The scheduled time to go to the ferry for the overnight ferry to American Samoa was something like 6pm. I was originally going to drive there and leave our rental in the parking lot. Leota didn't feel comfortable leaving us to our own devices nor with us leaving our car in the lot, so he volunteered to drive us there and keep watch over our car at his house. He didn't think we needed to be there at 5, as I suggested, to ensure we weren't late. He said we could be there at 8pm and be fine. He didn't think the ferry would leave before 10 or 11pm. I was naïve, and Leota would turn out to have been optimistic.

When we told people we were taking the ferry to American Samoa, we got a variety of reactions. Some were impressed by our mettle; ours warned us of the weather and conditions. Many Samoans have never taken the ferry to American Samoa. I think it is a bit of a status thing to take the flight over the ferry, but it is also a time and comfort thing. The financial savings are not worth the trouble, and we would've paid more to avoid it if we could have.

he wait for the ferry while they loaded took several hours in a crush of humanity. No one seemed to know how the loading worked, so everyone kind of crowded in, us included. We crowded near the front until someone finally told us how to read our ticket, and we realized we would be loading among the last groups, so we got out of the way and sat down.

Families were stocking up on food for the trip, buying meals from vendors at the station. We should have done the same. At any rate, we finally boarded around 8:30 or 9. We initially thought we'd have to sit on the floor of the cafeteria, but we ultimately found seats. Josh had been worried about getting seasick and purchased Dramamine from a pharmacy in Apia.

We took the meds and slumped in our seats. Grant went wandering. I think I woke up before we even left and eventually got down on the floor with everyone else to try to sleep. The storm kicked up before we left and buffeted us all the way there. The boat continually went up and slammed down, up and slam down. It was jarring and relentless, but I never felt unsafe inside the cabin. The boat never tipped side-to-side. Just the steady up and SLAM.

I thought the only entrance to our cabin was the one on the far side of the room, as people kept climbing over sleepers throughout the night to reach it. But it turned out there was another door right behind us that just wasn't being used, except by Grant, who found it eventually during his wanderings. Josh and I didn't leave the cabin we were in, trying to stay settled, not vomit, and get some sleep.

I did in fact sleep on the floor most of night, nodding in and out of consciousness. Most of what I know that went on comes from Grant and Josh. People were laying over every available floor space, so I had no compunction about sticking out into the aisle. My main memory is of being stepped over repeatedly throughout the night. I heard the coughing, but I didn't realize it was seasick vomiting. Apparently, a guy behind us was just throwing up on the floor in front of him as he lay trying to sleep.

Grant spent the night wandering the ship and surfing the storm up top with a bunch of Samoan guys he befriended. He was sopping wet when he finally came down.

Because Samoa is now at the beginning of the day and American Samoa at the end, the trip lasted about 6 hours, and we landed the morning of the day we'd left. Very confusing. I am time-zone challenged under the best of circumstances--this was breaking my brain a bit.

I had made reservations for us at Sadie's By the Seashore, one of two decent hotels in American Samoa. I tried to book the Tradewinds, the other decent hotel, which is near the Olaga offices in American Samoa, but they were booked up. Sadie's had vacancies, and was right next to the ferry terminal, so we were set.

​When we walked out, I looked around and thought I knew where we were. We'd go to the right, and Sadie's should be right there. We walked for about 15 minutes, and I said, "wouldn't it be funny if we walked the wrong direction?" We had a running joke of some sort, so we kept walking, but after another 15 minutes, I questioned my own impeccable sense of direction and asked a guy coming out of a store. He pointed the direction we were walking, so we thanked him and kept walking. After nearly an hour, we reached the tuna canneries, which I knew were well beyond our destination. I flagged down a cab, who gave us a ride to Sadie's for $10. It was all the way back around Pago Pago Harbor from where we'd come, just a few steps to the left of the ferry. He was a retired Filipino-Samoan schoolteacher, born and raised in Samoa. I didn't have the bandwidth to chat, but Josh and Grant kept up the banter for us. Grant was fading however.

