Cultural Exploration 41: Evening Prayer

I grew up in a progressive Catholic household where we said Grace before dinner each night, but that was extent of any sort of family prayer. Our Mormon friends had Family Night every Monday, during which they’d watch a movie together or play board games or something else along those lines, and I assume there was a fair amount of prayer there. But their habits still don’t compare to the evening prayer custom here in Samoa.

As I understand it, evening prayer should be timed so that the sun is completely gone just as the prayer comes to a close. In Samoan, this time of day is referred to as Sā. Usually bells are rung to alert the entire village that it’s time for prayer. During Sā, all activity stops; a temporary curfew goes into effect, fale’oloas close, children come in from play. In general, very few people are out on the street—families can be fined by the village for not abiding by Sā.

Peace Corps aren’t necessarily held to such penalties, but it’s still a good idea to go inside and keep quiet, whether it be out of respect or simply to avoid dirty looks in your village. Of course, different villages view Sā with varying levels of severity. Cale and Sara’s village was quite strict; my school’s compound, not so much.

But by that hour of the day, I’m either inside my house or completely off campus, so it’s rare that my presence would interrupt Sā.

Either way, I admit I enjoy Sā even though I don’t partake. You see, since Sā coincides with sunset, the temperature inevitably drops by 5 or 10 degrees just as the bells ring for prayer to begin. Then, off in the distance, I can hear at least 3 different families begin to sing, often in multiple-part harmony. The effect is quite calming.

When I stay in the host village, I am given a central role in the family prayer. The sequence would go as follows: Mele would say a short prayer, we’d all sing 3 or 4 verses of a song, I would read the bible aloud in Samoan (it’s a phonetic language so it’s quite easy to read, even with a complete lack of comprehension) (also, Akanese has started taking over this job as seen above), Mele would say a really long prayer, and then we’d close with a short song.

As I said, all of this happens in Samoan, and I can follow here and there, but inevitably I zone out. But zoning out can be quite Zen-like, and even without hearing the formal structure of the prayer (or maybe because I couldn’t hear the formal structure), I can appreciate the practice. It’s not a terrible way to end the day.

Tomorrow’s Cultural Exploration: TBA

I hope you’re well. Picture below.

Note: Jane emailed to point out village bells are often made from empty propane canisters. I never really thought about this before, but she’s totally right. Next time I see some, I’ll get pictures.

Luisa is here.

Breaking Bread and Brie

For a short time in college, I wanted to be a religious studies major; not born out of any strong religious views of my own, but more out of an academic curiosity. While I was raised in a progressively Catholic family, I find other faiths just as fascinating. And just as the Peace Corps is a cultural exchange of sorts, I enjoy a good religion exchange when I can find it. And since a bunch of the Christian churches in Apia get together for an ecumenical gathering once a month, I’ve been meaning to go. Also they serve dinner after.

In the announcements at the end of mass this morning, it was announced that this month’s gathering would be held tonight at the Anglican church. As I always have in the past, I briefly considered going, and then figured that the hour of mass I’d already attended was enough organized religion for this week. But then one of my friends in the Mulivae Youth program texted to let me know they were planning on going to the ecumenical service tonight after the weekly youth meeting. Also I’m over budget for the month and my refrigerator is empty. So I decided to give it a shot.

I showered and shaved and headed to the 7 o’clock service. I showed up to the church and immediately got my first lesson of the evening in Comparative Religion: Anglican is not the same as Protestant. I pass the Protestant church all the time, and when they said it was at the Anglican church, my mind didn’t process the difference.

So there I was standing at the Protestant church all alone. Just me and the crickets. At the neighboring hotel, I asked for directions to the Anglican church. It turns out I had walked completely the wrong direction from my house. Luckily I had about 20 minutes before the event was supposed to begin.

40 minutes later when I was standing at the gates of the Mormon church up the hill from the National Hospital, I decided I must have missed something. I was feeling foolish and hungry, and I’d decided to go on a whim, and I’d pretty much given up. And walking down the hill, I looked across the street, and there, a ways back from the road next to the gas station the concierge had mentioned, was the Anglican church. I was 24 minutes late.

With approximately 60 people in attendance, the gathering was relatively small, and I felt conspicuous when I tried to quietly slip into the back. But people were friendly enough.

