Wackyfish

when the power goes out...

The power was just out here for a few hours.
It was out when I got back from running errands and having lunch.
So I went down stairs to have a cup of coffee and spend some time with my book. They have a generator down at the bakery and I though it would be more pleasant than sitting in my now stuffy office.
I grabbed “Sarge” and my wallet and headed down stairs. My favorite table by the window was available so I grabbed it and sat. I ordered a cup of coffee and settled in.
About half a cup and a few pages later Francis came in. He and his sister Helen own/run the Bakery. I love them. Which is natural they are often responsible for feeding me.
He spotted me and came over and asked to join me. So I put aside my book and had coffee with Francis. Now there are days when I am just not up to putting on my PC, PR, good volunteer face, and I just wanna sit and read, quietly and alone. Fortunately today was not one of those days.
So we sat and asked eachother questions.

F: “Is your hair real”
D: “yes, it’s all my own hair, only real dead.”

D: Why do Men grow the nail on their thumb long but no other nail?
F: It is useful.

F: When will you go back to America?
D: In December

F: Do you want to stay? You should stay.
D: Francis I would love to stay, but my family really wants me to come home.

This is my standard reason I give these days when asked to stay. It seems to work pretty well without offending anyone. Anyway, it was a lovely time. We laughed and talked and just generally had a nice visit. Which is something I don’t get to do often as he is usually busy running a restaurant. Eventually the power came back on and I had to head back to work. (So I could write this of course) He said the coffee and muffin (which he insisted I eat) was on him.
These unexpected pleasant encounters are real common here. Yesterday I had one that was similar on my walk from work to the PC office. A co-worker walked with me the whole half mile distance and we chatted and laughed. I am going to miss these random pleasant encounters.

Who Me?

An old mentor of mine suggested I take some leadership classes or workshops or seminars. She thought I would be a good leader but I could use some formal training. I thought she was full of hoooey at the time. I was much younger then.
I am coming to realize that leading is a very difficult job.
I find that my natural desire to be friends with everyone is in direct conflict with my desire to be a good leader. It involves accommodating many different perspectives and attempting to help everyone understand and agree on mutually beneficial solutions.
Oy, It is hard.
It is requiring me to put aside my own personal convictions in order to be present for everyone else as a neutral moderator and then leader. I am not so good at putting aside my own convictions. I seem to have managed so far but it requires Herculean amounts of effort and emotional energy.
And lastly it requires large does of patience, balance and understanding. I have never been good in the patience department. Balance is likely my lifelong struggle, and understanding… requires me to be less emotional and more rational.
I am not sure I am cut out for what I have gotten myself into.
I am going to follow through, because I said I would and I am going to do the best job I possibly can. But for future reference… this leadership thing may not be for me.

She moved everything...

I finally ran again last night. It was hard, I didn’t do as well as I wanted to... no wait, I did ok.
I got home after my run with the desire to eat, shower, read/rest, and then sleep. I had leftovers from lunch that served just fine in the food area, and with minimal dishes to clean up. Which was nice considering I was exhausted.
I fed Mia and headed for the shower. After I cleaned up I headed to my room to snuggle in with my book and call it a day. When to my shock and amusement I found my bedroom completely re-arranged! I laughed so hard I almost slipped and fell.

I have a house girl (really she is a wonderful woman of mid forty’s so I get a little weirded out calling her “girl”, but that is what she and everyone else keep referring to her as.) who comes to help me out several times a week with the heavy cleaning. She must have gotten bored with my bedroom furniture arrangement and decided it needed to change. This isn’t the first time she has moved furniture in my house. It is just the most dramatic. Usually, I just let her do whatever she wants with it. She does the heavy cleaning so I figure she knows better than I do were everything should go. Once in a while if it is inconvenient (Like the time she moved one of the chairs so it no longer faced the TV) I change things back. But for the most part Moe is the boss of my furniture.

And as it turns out she was right. She placed my bed in front of the large bank of windows in my room. Which takes full advantage of the house cross breeze, and allows me to watch the sun rise gently from my bed. The moral of the story is… when Moe moves the furniture just laugh; it is probably better where she put it.