We got ourselves checked into Sadie's early and crashed out in our room. We'd tried to reach our families back home to let them know we were safe, after ominously texting "taking the ferry in a storm" before an extended radio silence. However, we were too fried to move immediately and crashed out in our room for a few hours. Then we got up, had some food, drank some Cokes over ice that would later give us serious traveler diarrhea, and sent out emails to try to make arrangements for Friday.

I reached out to Joe Ioane from Off Da Rock Tattoos, who was our main collaborator and data collection site back in 2017. I'd had to leave a week early that summer due to a family emergency and did not say goodbye properly.  I also got in touch with Joshua Naseri, who runs the Olaga programs in American Samoa and made arrangements to meet for a happy hour beer or three tomorrow.

We were at lunch in the restaurant at Sadie's when I see someone familiar. I keep looking and keep looking. I finally decide that it's Leuila Ioane, Joe's wife, and the person with his back to us therefore is probably Joe. I'd told him in my message that we were staying at Sadie's, and he'd responded, so if he was here, wouldn't he look us up? Apparently not. I finally went up to them, and indeed it was.

Joe and Uila are a powerhouse couple. They're both Army Reserve, fitness buffs, and driven entrepreneurs. When we were there in 2017, Joe was building a workshop attached to the tattoo studio for Off Da Rock Fashions, Uila's business. She designed cloths, and they had a team of seamstresses making them. I have two great handpainted ties. Joe and Uila and their kids (four now, two more since last time) all look like rock stars modeling her designs.

Anyway, I ask Joe if he can recommend a rental agency, as I'd decided we really did need a car and was about to go try to rent one. Instead, Joe offered to rent me one of his extra cars for a flat rate if I could drive manual. I definitely prefer island cars from friends when I can get them. Cuts right through the bullshit, and I trust Joe. Unfortunately, neither Josh nor Grant had any experience with stick shifts, so I would end up doing all the driving.

After lunch, we jumped into the back of Joe's truck and accompanied him on errands until he got back to his neighborhood in Ottoville. He hooked us up with the car, and I gave Josh and Grant a brief tour of Leone until we realized Grant was flagging. So we went back to Sadie's. Grant took a nap, and Josh and I went to meet Joshua Naseri in the restaurant.

We had a few beers with Josh and told him about our project in person. I'd been emailing back and forth, but this was the first time we got to meet in person, and the project is much easier to explain in person. Furthermore, he was really intrigued by the methods. His team would be able to try out data collection over the weekend, then we'd debrief on Monday and go from there.

We were thrilled. The Olaga team were locals, so they'd be able to collect data much more easily than we could.

One of the adjustments that we'd all agree should be made it that we'd pay more in American Samoa. I don't think I've mentioned the payment, but it was made very clear at the beginning of our data collection that anything but cash would be seen as colonial and paternalistic. In Samoa, we were paying $25 tala per participant for pile sorts, which seemed like a reasonable amount to our collaborators and participants. Given the exchange rate, that would be around $9.33 USD, which is both a ridiculous amount and too low for participant reimbursement. We ended up paying $25 USD in American Samoa because it felt equivalent to people, even though it wasn't and everyone acknowledged it. Weird.

Time to convalesce and watch Women's World Cup Soccer, which was being played in New Zealand and Australia, so near our current time zone. Josh and I are sports fans and looked forward to having something to watch when we weren't out and about.

Grant was still sleeping and would be down and out for most of the next two days with a fever. I was paying for that ice non-stop all day. Good times.

Josh Lockhart, Grant Pethel, and I went down to the shipping terminal to buy ferry tickets for American Samoa. We were planning to travel to Tutuila to collect data. Tutuila is American Samoa's main island, the Manu'a Islands the other.