From what I could gather, I think 4 churches in the area participate: the Catholic Community at Mulivae, the Protestant church, the Anglican church, and Peace Chapel in Vaimea. Ecumenical services are great and awkward. The people who show up are clearly passionate enough about their faith to show up, but they’re also secure enough to accept the faiths of others, which is cool. And then occasionally you get that feeling that people are walking on eggshells, and the fragility of comparative religion is palpable.

Whatever, you sing a couple songs, you say a couple prayers, and everyone feels like family. And then it was time to eat.

There was cake and doughnuts and sausage dumplings and breaded fish and sandwiches. And there was crackers with tomatoes and brie, which no one seemed very interested in. I probably had 14. They were delicious. And then a couple Aussies from Peace Chapel, Paul and Tim, chatted me up.

With my belly full and my Gnostic curiosity sated, I headed home.

I hope you’re well. Picture below.

One nice thing about the Anglican/Protestant mix-up was the sunset. I usually save sunset photos for Thursday, but there's been an abundance lately.

Cultural Exploration 27: Bingo!

Despite the weekly bulletin an- nouncements, my family never attended church Bingo back in The States. In fact, the only time I ever interacted with church Bingo was at Our Lady of Grace religious education fundraisers, which was called by Bubbles the clown. Beyond that, my Bingo experiences are of the secular variety, playing in elementary school and Spanish classes and such. I’ve never “made it interesting,” so I have no real baseline to compare. But in Fausaga on a Friday night, church Bingo is the place to be.

Before leaving for Samoa, the Peace Corps sent lots of information about how church life is important in Samoa and how it would be important to attend services regularly and how it might even be a good idea to join the choir or find another way to get involved. So our first Sunday in the village, we were pumped. Phil and I attended choir practice the night before, we got decked out in our white-on-white threads, we sat attentively through a half-hour sermon (though we understood none of it). And when church was over, everyone went home. When we asked our training director why there was no socializing going on, he said, “Go to Bingo.”

Most Bingo attendees are women. Occasionally a husband shows up to play, but for the most part, the fale is filled with older women, younger women, and girls. The church treasurer, who is male, sits at the front collecting money, a man goes around distributing the bingo papers, and I’m there playing the role of the token charming palagi.

The games are tense and have a cut-throat feeling to them. Money is scarce in many families, and a Bingo win can be a big deal. Bingo is also a game built solely on luck; sure, it requires skill to quickly find and mark the numbers and to recognize when you have Bingo, but beyond that, it’s a lottery. In my opinion though, the tensest aspect is the Bingo caller.

In order to allow for all the women in the village to play, a girl, somewhere around 12 years old, normally calls Bingo. The girls tend to go fast, and each caller tends to have her own style.

The Samoan number system allows for variation and abbreviation. For example, the number “54” might be lima sefulu fā, lima fā, or lima ma le fā. That is fifty-four, five four, or five and the four. Sefulu, the word for 10 and also the suffix signifying a multiple of 10, can be abbreviated sulu or fulu. So with all these variations, Samoan Bingo can be quite a challenge for the novice speaker. After the third hour, my brain is reeling.

The role of Bingo night in the community is palpable though. Ladies laugh and gossip between rounds, children from the village play outside, women sitting next to one another compare cards from the last round and stories from the week before. Bingo is the lifeblood of modern Samoan collectivism.

And I don’t mind being the token charming palagi. If nothing else, I get to practice my numbers.

I hope you’re well. Pictures below.















Attendees at EFKS Friday Bingo in Fausaga.















Me.





















Akanese does origami with finished bingo sheets. Often such sheets are used for toilet paper, no joke.





















Asolima keeps an eye on my sheet when I play.

Cultural Exploration 24: White Sunday

As far as I can tell, White Sunday is unique to Samoa, although blog readers from New Zealand and Australia can clue me in if I’m wrong. Even among Samoans there seems to be confusion about who celebrates White Sunday or Le Aso Sā Pa’epa’e or Loto Tamaiti. I got a ride from a Congregationalist Reverend to the Catholic Church in Mulivae for a White Sunday rehearsal, and as I was getting out of the car he said, “I didn’t know Catholics celebrated White Sunday.” Neither did I.

Jordan says he’d heard of it before he came here. PCT Kyle was wondering if Rome celebrated it. I’ve also heard it originated with the Methodists. So who knows, really?

