First things first. The necklace Nolan has on in the photo, seed beads he was given in the Marquesas by Rio and drilled and strung up himself, says it all. He wears it everywhere. If we as a family had not cut loose and sailed so far, I don't think any of us would have found the path to Midland School(www.midland-school.org). In late August I spent two and a half weeks in Seattle. Friends Melinda, Marty, and Kas had done much assisting Nolan in getting ready for school, but there were a few loose ends, from packing up the mountain bike to getting a state ID to last minute ironing lessons. Nolan had a great summer at a YMCA camp counselor assistant training program with a hefty dose of child psychology and working with Ali and family in Wyoming at the ranch, as well as his usual Seattle adventures chopping wood, helping with glass art, and leaving town for the islands.
We arrived in Los Olivos, CA, on a glorious late summer day (everyone else thought it too hot) and met roommate Matt, his parents, and a welcoming group of staff and students. While I traipsed around to talk to the head of school's assistant, dean of students, advisor, doctor, et al, Marty and Kas graciously put together the Ikea bureau for over 2 hours while Nolan lugged boxes to his cabin and began unpacking. Since the student prefects inspect the rooms daily and the faculty weekly, I had the pleasure of not looking back. At the BBQ we met a Tongan family from Oakland, CA, and we will visit their relatives soon in Tonga. The head of school introduced the faculty and said "I would go anywhere with these people". We felt the same. We left with a sense of peace that this is the right place, one which shares the values of self-reliance, simplicity, and being of use in the world, with a passionate dedication to the hearts and minds of the students. Nolan emails that he is having fun, has been assigned a white quarterhorse named Lasse that belongs to the head of the equestrian program, and that the work is very, very hard. His advisor, who is cool enough to have ridden his bike from Vancouver to NYC last summer, works with Nolan everyday getting him on track with the high expectations of being a student at Midland. Nolan turns 16 on September 26. His email is nolan_willett@yahoo.com. His mailing address is Midland School, PO Box 8, Los Olivos, CA, 93441. The physical address is Midland School, 5100 Figueroa Mountain Road, Los Olivos, CA 93441.
Meanwhile, back on Hannah, who is happily tied up to a dock with power and water for the first time since Mexico, Steve was busy in the indolent heat, varnishing, oiling, rebuilding, installing, sweating days in deep lazarettes, and one day sweating so much he slipped into the engine compartment up to his knees and needed rescue. Of course, the parts that I lugged back diligently packed turned out to be not exactly what we ordered or to be not quite installed in spite of multiple emails to tech support. At times, we are not tired of cruising but very tired of fixing things. The Great Zipper Debacle kind of summed up the quirkiness of boat maintenance. Suddenly, all within the same week, zippers of different ages, manufacture, quality, continental origin, and style simultaneously decided to rust shut. Lots of corrosion inhibitor and other chemicals later, they kind of work...just one thing we didn't do enough preventative maintenance on. So I hope you all out there are taking good care of your zippers!
Steve spent much of his spare time hanging out with the chiefs (matai) drinking kava in the central market and became a regular as much as a palagi can. He has committed to entering the blogosphere and writing about it. As we said our goodbyes yesterday, we were showered with presents by some of the group as well as the nearby woman vendor with whom I sat often.
I, meanwhile, have been procrastinating writing about Samoa, which I find compelling complex and nuanced. Apia, vastly bigger than Pago Pago and vastly smaller than Papeete, capital of independent Samoa, stretches along a flat shoreline dominated by a megalithic Chinese-designed state office building topped by what I think is supposed to be a traditional house but looks like some brown life form on steroids and a Catholic cathedral amid many dilapidated one and two story buildings and wafting diesel smells. There are three open air markets, for fruits and vegetables, crafts, and fish, where people come from all over the island to sell their goods; they are the first vital and intact markets in Polynesia. This country is land rich and cash poor: the only big employers that I see are the Vailima brewery, Aggie Grey hotel complex, an electronic assembly plant, and the government and aid agencies. Shortly past the city one rises to volcanic hills covered with rainforest and giant banyans and swarmed by birds and flying foxes. The villages, stretching in a necklace around the perimeter of the island, have an almost Victorian detail to them reminding me of Mexican and Thai sensibilities in turquoise, yellow, red, and neon green, but mostly reminding me of nowhere but here. Each aiga (extended family grouping) has its fale, an open air building with columns on a rectangular or oval floor. Sometimes they are empty, sometimes they are filled with chairs covered with plastic, a stereo, or woven mats. Around this are gardens, black soil or even lava sprouting red ginger and other red and green and yellow brilliance, and assortments of houses. The details of it all draw you in until your eyes hurt: carved wooden rafters, valences of flowered fabric, lavender and coral designs painted in odd places....and people everywhere. Even on remote dirt roads, everyone has a raised platform in front of their home where garbage is placed and pick-ups done regularly.