I had planned to go to Ta'u in the Manu'a Islands of American Samoa as well, but it was impossible. Flights among the islands are touch and go. The second airport in Samoa just reopened in July, so more flights had become available. However, the bottleneck of people traveling back and forth to see family was such that they were booked up for several weeks. The only way to travel to American Samoa during the six weeks of the field season without having known ahead of time was to travel by ferry.

This would be rather difficult because our return flights to the US were out of Samoa. Had I planned better, we'd have flown into Samoa and out of American Samoa and saved ourselves considerable stress.

We had gone directly to the ferry the day before after getting back from Savai'i, but Josh did not have his passport with him so we were not able to make the purchase. We planned to come right back with the passport but were tired and by the time we got back and didn't want to drive back downtown. We would have bought the wrong tickets if we'd done that because of the time zone issues.

We would have to buy a ticket that would leave on Friday from Apia at around 8pm and arrive in American Samoa on Friday around 2am. The return ferry would leave American Samoa around noon, and that would get up back in Apia on Saturday around 2am. It's very confusing to me.

We'd chatted with our host, Lai, and he'd told us which tickets we needed to buy. So we did that and then went to the CSS offices to conduct some pile sorts of participants we had recruited.

For lunch we went to Burger Bill's. We thought it was funny and kept accidentally ending up in their parking lot for some reason and had a hankering for a burger or something and went there. Bad idea. I have not been a fan of much restaurant fare in Samoa, but this was gross. I got a mushroom swiss burger for some reason. I should have known better because my first job was at Hardee's, and Hardee's had a mushroom swiss burger that I found gross then when I liked fast food (working at Hardee's soured me on that place forever). Burger Bill's burger was similar, so I left it unfinished. Grant and Josh had underwhelming experiences as well.

​The best food we have eaten in Samoa has been what people have served us at their homes, for the most part. I'm not a fan of the curries I've had there. They are simply flour based sauces, I think.

Fortunately, we were eating at Leota's for dinner, which would include the #2 pig. He also promised to make a couple versions of Oka (fish in coconut milk and lime juice), which is one of my favorite Samoan dishes.

In the meantime, we ran errands and tried to meet up with Su'a Alaiva'a Sulu'ape. We'd been popping in, and Ata finally gave me his cell number and told me to call him. I did but just got voicemail. I also texted. We had arrangements to meet that day but could not nail the time down. Su'a will often roll in a few hours after the arranged time, but he is Su'a, so no one says a word. However, we were on a schedule, so we could wait an hour or so but then would have to jet.

We sat watching Junior, and he introduced us to the family he was working on. It was the son/nephew of the Nu'uuli fautasi team in American Samoa. I told Josh and Grant how important these guys are, and they were very friendly and receptive. They live in Pago Pago, so we made arrangements to meet up with them the following week for data collection when they'd be back home and we'd be over there.

We went over to Leota's around dinnertime and met his family. This included his wife, young daughter, and baby son. His wife is a teacher a Samoa College. They also live with Leota's brother and three cousins, who go to university and help with the kids.

Basically, all land is family land, and they are from Savai'i. So when they are in Savai'i, they obviously have places to stay as any kid would going home. But when they are in Apia, this is an extension of their village, giving them a family to stay with in Apia too. Leota tells me that from now on, I will stay with them and in the village when I am in Savai'i.

Leota's mother bought the property they have in Apia, and she is buried there. This was a big deal for Leota and a decision he is unsure was the best political move for him. He aspires to be High Chief some day, and he certainly has the character and aptitude for it in all the best ways.

His mother was an important chief, and she should have been buried on the traditional family land, rather than a new piece of property on another island. However, Leota was so close to his mother that he could not bear to be separated from her, so he pleaded with the High Chief to be allowed to bury here in Apia.

In previous years, I've puzzled about the Samoan custom of burying family in the front yard. This year we got a thorough education about it from Leota. According to Leota, fa'alavelave are more important than the Christian holidays, even though Samoans are very Christian. Fa'alavelave are gift-giving celebrations that accompany important village events, such as weddings and funerals.