Here are some facts I do know: In Samoa, White Sunday is celebrated the second Sunday in October. On White Sunday, it is traditional for children to wear formal white (duh) clothes. At church, they sing, dance, occasionally act, and recite bible verses for the congregation. After church services, they go home and eat the biggest to’ona’i of the year and many children are given ice cream and gifts. It seems like Mother’s Day for children with some Christmas and Easter children’s choir thrown in for good measure. I’m told it’s a bigger deal than Christmas.

That last one might be a lie in the sense Christmas is hugely anticipated here. From what I remember from last year, White Sunday in Samoa is the equivalent of Thanksgiving in The States; that is, it’s effectively a starting pistol for the Christmas season. Christmas Day itself was relatively low-key and anticlimactic though, whereas White Sunday is a big day full of celebration and activity. It’s a big enough day my school gets Friday AND Monday off in order to ensure students have time to get home for the weekend and return back to school after.

I bolted after mass this morning, so I didn’t get to revel in the ice cream and celebration, but mass was a pretty big deal and try as I might to resist, I got into the spirit.

Since I was helping coordinate, I was appointed at the last minute to sit in the boys’ pew during mass to keep them as well-behaved as possible and to cue the ones who had active roles in the mass. This job is just the sort of cat-wrangling you might expect. I herded the boys into the pews, I kept 5-year-old Raphael in check every time he tried to swat the kid next to him with a songbook, I hurriedly got the intercessions boys up on the altar when the priest decided to skip the creed.

Also as one might expect, there were a bunch of kids there today who’d never shown up to rehearsal. I didn’t mind at all, but it became a slight problem when one such 4-year-old got up for the dance and song portion, and then changed his mind and came and sat down in the pew by himself. He was decked out in a red bow tie, and while I had no problem with him chilling with me in the pew, I figured his parents would probably want to see him up there. I gave him a nudge. And that was all it took. He sprang right back up there.

The kids were cute and awkward, and it was moving when they dedicated the event to the children who died in the tsunami.

But I still haven’t figured out if it’s a Kiwi thing or what.

Tomorrow’s Cultural Exploration: Global Warming

I hope you had great White Sunday. Pictures below.















Kids getting art projects ready to present.















Banner created for the day.















In the pew with the boys.















The big song and dance number. I didn't notice the girl standing in front until just now. Hilarious.

Cultural Exploration 22: Mourning

The National Memorial Service for Tsunami Victims was held yesterday, and though it was much larger in scale—the diplomatic corps attended, there were 11 caskets, the Prime Minister spoke, the event was nationally televised—it still followed the same general structure of a Samoan funeral. There was grieving and a sense of loss and lots of singing, and at the end, there were Styrofoam boxes of food for the entire crowd.

It wasn’t the first time I’ve been to a Samoan funeral. Back in August I went to visit the host family in Fausaga, and we whisked down the road to a funeral in neighboring Vaie’e. I was underdressed, and Asolima and I spent most of the time in the car, but when it came time, we sat outside the family’s fale and watched the presentation of money and fine mats and corned beef.

In training, the Samoan concept of Fa’alavelave was translated to us as “big trouble,” but that translation doesn’t quite capture the essence. My Samoan dictionary defines it as “Anything that interferes with normal life and calls for special activity.” This explains why both weddings and funerals constitute fa’alavelave. The dictionary goes on, “A wide range of events, ranging from a wedding to a canoe lost at sea is covered by this concept.”

Most often, a fa’alavelave consists of giving money to the family affected. Depending on a person’s relationship to the family, people are assigned the amounts they must give. For example, when Asolima’s cousin died last month, her mother Mele was assigned to give $40, 2 fine mats, and 1 case of corned beef. Asolima and her two children were assigned the same, but as a group.

The second part of the fa’alavelave is the family affected usually repays those who gave to the fa’alavelave with money and/or cases of corned beef.

With the immense destruction and loss of life caused by the tsunami, individual fa’alavelaves might break the bank. I haven’t heard too much about anyone being required to pay a certain amount, but I don’t doubt it’s happening.

As for the event yesterday, leaders representing the three main churches of Samoa—the Methodists, the Congregationalists, and the Catholics—gave prayers, and the Prime Minister spoke. Student leaders representing schools across the country laid wreaths as the names of the deceased were read. Many students cried.

There was a gorgeous sunset as crowds gathered at the site of the mass grave. Caskets were lowered and the crowd sang a traditional funeral song. I really liked the song, but I can’t recall any of the words beyond the last line, which was “Tōfā, tōfā, tōfā”, or “Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye.”

