications for villages with existing telecenters. This was an opportunity to politic with those who will select the new telecenter sites, hopefully for my village of Iva.

Conferences are basically the same worldwide. Power Point presentations serve as the scripts for presenters. There are boring speeches by mucky-mucks who have need to remind others that they are mucky-mucks. There is numerous staff and office support personnel who usually outnumber the attendees and who also help make the mucky-mucks feel at home. Finally there are a few people who actually want to get information from the conference, which they can use.

Samoan conferences have the entire above, but with a Samoan twist: food and lots of it! There is food when you arrive at 9:00. The morning break at 10:30 is a feast for a king served to you by colorfully dressed women of the host village. One is unable to eat it all, or even try a bite of each morsel, before it is taken away. Then an hour later it is lunch. Each individual meal can feed an entire kingdom, all stuffed into Styrofoam containers. The leftovers are repackaged and taken home by anyone who can still walk after lunch (which is all the Samoans).

Instead of some hotel meeting room, the conference is held in a huge open building with the sea and barrier reef to one side, and the mountains on the other. Ocean breezes serve as the air-conditioner. My mind drifts off. The flowered lei given to me helps to cover the B.O. from my bike ride. But in the end, it is the important politicking for your own interest that makes it a conference worthwhile.