Funerals are as lavish as weddings for Samoans, with family flying in from all over the world. The celebration of the deceased lasts several days and includes lots of event planning. We witnessed one next door from our Air'B'n'B that lasted several days. They had multiple Taula party tents set up and were outside cooking in the traditional style near the edge of property near us. There were ceremonies we caught glimpses of in the distance, and there were crowds of people.

​Like weddings, professional photographers capture it all on film, and Leota showed us the video of him wailing atop his mother's coffin.

Fa'alavelave are important and expensive, but Samoans don't think of money as something that needs to be squirreled away for personal use. They are a communal-oriented culture, especially compared with my own midwestern US background. In Samoa, everything is owned by the family and village, not individuals, so money flows through the family and village and is not kept by individuals. For the most part.

Banks accommodate this; fa'alavelave loans are easy to get, have no/low interest, and you can get multiple fa'alavelave loans even if you haven't paid off previous ones, because of the value these events have in the culture.

Burying family in the front yard is very important in Samoa. By doing that, family remain close. They are buried in the front out of respect, and the size and design of their monument often indicates their status in life. Untitled people may have unmarked graves in the yard but are still with family. In Savai'i, Leota pointed out several graves around the monuments that we had thought were simply landscape decor.

The cemeteries I've photographed in previous posts are often graves of displaced, foreigners, or those whose family land is gone. There is one such near NUS.

​Leota regaled us with these stories, and he and his family served us dinner and entertained us with some ukulele playing and singing. I will have to ask him to teach me a Samoan song next time, as I usually travel with a small stringed instrument to pluck on (uke or stick dulcimer). He family is lovely and daughter is charming, and the food was fantastic. Leota's oka is spot on, and even though there was too much food, I ate two servings of oka.

Leota explained to us that their tradition of hospitality requires that they serve guests and make sure they are satisfied and retired because they eat. He told us this in Savai'i, which is why he was always sitting before us as we ate and never eating himself. So again, he sat before us and talked with us while his wife and cousins brought us food.

By this point, Leota felt comfortable giving us friendly cultural advice on how to behave, which we appreciated. He had told us going to Savai'i that humility is the thing. Josh and I would like be seen as flashy because of our hair. Josh has long hair, and I put product in mine and have a somewhat extravagant mustache. Grant had his head shaved, which is seen as simple.

So he reinforced that I should be sitting in the middle as the important person. They would bring us a tray of food and extra of everything as soon as we tried to finish a dish. It was a Sisyphean effort to finish a meal because they would refill everything so fast. Fortunately, we had learned from Dionne the trick of at least having a bite of everything and not feeling guilty beyond that. Like money, food flows through the village. It is not wasted if it is not all eaten. It will go to the untitled people serving us later, and what they don't want goes to the pigs or the dogs, and it will replenish itself.

​We managed to not be completely distended by the end of the meal because Leota wanted to take us out for some beers before we left for American Samoa. So after the obligatory photo of everyone, we went down to the famous RSA.

I say famous because apparently it is known as one of the best nightclubs in the South Pacific. I thought this was odd, as there are a lot of clubs popping up around Samoa and American Samoa it seems. However, it turns out this was one of the first, and it is one of the few places a touring band might play if they went to the South Pacific (which I think is probably rare, expect among islanders musicians themselves).

Grant is very good at putting himself out there to get the party started. He jumped out on the dance floor and had local women dancing with him. We had a great time with Leota and learned a couple other lessons. He thought it was weird that each of us paid for ourselves going in, and I covered him so didn't notice; but the custom in Samoa is that the first person in a group walking in pays for everyone. And when someone gets a beer, they get one for everyone. I actually had been covering Josh and Grant for most things on our National Science Foundation Grant, but they don't cover nightclubs and drinking, so I'd toggled to the American style of covering ourselves.