Yes, I am in fact 4

I haven’t run in a week.
I skipped yoga last night.
5:30 came around and I found I was completely exhausted. I sat on the couch in the Kitchen at the office with my head in my hands and realized that I simply couldn’t go. I am not sure how I got myself into a taxi and got home. I managed to find something to eat and I lay on my couch for a few hours before getting to bed.
The thing is I haven’t been very physical lately. And it wasn’t really a physical exhaustion I was suffering from. It is more of a feeling very sorry for my self sort of exhaustion. (I have a pretty good clue that is what I am feeling because I have been listening to Stevie Nicks all morning which usually indicates that I am having a bout of self pity.)
I lost my two greatest support systems in country recently and I think that may be the cause. Mo, (my best friend in country) is… out of country for work and a vacation. She won’t be back until mid May. Mikaele left Sunday morning and won’t return until around my birthday. He came into town three times a week and stopped at the market for me (I hate shopping remember). He was my running buddy and biggest cheerleader, and after we ran he would come to my house and we would make fabulous healthy dinners. Mia loved him and he watched her whenever I needed him to. He took excellent care of me. So I guess this is me throwing a little fit now that I have to take care of myself.
Hopefully I will get over it soon enough. I can only take so much Stevie before I lose my grasp of good taste.

Oy

I just had a very long and intense weekend.
Friday I was out with a bad cold and Monday was a holiday here (ANZAC day). It has left me with a feeling very akin to the same sort of emotional exhaustion I felt as a little girl when I spent an extended amount of time crying. Worn out and a bit numb. Tho not with the same negative connotation.
Being a bit numb I will sum up the weekend and move on. My favorite local band played Friday night at my favorite watering hole, and I had a cold, but I went anyway, fun but un-wise. In the wee hours of the morning a good friend who was staying at my house got a call that he just lost a family member. I was up with him the rest of the night. Next afternoon (after precious little sleep) I had top run a VAC meeting in which some very strong opinions were expressed and I had to navigate the issues as best I could in a manner that was fair, reasonable, and impartial as I could. Being a leader is HARD. I also made some commitments that I wish I hadn’t, but now it is done and I am going to follow through anyway.
Sunday was lovely because I ended up with a houseful of brilliant women who kept up a constant dialogue of topics that I found challenged me intellectually and emotionally. I love this type of stimulation but sometimes I get like a kid in a candy shop, and end up ill. Being exhausted and a bit numb I spent most of Monday staring at my shoes…
Accept for the evening when some people came over and we ate Chill dogs and watched the DMB concert on DVD my Aunt sent me.
So now it is Tuesday and work is busy and I don’t feel much like processing anything else. Not for a few days anyway.
Which is unfortunate because I seem to be in the works of changing my opinions on several things. Such as leadership and the nature of leadership and also… Religion and how I am finding that while at one point I thought of it as organized spirituality and am finding (through the book I am reading, and several conversations I have had recently and what I observe here) that it has a lot more to do with Community than I had previously perceived.
Either topic being an excellent subject for this blog. Stay tuned, maybe I’ll get around to writing them.

And I ran...

I ran longer and farther than I have run yet (well in the last 10 years anyway) last night. No I am not going to tell you how far, you would probably laugh at me for making such a big deal of it. (Tho if you know the area you may be able to figure it out). Just know it was a significant distance for me, and I feel much more comfortable with the idea of running 10 K in about 7 weeks (OMG, 7 weeks).
When I left work at about 4:45 the sky was gray and overcast. It had been raining on and off all afternoon. I had hoped that a violent storm would come in and I could weasel out of running. Instead the rain stopped, and a nice ocean wind blew in to cool down the seawall area where I run. So I headed to the PC office to change clothes and see if my running buddy was waiting for me. When I arrived I got a message that he had a meeting that afternoon and I would be on my own. I figured that I may as well get it over with and I left the office about 5 for my run. I walked to the bridge (the mile marker starting point) and began to run. After about half a mile, it began to rain. Not to hard but enough to make me self conscious about wearing a t-shirt. I kept running. As I rounded the corner behind the Government building the wind kicked up and cooled me down. I kept going. Once I got to the fish Market I turned around and ran back to the starting point at the bridge by the office.
I had figured I would be more wrecked after the long run but I felt pretty good. Usually after the first run in which I step up my routine, I am exhausted. I attribute feeling good, to the perfect weather. If it had been a hot muggy day I may have had a more difficult time.
So with my run over, I went to dinner at the home of some friends in Vailele. L made a Banana Cake with Carmel frosting. I figured I deserved two pieces.
I got home late, and went to bed. Again normally after a hard run I sleep like a log. But there was quite a storm last night. The wind was crazy up at my house and I had to get up several times in the night to secure the screen frames on the doors. (I would call them screen doors, but they haven’t any screens in them.) They kept banging open and closed waking me repeatedly. It rained throughout the night and I would have been more grateful for a cool night if I could have slept through it. When I finally got up I opened the front door to let Mia out for her first thing in the morning business, and she gave me this “you don’t expect me to go out there in that weather do you?” look. So I said “suit yourself” and let her go back to her bed. She was unhappy when an hour or so later I kicked her out of the house because I was leaving. Poor puppy.
Anyway it is still raining here and I love it.

