Odd timing...

I was just cleaning out a drawer when I found a packet of photos. They were a jumble of images from as far back as my mother at 8. Many were from my parents college days. Uncanny, as I had just written about them. It was a curious window into their past. As amusing as it was as a history of their hairstyles and fashion mistakes, it did reveal a little of the life they led before I entered it. My father looked so shy and quiet, my mother so fun-loving and happy. Hawaii was the furthest my father had ever traveled from home at that time and I remember him telling me that when he first arrived he was astonished at how tall the buildings were (the tallest building in Samoa back then was 3 storys) and he wondered what was in the soil that made them grow so big. Of course, he didn't mean this literally as he was studying Soil Science, but he would sneak into buildings to ride the elevators for fun. I'm sure he marveled at the people who would need to box themselves away in the clouds, pulling them further from the warm ocean and the humming soil that housed life and the solidity of existence below. What was in the soil that made these people sleep so far from it?

In Samoa, all the traditional homes, called Fales, would be open and free of walls and doors. They are welcoming and most social activity occurs there. As you can see from this old photo, the roof is made of tin but originally it was all thatched plant matter, and bound together with a thick twine made from coconut husk. Whole families would live together and privacy was as rare as wine. That was before my time. Most homes now will have a fale for gatherings but a separate Western home for private living. My Grandfather was a builder and he built for his family a Western style house (concrete, separated rooms, with glass windows) but my father would sleep with his brothers in the fale out back, only a skip from the ocean. Late at night, when the sounds of the village would give way to the the songs of the tree frog, they would listen to the wind brush against the thatching and the waves press against the shore, as the scent of a fire burning low would circle their drowsy forms. What was in the soil that made these people sleep so close to it?

Fale at Saleapanga Beach, Samoa, 2001

View from my Grandfather's Fale, Utuali'i, 2001.

Getting to know me...

For those of you who know me best this will sound familiar, but for the rest, it will be exciting and exotic! Ok, too much hyperbole. See? You're already getting to know me better.

I was born on September 29th,1973 in the sleepy town of Southport. It is on the Gold Coast of Australia and is usually not noticed by tourists going to Surfer's Paradise,a town who's name advertises its interest to outsiders and locals alike. This was not where my mother grew up. She was used to the drier and more lonely landscape of the Outback (more about that later). Thankfully friends and better hospitals encouraged her to bring me into the world close to the sea. I'm a real water baby and I assume it has something to do with hearing the waves pounding the shore just a few blocks from the hospital.
Life was sweet in those early days. I can say this with confidence because I have absolutely no memory of it and thus will infer this from all the photos of me sleeping blissfully. Our stay was brief, as at the age of 6 months we moved to Samoa to be with my father. If Southport was a sleepy town, then Samoa was a sleepy country. The population including my new self and mother then was about 149,000. Once again we were surrounded by blue waters and lapping waves. It was and is paradise. I think I am beginning to sense a theme in my early geography. My parents met in Hawaii at University. My father studied Soil Science and my mother Political Science but more importantly, that's where I was conceived. I used to ask my father (my mother never indulged my inquisitions) where exactly he thought I was conceived. He would always answer very definitively "Makachakalakka" a place that sounded like chopped Latvian to my tiny ears. I pictured a beautiful beach, very much like the one you see in the photo on the right which I took the last time I was in Samoa. When I asked if it was a lovely moonlit beach my father would laugh and say it was the dormitories of the UofH. I never stopped asking my father these same series of questions throughout my childhood and the result never altered. I guess the beach that was my ticket into the universe was in my heart.