After the service, people crowded down into the grave to cover the caskets in flowers and baskets and packages. In Samoa, death is not viewed with the same macabre weariness that we feel in America; many many people have graves in their front yards. Sometimes these graves are decorated elaborately, and sometimes they’re just large slabs of cement where people lounge in the afternoon.

In any case, yesterday’s event seemed to me to hit the right note.

Tomorrow’s Cultural Exploration: Using the ATM

I hope you’re well. Pictures of yesterday's ceremony below.
















The Prime Minister giving his thoughts.
















Students line up to lay down their wreaths.
















The spot in which the deceased were laid to rest.
















The fa'alavelave tent.

Tiny Dancers

Through a chain of events of which I’ll spare you the details, I’ve found myself on the White Sunday planning committee at Mulivae. Though I’ve only experienced one White Sunday in my life, and though that day was spent at a different church, powers that be have decided I should take part in the creation and organization of this year’s event, which I guess I’m fine with, except I feel I have awfully little to contribute. Also, with the year 13 camp, I feel a little overloaded as it is.

White Sunday, as I understand it, is a holiday to honor children. It’s the third supplementary component to Father’s Day and Mother’s Day. There’s usually special components of church services for children to dance and sing and perform, and children are often treated to ice cream and special treats for the day. It’s a nice enough idea, I suppose, but I still don’t wholly understand the sentiment or the custom.

And I guess that’s why I feel out of place on this planning committee. I got a bit of a nudge to write a skit for the children to perform, but I quietly bowed out of that. The Catholic mass doesn’t lend itself well to skits, and beyond that, I assume this skit would have had to have a moral or a message or some sort of overarching meaning, and I don’t feel comfortable enough to come up with that sort of thing.

So mostly I sit in the back of the room and try my best to stay low profile. The skit idea has been abandoned, but there are plans for the children to lead the congregation in the entrance song and for them to do a choreographed dance later in the mass.

Today I was asked to sit next to the stereo and hit the play button when cued. Perfect. I was ready and willing for this job.

But as it turns out, the woman who is leading up the dance portion is going on a pilgrimage to Rome next week, and someone needs to be able to help the boys rehearse their part of the dance routine. All eyes pointed to me. So I begrudgingly agreed.

Singing and dancing is big in Samoa, and the boys throw themselves into it. There’s one step in which they go down on one knee, and they all do it so dramatically. It’s almost as though they lunge. Also, watching very small children dance is inherently hilarious. And it works whether they’re instep or not.

In any case, I half-assed the dance and the lunging and maintained my low-pro as best I could. A bunch of girls from the youth group showed up to help lead rehearsal, and I figure I can count on them to lead the boys next week. I’ll show up and do what I can, but I figure my rhythm is poor enough it would be irresponsible to leave myself in any position of authority.

I figure I’m best left to press play on the stereo. I got that move down.
















Younger girls watching the older ones.
















Girls practicing.
















Boys.
















I totally caught this kid doing Robot Arms. Awesome.

Him Too

The apparition thing has reached critical mass. I sat down at Interval today to munch on my scone and drink my tea, when my pule called me out in front of the entire staff. “Hey Matthew,” I tend to sit across the room from him, and he has to project and it tends to silence chatter. “You should take your camera and get pictures of the Virgin Mary on the building wall.” Two steps ahead you, buddy.

One of the Indian missionaries, Thanpuii, asked if I had the pictures on my camera at that moment. I did. So my camera got passed around the staff room during our half hour break. People looked at it, stared, put their reading glasses on, took their reading glasses off. It got around the room and was passed back to me. And then Peniamina asked if she could see it again. So it took another loop around the room. It was quite the talk of the town.

I admit I’ve had a little trouble finding the right tone in talking about it. Loto, the science teacher (and moonlight taxi driver), wanted all the details. He interrogated me in a quiet, urgent voice. My pule asked if I thought it was real in front of the staff. I shrugged. “Ou te le iloa,” I don’t know. At first people smile and tend to giggle when they talk about it, but then their tone changes and becomes more reverent. The girl at the computer store asked what I thought, and I snickered a little; her visual cues told me she was uneasy with my response. “What do you think?” I asked, straightening up. “I don’t what to think,” she said.

In any case, I had to walk to town today to pay my telephone bill, so I took the chance to walk by again, and see how the spectacle was playing itself out.

It was as much as I could hope for. Taxis were stopping in the middle of the road so their fares could look at it through the window. People sat in their cars blocks away with camcorders zoomed in. A group of older ladies was camped out in the grass fanning themselves.