Project Musings....

Remember the Coconut Bio-diesel project I talked about back in January? The one I was really excited to be working on. Well it seems that the project made some huge progress and then… some huge setbacks.

It seems that in Savai’i we managed to get one of our diesel engines rigged up to run on 100% coconut oil. I haven’t been out to see it yet, as that would require a boat ride but I have been sent all of the performance data to analyze and put into pretty reports. Which I have done. It turns out that running 100% coconut oil is not terribly efficient in the long term for our equipment. Being a small developing country this ia big concern. So (as we suspected) the visiting engineers from SOPAC have recommended we run on a bio-diesel blend. We had hoped to run 80/20 (80 bio fuel, 20 diesel) but it sounds like they are going to recommend 30/70 instead. Which is still better than nothing but not nearly as good as we had hoped for.
Then come the BIG setbacks. The agriculture assessment came back with the existing plantation infrastructure being able to reasonably expect to produce 10% AT MOST of our current fuel needs. Which doesn’t include what we will grow to in the future. And my data indicates that last year we grew 26% in demand (and generation of power). The AG report also came with a warning about reliance on agricultural based fuels in the South Pacific as Cyclones can wipe out whole crops for up to 8 years.
So essentially this project is dead in the water for a while. We are still going to do testing on other fuel/bio mixes with a SOPAC machine specialist. But for the time I have left I can’t really expect to work on this project. Which makes me sad.
However it looks like we are picking up the GIS project full steam. Depending upon how I approach it I could have a big hand in that project. We shall see.

The big clown with the red hair.

Last Friday was two for the price of one day at the McDonalds here.
I meant to get there since I hadn’t been to a McDonalds in... I have no idea how long... So long I don’t remember. I never made it. This is probably a good thing however as my friend Travis told me that he woke up the next day with a “McD’s Hangover”.
That and Auntie Lea told me this morning that the place was packed all day long and that even at midnight they waited an hour in line.
Either way, in retrospect I am pretty ok having missed it. Tho I do feel like I missed some big social event as the hot water cooler topic at work today was what everyone ate at McDonalds on Friday.

More literal translations… and the story behind… this story.

I am again a paradox of myself in that I am not one of those people that generally enjoy the daily minutia of life. However I do love getting out of the office for a long lunch in order to shop and run errands. It certainly is not the shopping or errands I like, so it must be the people I run into, being outdoors and the walking that I am fond of.
Fridays are a particularly good day for this. This afternoon I left the office and headed for my bank on foot. It is only about half a mile. I had a shockingly pleasant banking transaction. Everyone was so nice to me. Then I went to the Marketii and a couple of other stores (because I never can seem to everything I need at just one). Loaded up with fruit, veggies, household items (read: TP), and two bags of dog food, I hoped in a taxi and headed home. At which point I though to myself… “I really should do all this shopping a little at a time instead of holding out until my house is empty.” But I never will.
Anyway back to my story…
After getting home, putting everything away and having some lunch I headed out to the road to catch a bus back to work. It was about 2:30 in the afternoon on a Friday and all the schools in Vaivase had just let out for the weekend causing a HUGE traffic jam.
The driver stopped the bus and looked back at me for a min. “Pisi le auala” he said to me. Which literally means “The road is busy” but translates mostly to “Traffic”. This reminded me of a conversation I had with Leata, one of our Language trainers. She told us that several words in the FaaSamoa, were adapted from English when the missionaries came because Samoans simply didn’t have an equivalent word. “Pisi” (pronounced: pee-see) meaning busy, is one such word.
I think it says a lot (of positive things) about a people who didn’t even have a word in there language for Busy.

“It’s good ....for Samoa.”

