polynesian dance performance

I'm not necessarily known for my grace or coordination - if anything, I'm probably known more for my lack of grace and coordination. Dancing is not one of my strengths. And I'm not being modest, it's just not. There are things I do well and things I don't. Dancing falls into the latter category. In spite of that, I joined a Polynesian dance group, Tui Moana. It's amazing exercise (you use muscles you never knew you had!) and a lot of fun.

The group performed just a few months after I started dancing with them. I was supposed to perform too, but chickened out because the dance we were supposed to perform still hadn't been made up (errr, choreographed) two weeks before the performance. I was too new on the island to be comfortable with that level of unpreparedness.

Apparently I just needed a few more months on the island... Last Saturday I performed with the group. There were fifteen of us so this picture is just a portion of those who performed (just those who happened to be standing around when Clif was available to take the picture).


I knew I would be performing one of the dances we had learned earlier. We were learning another dance too, but it was never finished. Just a week before the performance the group decided to scrap the new dance and perform a dance that some of them had done before (affectionately known as the "yellow dress dance" because they originally wore a yellow dress when they first performed it). I wasn't sure if I could learn it in time, but managed to pull it off in a week -being conveniently situated in the back and middle of the group during the performance helped! And, just to keep you on your toes, the "yellow dress dance" was done in the green/red dresses and the yellow puletasi was worn during the Samoan number.



We performed at the Tradewinds Hotel at a fundraising event in order to send a different dance group to Hawaii for a dance competition (although as Clif cynically pointed out, if we had just given the group the amount we spent on costumes, they would probably have made more money). There were fifteen different dance numbers and our group did two of them. I love watching the other groups dance.


Everett is fascinated by Polynesian dancing so he was mesmerized all evening. He even volunteered to get up on stage while the emcee was stalling between numbers.


Simon... well, not so much:


In keeping with Samoan tradition, the final dance was a tauluga. The tauluga is a dance performed by a taupou at the end of important events. A taupou is the daughter of the matai (high chief) and usually a virgin. She is important as a symbol representing the purity and beauty of the girls/women of the village. During the tauluga, people throw money at the taupou, but throwing money isn't just reserved for the tauluga. Anyway, here are pictures of the tauluga; the one at this event was performed by Miss American Samoa. The crazy headdress she's wearing is called a tuwinna and it's my favorite part of the traditional clothes the taupous wear.

Samoan Flag Day Fautasi Race

Flag day is the holiday in American Samoa. It marks the day in 1900 that the chiefs of Tutuila signed the Deed of Cessation, making it an official American territory, and the subsequent flying of the American flag (hence the Flag Day thing). I'm a little fascinated by it because the guy who was responsible for all this, Commander (at the time, Captain) Benjamin Franklin Tilley, became the acting governor and forwarded laws within the same month that protect the Samoan traditional way of life, mainly by protecting the communal land and matai systems. I'm so impressed that he had the foresight and desire to prevent the complete Westernization of the islands, and that these laws have worked so well to prevent displacement of Samoans from their native land. People can, and some do, live off the land here. It's a crazy concept for a palagi coming from US suburbia.

Anyway, April 17th is also the one Samoan holiday we've learned a lot about because, while watching our one channel on tv, occasionally the few US shows that are on will be interrupted and they will start broadcasting last year's Flag Day celebrations. Last week we were given both Thursday and Friday off, it seems almost a necessity because everyone -literally, everyone- is involved in the Flag day celebrations. There are two full days of speeches, singing, and dancing at the stadium, along with evening performances all week in the Fagotogo malae. Every village or group seems to make an appearance at least once.

I was most excited about seeing the fautasi race.


Fautasi are longboat canoes that used to be the main mode of transportation between islands. They hold up to fifty people and can be over 90 feet long. I wish I knew more details on them because it's pretty amazing to see them glide through the waves. The fautasi race begins out in the ocean and the rowers race the five miles toward shore.

We got out early to make sure we didn't miss it. We've gotten a little too acclimatized and were cold that morning, even though it rarely gets lower than the high 70's here. It might have been 75 degrees...

I had expected a huge group of fautasi boats to come up to the finish line, with a close exciting finish. Well, I should have known not to have expectations! There were only 8 boats in the race and they were so spread out that it seemed like there wasn't much competition. It was still pretty amazing to see them come rowing into the harbor. I love watching them all paddle in unison.

As an interesting side note, I later learned that the top 8 finishers won cash prizes. The top eight, huh? Convenient!

a Samoan funeral

Today I attended my first big American Samoan cultural event. Unfortunately, it was necessitated by the death of a great man. One of the Associate Judges at the High Court, Judge Sagapolutele, passed away a couple weeks ago. It was very unexpected and a great loss to the High Court. Not only was Sagapolutele a judge, he was also a matai and, I believe, a deacon in the Catholic Church.

As far as I can tell, Samoan funerals are a series of events. There may be something else that precedes it, but for me the first event was a type of gift-exchange. The family of the person who has passed away and a family (or, in our case, group) of the people who are coming to the funeral meet and give each other gifts. I don't know how many of these they have for every funeral, but I imagine that there are usually several because it is just a meeting of one family with another. Clif had already attended this portion of a Samoan funeral so I had heard about part of the customs and had some idea of what to expect. I didn't realize all the preparation that went into it though. The High Court employees had matching uniforms made: the women had puletasis (a Samoan-style shirt & skirt) made with a screen printed flower design and the men had shirts with a screen printed bamboo pattern.