Sia Figiel writes in "where we once belonged", her novel of growing up female here, that "I" am "We". "I" does not exist. Samoans seem both to live out and to regularly violate an extraordinary code of group behavior set forth by relatives (who are never absent), chiefs, church figures, and teachers. You are your village and your village exists through you. That said, they swim back and forth between traditional and international culture with spirit and smiles and congeniality: coconut milk vs Coke, the traditional long dress vs shorter knee length skirts or the rare pants, giving money to the community or church vs trying to provide to immediate family, unfettered borrowing vs stealing of crops and belongings, accepting all Christian sects vs muttering about someone of another faith or advising us not to go to the Bahai temple, railing against abortion vs the Samoan Family Health Association (an International Planned Parenthood affiliate) providing contraceptive and prenatal care and peacefully discussing the effects of illegal abortion with religious leaders and chiefs in private, staying here or migrating to New Zealand or Australia. In all of it, there is a sense that people approach differences of opinion by discussion, story telling, and waiting, rather than barricaded isolation. At the same time the weight of tradition can cover up domestic violence and teen suicide. However, the Samoa Observer today reports on a woman being beat up by a chief because of a land dispute ("Enough of your violent bullying"), a teacher shaving his head to raise money for the no-suicide advocacy group, a professor lamenting the lack of local food sustainability in the islands, the low incidence of HIV leading people to still feel shame and not seek help, dengue deaths,an associate minister picked up for US passport fraud, the power authority looking for alternatives to diesel... Not an island paradise, but somehow a healthy society going along at a sensible pace. Even better.
We are always approached by adults, teen, and kids, just eager to talk or take us around or sit with us in the market. We went to Uafato, where many kava bowl carvers live because the tree they cut grows there, and within minutes were invited into a home to watch the work and eat lunch and talk. We went back to Robert Louis Stevenson's and were touched by how he is loved here because he was both a teller of tales and an advocate for independence in the late 1800s when the US, Britain, and Germany were vying with each other for rights. Having been read his poems by my grandmother, I was touched to see where he slept and where he died and to know the bigger story. Driving around the island, we stopped at a women's fundraising BBQ and discussed coconut theology (all parts are useful, all are different but similar...applies to religion and other things) while watching cricket. A family has started a soap making business, buying cocnut oil from families, and is trying to figure out how to find a distributor internationally. At Sataoa and Sa'anapu we paddled an outrigger through mangroves and watched the boys catch doubled-jointed crabs by tying a stick to a square of wire with meat dangling and setting it flat in the river. When the stick jiggles, it means there is a crab eating and they grab it fast. We climbed down the ladder to To Sua ocean trench, two sinkholes connected through a lava tube to the ocean: once down the 50 feet, you swim in swirling currents and look up at vines dangling and feel like you are in a National Geographic movie. Everywhere we eat new foods like taro baked in an umu (ground oven) with coconut and sugar, wrapped in a tent of leaves.
Wherever we go, people bring up the US presidential election. Whether Kiwis here on vacation, highly educated local leaders, or cab drivers, they seem to have favored Hillary Clinton and are mystified why a woman of her experience and competence did not win the nomination. In the rest of the world, Bill still has the magic touch. I have been unable to explain in a comprehensible way why she is so vilified by some in the US. At the same time, they often ask "the question": is the US ready for a black president? Obama is seen as a potential world-class leader by many and as someone who bridges differences. However, some here hold to the belief that he is Muslim and prefer a white man. ????? (Even the spell check wants to make Obama be Osama.) McCain as an individual is unknown to them but is closely associated with the Bush administration, about which no one has anything good about, so that trumps any individual strengths he has. The subtext of the devil, the atavistic dominatrix seducing America, with a track record of saying one thing and doing the other, who has little to do with Republican or Democratic or American values, is beyond everybody and people don't know her name. Perhaps one needs to "get" reality TV from inside the culture to even begin to make sense of her. Disclaimer: other than the last two sentences, this really is what we have heard and not my personal opinion!
Within the next few days, we will sail to northern Tonga and made our way south through the islands and then to New Zealand. We will fly to the US on December 12 for a month.
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