Some friends just lead me to read a horrible review for the new “Hitchhikers Guide to the Universe” movie. I have to say I am still looking forward to it. It is almost a perk that we only have one movie theater and we get movies several months after the arrive in the States. This condition leads you to see movies that you may never have bothered with. When you have a limited selection, your pickiness evaporates. The movie theater here is comfortable and Air Conditioned and has American movies. So you go, often in spite of what is playing. There was a Preview for HHGU at the theater last Sunday. Which is a pretty good indication it is coming here. I am going to see it…. I am can almost bet that if asked how it was, I will respond with… It was good for Samoa.

The one movie I couldn’t even say that about is:
Team America
(a waste of money… even here).

This may be real vauge.. So let me just say it is not about you…

I am easily influenced by the loved ones around me.
They bring out the parts of me that we share or have in common.
For this reason I sometimes have to be careful who I surround myself with.
I think people sometimes interpret this as an indication of how I feel about them. Often that is incorrect.
I can see the life I have and I can see where I want it to go. Sometimes you love people who are not going in the same direction. It would be easier if all of your loved ones could see this, understand it for what it is, and wish you happiness on your way, without judgment or taking it as a personal assault. Unfortunately friendships don’t always work out that way. It makes me sad. I still love them. I still enjoy the time I have with them. But I learned somewhere along the way that I am the only one responsible for determining where my life goes and how happy it is. And I am the best judge of what makes me happy and what does not. So I guess, that while I am sad to see some people I love hurt by my choices on how I want my life to be, I am going to move forward, accept that sadness, and treasure the memories I have of them.

I’m sorry but I have to do this…

I know it is Tuesday but I need to do a boring weekend update on what I did so that 30 years from now when I read-read these journal entries I will remember my time fondly. Yes I am pre-rose tinting my glasses.

Friday I ran (which sucked) and then I met Pele, her mother who is visiting from the states and a few other volunteers for dinner. Which didn’t suck. It is always fun to meet visitors from the states. After dinner we went to Paddles. Laura and I only stated for a few min and then we headed back to my house for a movie. We saw “Closer”… Ummm wow. Ok.

Saturday morning I meant to do a bunch of stuff around the house, and then run out and get a new bike tyre. ( Yes they spell it with a “y” here.) However the sports store was closed and I didn’t end up leaving the house anyway. Also my shovel has disappeared so I was unable to do some of the gardening I wanted to.
In the afternoon Clare and Ema came over and we all got dressed up for our fancy girls night plans. (I wore my green birthday dress from last year. I have to say that I can see all the exercise paying off.) At about 6 we headed over to Mo’s house for lasagna and wine. I even broke my ban on alcohol and had a glass of wine with dinner. After an excellent meal and lots of great discussion we headed out for Karaoke. The new Karaoke bar was closed however and we ended up walking several blocks in the rain. Finally we ended up (soaking wet) at Paddles. Jona gave me a great big hug when we walked in. A lot of my friends were there and much laughing and dancing ensued. About 11:30 Ema and I left and went back to my house. We stayed up for another hour sitting on my porch watching the lighting storm. It was a really fun night.

Sunday Ema and I got up and after a bit of sitting around and drinking coffee we did a Sun Salutation Marathon.. This involves doing as many as you can before you fall down. We got to 24 (which is good because I had been stuck at 22 for about 2 weeks). After that I died… no kidding… but I felt like it. Then we made a huge breakfast of eggs, and waffles. Jona showed up at some point and (ate the rest of the waffles and) we watched movies and hung out all afternoon until about 4:30 when we went to the Movies and saw “The Pacifier”. Wow that was an interesting roll for Vin Diesel.
Anyway it was a good weekend.

Look a monkey

And once again, in lue of real substance I post a shot of my friend Jona, wearing the Monkey PJ’s.
If you are not laughing… you should be.

*NOTE: “Monkey” is an affectionate term I often use for close friends. I am using it in a very positive context.

Literally

Auntie Illi had a bottle of bright red nail polish with her this morning at coffee. As she started painting Pisa’s nails she said to me “Get your hands ready because I am going to paint yours next.” Now, I am not a red person. I tend to lean more towards muted subtler tones. But Auntie Illi is not someone I am willing to argue with. So when the time came I offered up my fingers for her to paint.
After she was done painting me, I asked Pisa “O le a le faasamoa – fingernails” (what is the Samoan word for fingernails). It turns out that the word is “atigilima”. Which is hilarious.
Atigi means shell
Lima means hand.
Hand shells, is the literal translation of fingernail. FaaSamoa is a fun language sometimes.
Other literal favorites of mine are
Lau’ulu- Lau= leaves, ‘ulu = head, translates to hair.
Pa Povi –Pa = fence, Povi = Cow, translates to Cattle farm.
Fale tala vai- Fale = House, Tala = talk/talking, Vai = water. House of the talking water translates to pharmacy.