Walking around the building, I came to the front where a traffic cop regulated the flow of cars as best he could. People stood along the street looking up at the side of the building. The side has a lot more of the darker patches. There was a crowd across the street along the seawall looking up. I found this strange because the apparition is on the backside of the building. But the crowd, which was sizeable, stood with their cameras and pointed fingers.

Everyone stared at another dark patch. Less cool, I thought. You can’t have two Virgin Mary apparitions. It cheapens it. But I took a photo anyway.

The guy next to me saw me take the picture, and asked to see it. I zoomed in on the dark patch and he nodded. He looked a moment longer and then said, “Yeah. You can see his face. There’s the beard.”

Whoa! The plot thickens.

Apparently the likeness of the Virgin Mary is on the back side, and the likeness of Jesus faces Apia Harbour. Crazy.

Then I paid my phone bill.

I hope you’re well. Pictures below.
















Long line of cars.
















Old ladies camped out.
















Crowd at the sea wall.
















Traffic cop.
















Dark patches along side of the building.
















Hi-Res Jesus.

There's Something About Mary

Update! Higher resolution image at the bottom of the post.

The likeness of the Virgin Mary has appeared on the side of a building along Apia Harbour. Which building? Wait for it. Wait for it. The Congregationalist office building. That’s right. People at the scene are claiming Lady Madonna stamped her image on an awning of the John Williams Building, which is owned and operated by the Christian Congregationalist Church of Samoa. As dusk fell this evening, the crowd seemed to be growing.

On the morning of the Road Switch, as I took a picture of the police officers guarding the intersection near my house, a Samoan drove up and leaned out the window of his car to take a photo with his camera. It was the first indication of how momentous an event the Road Switch was. Walking away from my intersection, I remarked to Phil how rare I thought it was to see a host country national taking photos.

So I knew something was up when, taking the shortcut around the back of the John Williams building, I turned the corner and saw a dozen Samoans looking up into the sky, at least 3 of them taking photos.

It was one of those scenes out of Candid Camera where I found an entire crowd staring off into the distance, so I went and stood with them and stared in the direction they were staring. I have expected Allen Funt to step out from behind some van in the car park.

It took only a moment for me to figure out what all the commotion was about. I love a good spectacle, and what could be a bigger spectacle than the Virgin Mary showing up in Samoa?

Apparitions and visions are a big thing here. When I went with the Catholic youth group from Mulivae out to see the new cathedral (basilica?) on the western side of the island, the priest who accompanied us told detailed accounts of Juan Diego and Our Lady of Guadalupe and the Portuguese kids and Our Lady of Fatima.

I’ve never seen an apparition, hoax or otherwise, in person. I remember when the lady from the Midwest sold the grilled cheese sandwich with Jesus’ face on eBay. And I remember watching a news story at Marlis’ house a Little Caesar’s ad in which people said they saw the face of Jesus in spaghetti. But never with my own eyes, so today is a big day.

It looks like the rain gutters on the John Williams building leak at certain joints, and water fans out from those spots. The apparition has a similar fanning-out shape, but is darker in colour and slimmer in its fanning.

I find it slightly amusing the image has appeared on the Congregationalist’s building. There are dozens of Catholics milling around the car park. And what statement is Mary making? Is she endorsing the Congregationalists or trying to convert them? Perhaps it’s a call to ecumenicalism?

The security guard who works at the National Bank of Samoa across the street wasn’t convinced. “Maybe someone just drew it on there,” he said.
Maybe.

I hope you’re well. Pictures below.
















Wide shot.
















With pointy arrow.
















I was the only one who pointed my camera at the crowd. I think people were weirded out.
















Higher resolution image. Click to see it big.

Mission and Diplomacy

I didn’t teach this morning, but a bunch of the year 13 history students cajoled me into opening the computer lab so they could work on their Interval Assessments. I have been in massive sleep debt, so I was hesitant to give up a Saturday morning, but they looked at me with puppy dog eyes, and I couldn’t say no. So this morning I trudged over to the lab at 9:00 to open the door. I was under the impression I was going to let them in and they’d work and I’d sit around bored for a couple hours. I even brought a book. But it turned out they wanted me to edit their papers.

