past due

October 2nd

The thoughts and opinions expressed in this blog are my own and do not represent those of the WorldTeach organization.

Okay so for the most exciting news: I just saw a whale! I didn’t think I would be so excited when I saw one, but this one was about a football field length away! I was just sitting out on one of the rocks in the ocean and all of a sudden the whale jumps out of the water…I screamed! Luckily, I had my camera with me and quickly took it out to snap some photos. The whale didn’t come nearly as high out of water after that, but I did capture him!!

It has reached the point where I have been here long enough that I am ready to have a weekend away. Next weekend I am planning on going over to Ofu and Olesega. Due to Columbus Day we have a three day weekend, so I think it would be perfect to getaway. The JROTC lieutenant, Trevor, has family in Olesega and invited me to ride over with him kind of as a birthday present. For a while I was debating on whether or not I should go, but at the end of the school day yesterday I decided I need to get away for the weekend. To keep any hope of sanity left, I should get away. 

Let’s rewind back to my last blog post about me finding out Tala cut herself and all my bad luck that followed. On Saturday night there was choir practice in the village. During the choir practice, there was an announcement about Tala cutting herself. There was also an announcement about my late night intruder the previous night. What came out of the meeting was that after 9 PM no student, grades K-12, are allowed outside their homes or they will be fined $100. At the same time, if a visitor is found outside of any white person’s house, then they are fined $100 by the high chief. And that’s how the village deals with a problem. :-) As you can probably imagine, I was pretty upset with how this girl was being treated and knew the only thing I could do is apologize to her for all the crap she had to go through. The rest of the weekend I didn’t see her around so I waited until school began. Monday morning there was an assembly. Towards the end the principal spoke about girls’ cutting themselves and that it is bad because “When you get older and have grandchildren you are still going to have those scars on your arms and you will have to tell them why you have them.” And thus began the week. I sat down with Tala and let her know that I was available if she ever needed to talk. She has yet to come seek me out but I hope she does if she needs it.

Last weekend I received some troubling news and it made for the beginning of a bad week. Fortunately, the week wasn’t as awful as I was expecting. On Sunday night, I was walking around the village and ran into one of my students, Jedi. Jedi is the kind of kid who thinks he is a genius and likes to rub it into everyone’s face. At first I didn’t care for him much, but he actually has common sense which everyone else out here is lacking so it is nice to have that in a student. Jedi and I talked for about a half an hour about the village and specifically about the students in the village. The girl, Tala, that I found cutting herself the week prior is one of Jedi’s good friends. I thought he would be a good person to talk to because he seems to be trusted by a lot of people. There are five females that attend the high school from my village. Jedi is 100% positive that four of them are cutting themselves. The other girl is a sister to a girl cutting herself so she might also be doing it. There are also two eighth graders in the village who have been cutting themselves. This is obviously much larger a problem then I initially thought. My first thought was that these girls are doing this together, sort of like a cult or something. It seems like they don’t all know each other are doing it. Jedi said that a lot of people come to him when they have problems. The worse part is that I found out one of my students from a separate village tried killing herself this summer by drinking two bottles of shampoo. Obviously, there are major issues with the way people are living their lives out here! Right now, I am trying my best just to be someone that people can come talk to if they have problems. This week I have had a lot of conversations with students so hopefully I am being a good listener.

On Wednesday, September 29th we had no school due to the one year anniversary of the tsunami. On Tuesday, we had a service after lunch where all the grades performed a song or two and we prayed. I felt like the service was just one big joke. I really don’t understand why they were laughing though because they do have a lot of family over on the main island where the tsunami hit. Just one more thing that I will never understand about Samoans. On Wednesday, Josh and I went to the 6 AM church service for the tsunami victims. It was a nice one hour church service in which we had a moment of silence at 6:49, the time the tsunami hit last year. After church we went home and went right to bed. At 9 AM, I woke up for the second time and made myself some breakfast. Josh woke up shortly after to tell me that an earthquake hit on the main island at around 7:15 that morning. Fortunately, there was not a tsunami following this earthquake and we didn’t feel a thing. Josh’s girlfriend from WorldTeach, Holly, is living off the main island on a little island called Aunu’u. She called him and told him she was running up the hill to higher ground. As the day wore on she kept calling and updating him. Basically not a single Samoan reacted to the earthquake. You would think a magnitude 5 earthquake would be something to take seriously, especially if it happened on the year anniversary of a tsunami! Another reason why I will never understand the people of American Samoa.

Thursday began what felt like a Monday all over again. Thursday was actually a decent day but Friday was so annoying that it didn’t matter if I had one decent day out of two. On Friday, we received a bulletin in the morning that during the second half of lunch we will have a meeting in the cafeteria. The lunch period is 45 minutes and the students only eat for about ten or fifteen of those minutes so it really isn’t hard to have a meeting there. As I was finishing up grading, the principal walked by to tell me the meeting was about to start. I left my room a few minutes later to find a group of students standing around the office area. I stopped a student to find out two girls had just been in a fight. The computer teacher, Lofi, had one of the girls and so I went to find the other who had disappeared. I brought Jasmine to the office where I thought Lofi brought Trina. I reached the office door to find that it was locked. Instead, we all met at the back of the building. I began saying, “Okay, what is going on? Let’s talk this out.” After no one spoke, Lofi proceeded to talk to them in Samoan. I have no idea what was being said, but at the end she had Jasmine apologize. I did have a problem with her apology though as it wasn’t very sincere and neither of them would even look at each other.

While this was going on, Crystal went to go get the principal from the cafeteria. Crystal came back with no principal. She told me later that she went and told him and he said, “Oh, ok.” As we continue to stand out there, we keep getting students come up and tell us that we need to go to the meeting. We were getting yelled at for trying to remedy the situation. And so we leave the girls to do whatever they want and go to this damn meeting. We got there and the entire thing was in Samoan. Obviously I was quite angry, and still am, about everything that came about in that half an hour. For the first half of the meeting it was the entire staff and then it became just the instructors. For about half the time he spoke to just the instructors he spoke in English. Luckily he asked if there were any comments or questions in English in which I raised my hand. I explained that I was disgusted that two girls were fighting prior to this meeting and Lofi and I were trying to take care of it and were yelled at because we weren’t in the meeting. Now the girls are just running free around campus and can pick another fight at any moment. The principal responded that this meeting was scheduled since the morning and a fight wasn’t going to change that. He also told me to let them fight, it is good for them. When he leaves here he can go pick them up and drive them to the hospital. I didn’t speak the rest of the meeting. Once we were leaving he grabbed me and said, “Oh Gretchen, I didn’t mean what I said. Of course I don’t want them fighting.” I kind of chuckled and walked away. I am glad he cared so much about saving his ass.

Finishing out the last class of the day helped me relax and calm down a bit. At the end of the day, every staff member jetted off campus when the bell rang. That means that the keys to JROTC where my laundry was was also taken. As I walked home, I ran into Tautua and he told me we could go back up to school later as he didn’t have his keys on him. At 8 PM, after not hearing from him, I walked over to him and Trish’s house to see if we could go get my things. Tautua didn’t really feel like going so I ran around trying to find the secretary, Ben, to drive me up there. Really not making me like the principal any better. Once I finally got my laundry and went home, I realized I left all my whites in the washing machine.

Another week done, another week to go. Hopefully I will update you before I leave for Olesega next weekend!


Love,

Gretchen