It was held outside the family's fale. The fale was an amazingly beautiful traditional style fale, decorated with fine mats wrapped around the posts, twisted into rosettes on top of each post, and covering the floor. Outside the fale were some tents set up with chairs for us to sit in. When we were all seated, one of the Judges stood in front of our group holding a carved wooden staff. One of the men for the Sagapolutele family stood in front of their group with a similar staff. These men spoke for their respective groups during the presentation of gifts. It was all in Samoan so I didn't understand much, but the judge spoke for a minute and then the women (me included!) held onto a 40 yard length of fabric, each of us about 5 feet apart so the fabric draped between us, and carried it up to the fale. We had our 20-yard bolts of fabric and flowers in the other hand and left those gifts near the casket in the fale.

The rest of the event took place in front of the fale too, which is only interesting to me because when Clif went, the men went inside the fale for the presentation of other gifts. Judge Sagapolutele's family began by giving many trays with a large can of corned beef, a package of crackers, champagne with money tied to the top, and a bolt of fabric. Then they presented many fine mats. The mats vary in size and they unfolded them to show the patterns. Sometimes it took up to five people to hold the mats open because they were so big. Then the Court presented mats and money to the family. While they were presenting these gifts, I noticed that while we were giving gifts, we were also being given gifts: two of the High Court's trucks being loaded up with cases of chicken, canned mackeral, and rolled mats. One truck was so full of mats that they were piled up as high as the cab of the truck. Then Judge Sagapolutele's family presented us with more mats and gifts. The amount of gifts being passed back and forth (and there was a lot of back and forth) was really incredible. From what I understand, each of the items given has cultural significance, but I'm not really sure what that is. Anyway, it was very interesting. I just wish I had been able to understand the things that were said.

The funeral service was later today. It was also entirely in Samoan so I didn't understand much. It seemed like a fairly traditional funeral mass (not that I'm uber-knowledgable about funeral masses) with a few Samoan twists, like when the family gave everyone leis. Needless to say, it was a very interesting Samoa day for me.

I've been told that the traditional Samoan portion of the funeral used to be very important as a way of showing kinship or friendship with the different families on the island. Now it's not as necessary because the families aren't constantly fighting with each other, and if they do have a dispute, they can resolve it in court.

Clif received these two fine mats from the funeral he went to.

The Break-in

We got home from work last night and I went straight into the bedroom to change out of my work clothes. Things from the closet were out on the bed and strewn about the room - the camera bag and the case that our hair clippers are in (it's shiny and looks expensive I guess) and my jewelry were lying around. The dresser drawers were all opened and had obviously been rifled through.

We went back into our front room area and noticed that the wood slat holding down the screen near the back door had been pried out of place (not that it was hard since the wood was rotted and the nails rusted, they apparently used some bbq tongs to pry it up), the screens lifted up, the glass louvers carefully removed and stacked, and then they just crawled right in.

They took all kinds of stuff. Some kind of random and other stuff that was clearly valuable. Our laptop, iPod (which I racked up all kinds of Westlaw points to earn - arg! and it was the big one), iPod speaker, 2 cell phones, a bunch of jewelry, a cooler backpack, Simon's allowance out of his wallet, some of Simon's tee-shirts with cartoon characters like Batman and Spiderman on them, bathroom stuff (hair gel, hairspray, my face cleaning stuff), and medicine (children's Tylenol, NyQuil, etc). The interesting thing is that they didn't take the Wii or our camera, although it looked like they may have accidentally left the camera behind. And the jewelry they took wasn't the expensive stuff, but some cheaper things that I just really liked.

Simon was pretty sad about his shirts (not that he needed as many as we brought since he wears uniforms to school most days) and allowance money. But he and Everett were glad that their toys were all still there, as far as we could see.

It's really frustrating, not so much the monetary value (although partly since we can't afford to replace things), but that it was so easy for them to get in. And then that we sold nearly everything we owned to come here and someone took the few comforts of home that we had decided to bring with us. There is so much that's irreplaceable on our computer, like all our photos. And the iPod was our only way of listening to good music - the radio stations here play the same 10 songs over and over. The funny thing is, I'm almost just as upset over my Clinique face stuff that they took because it's just as impossible for us to replace.

more snorkeling stuff

Sometimes the call of the ocean is too much for us to handle and we go snorkeling even though we should be doing all kinds of responsible (boring) things like feeding our children and getting them ready for bed. Tonight was one of those nights. It was totally worth it!

I saw a black-blotched porcupinefish and a barracuda (far away enough and small enough that I didn't immediately get out of the ocean!).

Right before they rang the bell for Sa*, Clif saw a red firefish (from what I can tell, it's a type of scorpionfish also called a lionfish) near the shore and we all jumped in the ocean to see it. It was very impressive, but we didn't want to get too close because it's also very poisonous. We couldn't watch it for long, but we were all able to get a good look at it before we had to leave.

*I realized that I never explained Sa! It's a family prayer time that happens at dusk and sometimes at dawn, depending on the village. Certain people in the village ring bells (not real bells, big empty tanks that are hanging from posts or trees, I'll have to take some pictures) or blow conch shells and make sure everyone goes in their house to pray. They will either go inside their homes or a fale to sing and pray. People can't be out in the ocean or playing in the parks during Sa, everyone is supposed to be inside praying -at least theoretically, it's not like they monitor what you do inside the house. Some villages are really strict about Sa and others don't observe it as much. Technically you aren't supposed to drive or walk through a village during Sa either, but if you're on the main road then it's ok. They ring the bells or blow the horns again for curfew later (I think it's around 10, but I never paid much attention), but it's not followed as strictly as Sa. From what I hear, some of the people who enforced Sa in the past would occasionally get violent with people who weren't inside, but it's not an issue anymore.