Good Bye Samoa!

We spent almost six weeks on the island of American Samoa, helping with the repairing of homes, after the earthquake and tsunami of September 29th, 2009. Our purpose was to make homes safe, secure and sanitary. The Samoan people have an attitude of grace and acceptance. We were able to help a few get their homes back to where they had been before September 29th. The time went quickly, and the memories are special.
We are home again with major jet lag!!

Some special memories:

The lava rocks taking on a huge wave, just 400 feet from our house.

The beauty of the ever present waves, on all sides of the island. The blue-green color is real.

The sunsets, oh, the sunsets.

The ever present Samoan smile. Mira, George's wife.

Surfers, swimmers, fisherman and fisherwomen.

The lovely flowers, of many bright colors.

The many beautiful, large churches.

Even in destruction, this is a beautiful setting. This is Amanave, a village where we worked.

George and Wilbur, with Precious, the five year old daughter of George.

Apprentice Nue and wife, came to say good-bye, baring gifts.

Noah and wife and Love, came to wish us the best and say goodbye.

Mary with George's two youngest children.

Mother's Day, a very big day at church. Line (Leenay) is giving Mary and all the ladies, some goodies. Line was our contact at the bank.

Most of the ladies wore white and the youth put on skits (taken from the Bible) to honor mothers during the church service. The singing is so beautiful.

Wilbur and Johnnie at the house where we did most of our work this month.

George and Darwin, both have on a Eu lava lava (a man lava lava).

Typical discussion at the table.

Norm and Phyllis Lind and usat the airport. We are wearing gifts from George's family.

We left Samoa at 11:30 PM and arrived in Hawaii at 5:00 AM. We went to Pearl Harbor for a look around. We were in the harbor where the US was attacked by Japan in 1941.

I was reading this book, while in Samoa and it helped understand some of the customs and the culture. The fabric is a lava lava, that was given to us.

As a quilter, I am always looking for local fabric, common to the area and an
expression of their culture.

A fan is as important as a bible in church on Sunday. The jewelry is quite common. The beads say Talofa Samoa, meaning welcome to Samoa.

Wilbur got some hats and he had taken some farmer hats to give away.

A view from the harbor in Fagatogo, today, as we watched the boat races.
April 17th is the 110th anniversary of American Samoa becoming a territory of the U.S.A.

There were nine boats and each boat had a large community of support.

In the picture below they are launching one of the long boats. The boats are 115 feet long, weight around 2 ton. There are 23 rowers per side, which makes 46 rowers with a captain running the rudder and yelling the commands. There were heats yesterday and one of the boats swamped, because of the rough water in the ocean and today, they won the race of the year. This is a long and much celebrated event, I would assume it has been going on for the all 110 years. It has never been canceled and they usually row in the rain, which they did today.

We went to two night of celebration of Flag Day. There was much music and local dancing. It rained both nights but there were tents to protect the crowd. Many of the groups were local schools presenting various traditional dances.

I am so impressed with the buses on the Island. There are between 40 and 50 different buses running between all the little villages and the main part of town. Any person or family can prepare a bus for hauling passengers, without a special license. Wilbur thinks I got carried away with pictures of the buses. I wish I had native music on this blog for you to enjoy as you enjoy all the different styles.

This one is picking up some high school boys.

Most buses have wood bench sits and we plan to ride one before we leave Samoa.

What a cutie?