Having friends there willing to tell us these things has been great. I'm very torn about staying with Leota's family in the future, not because I'm not thrilled by the offer and opportunity. I have an excellent relationship with our hosts Lai and Renon, and I learn a lot from them too. Lai and Leota are both talking chiefs, so they are very knowledgeable about Samoan culture and history.

​Leota showed us the genealogy of his family he has memorized and written out. As a talking chief, it is his responsibility to know the family history and names. The titles are passed around to indicate status and lineage in the hierarchy. For instance, the title Leota is an important one in Gataivai and widely used. Several of the chiefs we interviewed were also called by their chief name Leota.

I promised not to publish it, but Leota let me take a photo of the genealogy. Leota says he has memorized 72 generations but has not completed his memorizing. He knows ancestors that predate the colonial encounter, however, making me wonder about the validity of the concept of prehistory/history with regard to Samoa.

​Leota says that Samoans know more about their culture than has ever been written down because it is palagi who write things. Samoans live them. But he is worried that his children will lose access to the truth of their culture through learning to read if the truth isn't written by Samoans for the children to read. Matai are responsible for preserving their culture, so he considers this his mission as a scholar. He says the chiefs don't really value the university education, but they appreciate that it must be done to protect them, and they support Leota in this role.

The woman who had been dancing with all of us but especially Grant was a US Customs Officer and was trying to get Grant to continue the party with her friends, but he politely declined and we dropped Leota off and went "home."

On Monday we got up and prepared to leave to catch our ferry. The High Chief asked us to stay for the leaving ceremony or if we could come back for the final ceremony before leaving. It's a ceremony presented by the untitled women, as the 'ava ceremony had been hosted by the untitled men. We had exchanged gifts with the untitled men on Friday.

We strolled around the area a bit. I was following pigs around because they reminded me of my chihuahuas!

I think I found the #4s, and I decided not to get any closer.

Since our ferry ticket was technically for 2pm, the village considered us under their care until we left the island, even though we'd have to leave the village a few hours early to get lined up for the ferry and because we wanted to go to the market beforehand.

That meant they wanted/needed to feed us breakfast and lunch, so they brought it to us together. Breakfast was awesome. I was still a little overfull from the day before, so koko aris (cocoa rice), fruit, eggs, and bread were fine. But then they brought "lunch," which included hot tuna and cucumber. After the hot tuna last night, I couldn't do it again. Nope.

We had so much food from the 'umu the night before that we had a whole cooked #2 pig and a chicken to take back to 'Upolu. We agreed that Leota would take it back to his house, and we'd all go over there for a Samoan meal before we left for American Samoa later in the week.

We took photos with the family before leaving, then stopped to see another star mound on the way to the ferry. This was the most visible mound we'd seen yet. This mound had been cleared off in conjunction with the Centre for Samoan Studies (CSS), and the owner had been advertising it for tourism. But they'd taken the sign down and were no longer maintaining the site, using it as a plantation for taro, coconut, and cattle instead. But Leota stopped by the home of the owner and received permission for us to visit with Leota.

Not only was this mound the most visible, the low walls or walkways that CSS archaeologist Greg Jackmond had told us about were clear. They were the most obvious route to the mound, so you are walking on them before you realize what it is and that it's a human-made feature you're walking on.

On Saturday, I was supposed to get a tattoo at 9am from Joe at Off Da Rock. I'd been planning to get one from him in 2017 when we worked together on my second tattoo study, but I'd had to return home early due to a family emergency and hadn't seen him since. The problem at the time was that Samoa and American Samoa don't play nice in a lot of ways, including the cell phone carriers they use. American Samoa used to be Digicel and Blue Sky, with Blue Sky being the only carrier that works in both countries. So of course when I was in American Samoa the first time, I bought a Digicel phone (bad advice). I skipped getting a Samoan phone until this year, when I bought a phone with Bluesky. Well, apparently Bluesky was sold, and they're no longer compatible in both countries. Or something. So I could only get messages via email and social media, and Joe doesn't really use email. So he wasn't able to tell me when he was running late. I slept in the car in front of his shop for about an hour before one of the seamstresses from his adjacent clothing shop knocked on my window to tell me he needed to reschedule.