I found it strange when they told me they were all writing papers on the same topic, the 1830 arrival of the London Missionary Society in Samoa, but I shrugged it off. All 3 of the kids I worked with today are native Samoan speakers, but the assignment required a 1500-word essay in English. The entire assignment was in English, in fact. So many of the changes were pretty elementary; non-agreeing tenses, missing plurals, strange words that don’t exist in the English Language. At one point I was confused by use of the word “task, ” and it turned out they were using it as a contraction for the words “to ask”.

So I was moving through Mira’s paper pretty fast when I came to this sentence:

I had also understand the way that Samoa still late have an independent state that is, because theirs no Christians beliefs, but when Malietoa Vainu’upo accepted it in Samoa was go through the right way of life, and try to accept the nationalistic of others.

At first, I had no idea what she was trying to communicate, and after talking to her a little bit and reading it over a lot, I think she was trying to say that Samoa’s policy of the separation of church and state allows for a free-thinking country that accepts cultural and religious differences that exist within its peoples. So I tried to re-write the sentence, but I kept getting stuck on the “try to accept the nationalistic of others” phrase.

Mira calls over Site who typed Mira’s handwritten essay. Site reads my sentence over and looks at me like I’m an idiot. I half expected this. I wasn’t sure if there was an articulated separation of church and state in Samoa; I figured there might be—much evidence suggests the opposite—but what can I say? I grew up in society that still grapples with the difficulties of separation of church and state and the oppressiveness of any breach therein.

Site explains what the original sentence meant. Essentially, it said, “Thank goodness Malietoa let the missionaries in because up until then Samoa was a heathen place. Also, it was only when Samoa adopted Christianity that it became mature enough for it to be an independent state.”

Wowa.

My brain went to work improving the English and making the grammar work while my soul had a little cry. I didn’t come here to impart my beliefs or my progressive upbringing on moldable Samoan youth, and re-formatting essays this morning was by no means a teaching moment for a lesson on cultural heritage and pride and the questionable morality of 19th-century religious imperialism. So I shut up and helped Mira put her report together.

But I can’t help feeling weird about the whole thing.

I hope you’re enjoying your 4th of July, America. Pictures below.
















Phil's school made an impromptu banner out of a fala.
















Head massage at the record-keeping table.
















Rain at lunch time. It's difficult to tell from this picture, but the track is completely flooded.
















The guy dancing near the bars in the center bottom right was making the Congregational Senior College kids go crazy. Phil is also in this picture wearing blue in the bottom left.

Cultural Exploration 11: Triduum

Triduum is the collective term for three days from the evening of Holy Thursday to the evening of Easter Sunday. The Triduum begins with evening mass on Holy Thursday and ends with Easter mass. Samoa is an intensely religious country, and everything shut down for Good Friday. Shops were closed, buses didn’t run. Then everything was business as usual on Saturday, and now everything’s shuttered again for Easter Sunday.

In an effort to avoid the logistical nightmares posed by a laissez-faire transportation system, I opted to stay at my house in Apia rather than go back to the host village for the weekend. So I attended mass at the cathedral in Mulivae. Here’s how things went down:

Holy Thursday

In The States, Holy Thursday is usually a pastiche of faces from different masses all forced into one evening mass for the entire community. But since a lot of people don’t show up for Holy Thursday mass, everyone still seems to fit in the church. Not so here. There’s only one English mass on Sunday, and there’s only one English mass on Holy Thursday, and the weird thing was that EVERYONE was there. The church was packed as usual.

It’s always interesting to see how the washing of the feet is going to work. At St. Anne’s, they used to wash hands. At St. Gabriel’s, everyone got their feet washed. And I’ve seen where specific people are pre-chosen to have their feet washed (This is the lamest, I think.). Here, the altar boys brought out 12 chairs, and the priest said, and I’m paraphrasing here, “First 12 congregants up here get their feet washed.” It actually worked pretty well. I did not go up.

Good Friday

As I said above, the whole country shuts down for Good Friday, and the service at the cathedral took things no less seriously. I guess it’s been a long time since I’ve been to a Good Friday service, but I was a little weirded out by the priest lying prostrate. And then they did the rosary for the Divine Mercy. And I could feel Vatican 2 getting all squeamish.

The priest apologized that our church doesn’t have a relic from the actual cross that Jesus died on. Apology accepted. Then people went up and kissed the cross. The collection basket was underneath the cross, which I found tacky. I just touched the cross. Kissing seemed a little too intimate. The priest nodded at me in approval.

