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.

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.