I went back to find Josh up an roaming around the hotel grounds talking to his girlfriend on his phone and Grant laid out with a fever. I wasn't feeling great myself, so I laid back down and was out until about midafternoon. We essentially did nothing the rest of Saturday except hang out and probably watch some Women's World Cup Soccer.

Sunday was similar. We all felt like shit, but I kept trying to rally us to show the guys around Tutuila a bit. It's so weird to be in American Samoa for the first time since 2017 and after several trips to Samoa. Because one was colonized by the US and the other by New Zealand, I feel more at home in American Samoa. Ironically, the facilities and resources of American Samoa are better, as indicated by the illness we suffered all week.

Grant was really ailing, and it was coming on Josh, so we didn't end up doing much. I took them for a drive to see the Vai'ava Strait National Natural Landmark because it's on the other side of the mountain range that runs thru Tutuila, and I hadn't been there before. The photos below remind me of how cool it is but also of a skinny little dog that followed us from the village up the rocky road to the parking lot, onto the beach, and back again. It actually let us pet it, which is unusual of Samoan dogs.

On Monday we were similarly laid out. However, I'd asked Leota if he could ask his sister in American Samoa could help us meet people to interview. Consequently, she arranged for the church youth group she works with to participate. They were happy to have the compensation for participation to donate to the youth group fund.

We all felt so sick all day that we half hoped it wouldn't happen, but we also had been ailing so much that we had not been able to chase down other leads. Leota also wanted us to be able to get our sample early and enjoy ourselves for a few days, so he was anxious to help us finish.

The tough part for us, given our queasy stomachs, was that the youth group met in a fale tele overlooking the tuna canneries! It's steep, gritty part of American Samoa full of immigrants who work the canneries, and it stinks when the wind is blowing in the wrong direction. Fortunately, we all weathered it and had a splendid evening of data collection.

The principle of unconstrained pile sorting in the manner we conducted this study is that each person is given 50 cards with a Samoan term on one side and the English translation and number on the other side. The terms were developed during the freelisting stage described earlier. They are told that the cards are terms that describe typical Samoanness and that the terms come from Samoans in Samoa and Hawaii. They are asked to sort the cards into meaningful piles and to give each pile a name. The only other rules are that there have to more than 1 pile and fewer than 50.

Participants enjoyed this research activity. They felt it was more like a game than just a survey and had fun doing it with their friends. There were high degrees of overlap in pile sorts among people hanging out together at the time of data collection but also between each of these groups, suggesting we're going to find a high statistical degree of sharing in the themes too.

We can certainly explain some of this as the influence of others in the room, but we were also surprised at how different the piles of people who were friends could be. Leota had been shocked by the variation he observed among his extended family.

After collection data, we stayed for a birthday celebration of one of the youth group adult members and ate cake before heading back to Sadie's, thoroughly satisfied with a blessed evening, as they say.

On Tuesday, Leota's sister Ake wanted to take us out to dinner. We were going to be treated to dinner by the whole family. I think originally they were going to put something together Samoan style, but they toggled to American style by having it at the local fancy Chinese place, we were fine. We weren't sure we had the stamina for more Samoan-style hospitality, and I'd been to this restaurant numerous times, so it was a good call. As it turned out, meeting Leota's family in American Samoa is as much an epitome of the contemporary relationships between the countries as anything. We expected the traditional Samoan treatment we'd received in Savai'i, and instead we discovered Leota's father and grandparents here were quintessentially multi-cultural American family, with a mixed heritage of Samoan, Chinese, Fijian, and American.