Ua vela le la

“Ua vela le la”- Samoan proverb meaning “the mat is warm”…often used after a long meeting

“…and all my words come back to me,
in shades of mediocrity...”
– Simon and Garfunkel Homeward Bound

Hardy:    “I hate it! I hate the air. I hate the sand. I hate the stupid people. I hate the way they work. I hate their bloody smiley bloody faces. I hate the never ending sky!

Baxter:   Well, why be here at all?
Hardy:    It's penance”
- from the television series ‘Broadchurch’

I’m going home in 4 weeks… and this is the last plogg I’ll write. 

I had started to write a plogg, finally, about my job- my assignment. I wrote and re-wrote explaining what I have been doing as a volunteer in Samoa…vented in a series of pages written under the working title of “Spleen”.

Obviously- I didn’t bother publishing them…or even keeping them.

I’m already starting to forget things that have happened this year. My memory is gently being burnished – the minor trials of what we laughingly refer to as ‘work’, are being polished away leaving sepia toned island scenes…

And I don’t mind a bit. I’m looking forward to a selectively tinted hindsight- where I won’t recall what didn’t matter. It’s amusing to me, that what didn’t matter most of all, is the purpose for which I came…but that’s precisely the kind of contradiction which Samoa generates.

Case in point; When the Minister of Women, Community and Social Development makes a statement like “There is no poverty in Samoa”.

Wow! Really?….I mean, it kind of renders a ‘Minister for Social Development’ redundant...and I’d like to know why you haven’t stopped asking the rest of the world for money to embezzle…or why the there are 200 professional volunteers getting about the countryside trying to resolve the simplest of health, educational, infrastructure and economic issues…but hey- one thing at a time, right…No poverty? Great work- take the rest of the week off.

When I leave this place- I will forget the fat meetings, with fat people and fat lunches in fat air-conditioned offices devising methods to tinkle away other peoples money. I will forget about being asked for advice, so that it can be ignored in a more informed manner. I will forget the scared, abused creatures that could never be called pets…forget the roadsides & beaches littered with tins and packets…forget the kids nibbling dry 2 minute noodles from the packet unaware of the nutritional deficit of simply expending energy eating them…I will forget the ridiculous cathedrals built with borrowed funds, so that people might stand in them and pray to God for help with their debts…

Instead I will remember…friends and aiga… playful puppies finding happy homes…blushing sunrises and bleeding sunsets…waving cabbies, and bus drivers who refuse payment…I’ll remember slurred conversations about culture over too many beers, and long cups of coffee mid morning...brown skin on dusty streets…ute rides and floating in warm shallow water…vivacious volunteers and troppo ex-pats…and acts of kindness neither random or rare. I will remember smiling comfortably at strangers for no reason. 

When you walk along the street in Samoa, the most common question directed at you is to the effect of “E te alu, ai?”…”Where are you going?” - it just means ‘what are you up to?’ I will remember that question and the ensuing conversations, though I may forget who they were with…regardless, for the next four weeks- the answer will be “Home”.

Our business in life is not to succeed, but to continue to fail in good spirits.

- Robert Louis Stevenson