Sick in American Samoa

Saturday, July 22, 2023

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, July 23

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.

Monday, July 24

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.

Tuesday, July 25

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.

Photo by Akenese Lealamanua. All rights reserved.