So now I have bright red (it is a kind of smutty, red actually now that I look at it.) fingernails. And a new word to giggle at. May you all find your own inspiration to giggle today.

The part where I laugh at myself.

Humans are the most wonderfully adaptive creatures.
When I see people adapting or I think about it I always have to giggle.
I observed it in myself today while talking to a good friend. Our discussion lead me to remember back when I was visiting my very first hospice patient. Without saying too much about him and the circumstances, I will say that he had a relatively positive passing. I however did not take it very positively. It was my very first experience with death up close and the whole experience was rather traumatic for me (or maybe I should say Dramatic). I remembered calling my best friend after the visits and sobbing into the phone because I was watching his slow decline. But looking back I see that the experience was not very negative. The patient (who from her eon out I will call Joe) and I had lovely visits. We shared a few months at the end of his life and became friends of a sort. I was really lucky to have known Joe. The problem was me. I had never been close to anything like it, and I simply did not take it well.
Eventually I had other patients to visit and other hospice experiences. Then I moved to a place were I live much closer to the natural circle of life. (For instance I have often fed the chicken that I ate for dinner.) So my prospective on death and dying has changed quite a bit over the past few years. And to look back on how I handled this previously makes me laugh. Let’s hear it for growing up.

Crank it up Cranky

I’m thinking that it is time for a secondary project.
I have an 8- 5, Monday through Friday day job already. Which is not common for volunteers (here anyway). So I am not required to take on a secondary project but I think at this point I may just want to. I think I am going to look into spending some time at the one and only “Home for the Aged” here. I think it is a catholic organization and has mostly retired clergy in it. It is tradition for the elderly Samoans to be looked after by their families, so these types of places are not typical.
What can I say, I like old people. Maybe this is because cranky people like to hang out with other cranky people. BAH….I’ll let you know how it goes.

Ten weeks… and counting

I am not yet at the point were I actually enjoy running.
However I will say that last nights run was not completely miserable. In fact I think my legs may have started to remember what it was like to be a distance runner again. (I ran on the Cross Country team in high school and I ran insane distances with ROTC in my first year of college.) My legs got that tingly itch to work hard and I ended up sprinting my little heart out the last 50 yards. It left me gasping for air and barley able to stand at the end. It almost felt good. And I can’t believe I just said that.

"Fia" means good or to like

Last week I got a curious invitation.
I was invited to the 21st birthday party of the sister of a friend of mine.
Fia (Jona’s little sister) was turning 21 and although I had only met her a handful of times, my baked goods have become very popular at their house and so I was not only invited but asked to make the family cake. (I usually send cookies, or cake or something home with Jona for his family, hence the reputation.) Fia has “High functioning Down Syndrome”.
So Friday rolled around, and I went home early to make a cake. She wanted a chocolate cake with chocolate icing. A girl after my own heart.
I got ready and put on my simple patchwork dress. Jona showed up about 7:30 to get me (and the cake) and off we went. I sat in the back of the van with his grandmother and smiled politely at her. She insisted I take her fan since it was going to be a hot night.
When we got to the hotel were the party was to be I quickly realized, I was rather under dressed. 21 birthday parties are a rather formal affair here. I glowered at Jona and said, “Hey, you said it was casual”. To which he grunted something in a very boy fashion and started off to help with the food. In the meantime I was ushered off with the other Palagie and given drinks and snacks and a good place to sit. From here the party began.
Fia was a gorgeous. She appeared to be having the best night of her life. She went from table to table basking in the glory of her night. Her friends, family, teachers, elders, and classmates were all there and she was shining. There was a band, and everyone took turns singing and dancing. At any given moment in time, as the band would play the crowd could be expected to break into song. That or clap and do special dance moves for a song. There was plenty of food (because it wouldn’t be Samoan if there wasn’t) and lots to drink. (Even for me, the non-drinker these days.) It was an amazing night. I was pretty honored to be included. I wish I had taken my camera along with me so I could capture it.

A couple of fools

In honor of April Fools day Amanda and posed for this shot last night. I post it here in place of any real substance. Enjoy.