The Samoan Letters

Although the family was delighted with their new house and their friendly neighbors, they were slightly disappointed that they wouldn’t be living near the ocean. If you are going to commit to two years on a tropical island, you might assume that you’d get a beach with that. There was a lagoon across the road with an active mosquito population that tested the strength of those preventative shots they had received, but no real swimming. The bushes along the water were full of frangipani blossoms, a pale yellow trumpet flower that grew wild around the island and had a sweet smell that floated across the street. The pavement itself was frequently spotted with the remains of large toads whose eyes and tongues had exploded out of their heads after being paralyzed by headlights and run over —the wildlife on the island was still getting used to the paved roads. But no ocean.

“Larry, I need to talk to you,” said Jean after dinner one night. The evening air was beautifully cool and a tropical breeze kept the air moving as they sat out in lawn chairs with their toes in the sand. It was hard to believe that the day had been steamy and still. “Do you know what I did today?”

“Wrote some letters?” Larry guessed, sensing he was inching into dangerous territory.

“I ironed. For three hours I ironed every damn article of clothing this family has. And I cooked a pot roast so we could have a lovely dinner together.”

“Well, you did a great job. Dinner was really good; did you see how many helpings Carolyn had? She said it was just like a meal we would have had at home.”

“But that’s the problem!” wailed Jean. “It was just like a day at home! I traveled 7000 miles and I ended up in exactly the same place I was before, only now there’s sand everywhere and I sweat a whole lot more. Do you any idea how hot it was in the house with both the iron and the oven on?”

This one grew up to be doctor, and it all started at the Goat Island Club.

The Samoan Board of Education had decided that there weren’t enough children under the age of six to support a full-time kindergarten, nor was there any available classroom space to hold one. But the stay-at-home moms of the few five-year-olds around disagreed, and a do-it-yourself kindergarten was launched with the moms acting as the teachers. They started slowly by holding class in the living rooms at Tafuna, but realized quickly that more space would be needed.

Fortunately, there was another souvenir building left over from the military that went by the spiffy name of the Goat Island Club. Legend said that a Naval commander stationed in Samoa had a goat kidnapped from another island and brought over so that his wife could have fresh goat’s milk in her pantry, and that the club was named in the animal’s honor. That wasn’t really much of a reason to call it that, but then it really wasn’t much of a club.

The students who attended the Dependent’s School were a mixed group. Most were the children of the teachers/principals who had been brought to the island by the United States government or offspring of other industry such as the Coca Cola Bottling Plant or Starkist Cannery. Classes were taught in English so most of the students were palagi, but there were also Samoan kids who had been educated on the mainland and had a good command of the language.

The proximity to the harbor was a huge distraction to the learning that was supposed to be happening in the classrooms. There was a constant stream of watercraft churning through the bay to the docks, from jerry-rigged fishing boats to majestic cruise ships. Giant metal cleats were cemented into the ground right outside the fourth grade building, and ropes as thick as a tuna fish were wound around them to anchor the huge boats.

Centipede Row, which was near the school, shows how close the harbour was to the buildings. This picture is actually from 1948, taken by Dr. Jim Harris, and can be found at http://jmflanigan.smugmug.com

While Larry was off saving the Samoan population one toilet at a time, Jean was once more in charge of keeping the homefront on track. School had started for the three older girls, and this caused a flurry of activity as the household goods were still on a boat somewhere. Three outfits apiece were problematic when one had to go to school five days a week and there was no washing machine on the premises.

Larry outside of a school in the village of Nua.

The camera was running and Larry called “Action!”. There was some confusion at first because no one knew what “Action!” meant, but eventually they sorted it out. Under his father’s direction, Solomon gathered up his soap and toothbrush that had been strategically placed by Larry and headed out of his fale to the communal shower. The village’s water supply came from the reservoir that was built up on the mountain, and the shower was basically a pipe that allowed a one-inch trickle of water to flow.

Carolyn ignores the view from the platform where the cable car passengers disembarked.

Governor Lee’s bold new idea had set off a building boom on the island. A new power plant had been constructed in 1961 to supply the electricity needed to run the televisions in each remote village. In order to broadcast the programming, a 40,000 watt transmitter had been constructed and lifted and then rebuilt on top of 1600 ft. Mt. Alava, assuring that the signal would reach the outer islands. They had even strung a mile-long cable car across Pago Pago harbor to allow engineers access to the giant antennae. The hike up the mountaintop to access the gondola was daunting, as was the trip across the harbor in a car that swayed and buffered as it zipped along a cable that was terrifyingly thin. But the view was spectacular.

Larry shows his charismatic camera side while teaching proper toilet usage.

Larry was plunged into the chaos of the project with little training or warning. The four teachers who had been on the island for several months had a bit of a head start because at least they knew what subjects they would be teaching. Larry had taught World History in Detroit but there would be little need for that until students had mastered English and a few other basics. So after careful research and much discussion, he was given the responsibility of teaching a subject that many considered to be one of the most important in the curriculum: Hygiene and Sanitation.

This was deemed a major necessity because centuries of depending upon the tide to carry away sewage had caused environmental problems for the island, as well as comical incidents when the natives were faced with the prospect of using indoor plumbing. Workers at the new airport terminal reported finding rocks in the toilets, as this was the usual substitute for paper when one was going in the ocean.