Easter Vigil

They switched presiders on us for Easter Vigil, which felt wrong; like having a waiter take your order, bring appetizers and entrees, and then having a new guy come in to handle dessert. But more obnoxious was the candle situation. As the crowd assembled outside the back of the church, everyone bought candles from the small church store. I have no problem with purchasing my own candle… But then as soon as things get started, New Presider says, “We’re not going to be doing candles tonight because the wax gets all over the church.” Granted the candle was only $1 WST, I was still annoyed that no one put the kibosh on the candle sales. Whatev.

We had no baptisms, which was bittersweet. On one hand, it sped up the evening, and we were out of there much faster; on the other hand, they had a pretty crazy baptismal font setup complete with wading pool, fountain, and milk cartons. But no newbies at the English mass; the Samoan masses had all the fun.

Overall, it was interesting to experience the Triduum in a new place, and Easter Vigil is always kinda neat when you get through the readings in the dark, and then they turn on the lights and the whole symbology is impressive. And who doesn’t enjoy a good Passion Play?

But I think next year I might try the village.

I hope you’re enjoying your Easter. Pictures below.





















The cathedral with dramatic lighting.
















Samoan mass ending on Holy Thursday with English mass set to begin moments later.
















Washing of the feet.
















Carrying in the cross on Good Friday.
















It's a little hard to tell from this picture, but everyone sitting around me now knows that I have no iron.
















The shop that sold the stupid candles.
















Alter boys next to the fire.

Close Quarters

My goal for this weekend was to sleep and to unwind so that the upcoming week would be less stressful than the week that just ended. By this afternoon, I had succeeded with the sleep, but the unwinding handed happened, and I was starting to get nervous. The biggest problem with the unwinding was I wasn’t entirely clear on why I was feeling wound up. And my schedule for the evening wasn’t promising.

One of the teachers I work with invited a bunch of us to go out. A new basilica was being built on the west side of the island, and we were going to check it out. I accepted the invitation out of politeness and boredom. But my hopes weren’t high for the unwinding.

So we got in the car and we were driving along and, out of nowhere, I was unwound. All it took was getting the hell out of Apia. See, on Friday, I even titled my blog, “Gotta Get Out of This Place,” and I had meant that I really needed to get away from my school compound. But I think the problem was I needed to get farther than that. I needed to get out of Apia.

When I think about it, this makes lots of sense. I didn’t have a car my freshman year of college, and Los Angeles isn’t exactly known for its public transportation system, so I spent most of that year cooped up within the confines of 6 or 9 city blocks. And it drove me crazy. I don’t need to go far distances (although I often would when I did have a car) or spend lots of money at the places I go, but I think change of scenery is very important to my mental well-being.

The funny thing is that I totally got this out of my system last weekend and the week before by going to the village and to Savai’i respectively. The problem with each of those trips was I got relatively little sleep at either place. But they both made sense because they got me out of here.

When I worked at eCivis, it was a similar situation. I worked 3 blocks from work. In fact, to get to the good part of Pasadena, I had to walk past my office. And it really did play games with my mind to think that I could never escape work. Even when I had a day off, I was never really gone. But I was able to deal with it because I would drive down to LA or go see a movie in Hollywood or drive out to the beach. And it wasn’t the stuff I was doing that I found relaxing as much as the sheer act of going there.

The situation here brings Pasadena to a new level. I don’t live 3 blocks from work; I live at work. To take my garbage out, I have to walk to school, and that’s a little scary. And even going into town feels like old hat after a while. A bunch of us went out for a few drinks on Friday night, but I walk past that bar almost every day.

So it made sense that it would feel good to get out of town, if only for an hour or two. Before the surprise plans, I was thinking about biking out along the north side of the island to the spot I went surfing with Aaron. I wonder if that would have felt as good as getting in a car. Yes, Critical Mass, I understand that biking always feels better than getting in a car, but sometimes I just want the implicit distance that comes with automobile travel. I’m not sure that getting on a bike has the same mental effect. Sounds like a question to be answered next weekend.

I hope you are fresh and ready for the new week. Looks like somebody’s got a case of the Mondays! Pictures below.
















Sunsets are awe-inspiring in Samoa. Never seen anything in California that compares.
















This morning at church, the first four rows of pews on the right side were filled with men wearing the same outfits. It turned out to be the Toa Samoa, or the national rugby team. Also, if you look closely at the picture above, you can see a man with a video camera. Today's mass was televised this afternoon. With the Toa Samoa taking center stage... errr... altar.