Thanksgiving in Manu'a

Manu’a is the name for the outer islands of American Samoa which include Ta’u, Ofu, and Olesega. There are currently 5 world teachers living and teaching on Ta’u and 2 world teachers living on Ofu and teaching in Olesega (the two islands are connected by a bridge). We met and befriended these world teachers in July when we were all crammed into close quarters for orientation, and then they were all shipped off to Manu’a, not to be seen again until the entire group reunited again in December at mid-service. A few of us decided that Thanksgiving would be an excellent time to go visit Manu’a and the teachers living out there. It would be enough time to see everyone and do everything but not too much time to become bored. I have been told several times by Samoans that there is nothing to do in Manu’a besides watch TV.

Getting to Manu’a can be a pretty tricky thing, and even after having gone through the process once now, I really don’t understand it any more than I did before. It seems like it mostly has to do with knowing someone who knows someone else whose cousin’s sister knows someone who works at the airport. That and a lot of persistence and a little bit of luck. The three of us who decided to go starting putting our names on “lists” for flights weeks before the actually flight. Then they would tell us that we were “confirmed” for the flights. I’m pretty sure that no one who works at the airport here actually understands what that word means. They told us it would be best to wait and pay for our tickets later, just in case. Then there is always the problem of the plane breaking down because it breaks down at least once a week. Anyway, many phone calls and “lists” later, I personally, was not 100% confident that we would be traveling to Manu’a until I was in the plane and it was in the air.

Me, Quinn, and Amber with our turkeys!

We were scheduled to leave Pago Pago Wednesday at 11 am. This was also the day of the annual Turkey Run fundraising event at Leone High School. Every year a lot of students, staff, and others who just want to run for a good cause participate in the approximately 4.25 mile run around Leone. The winners (of so many different categories I can’t even count them all) win a giant turkey. I’m pretty sure the amount of money spent to buy all the turkeys for the winners exceeded the amount paid by the participants to enter the race. The race started at 5 am which is before it is even light outside, so Quinn and I figured we could go run the race, pick up our free turkeys, then head home to shower and grab our bags before heading off to the airport, our turkeys in tow. You can’t buy a turkey in a store in Manu’a so pretty much the only way to get one is if your friend or family members bring one to you. At this point you might be thinking, “You can just bring a turkey on a plane with you?” And the answer is, “Yes, of course. This is American Samoa.”

There was one slight kink in the plan, though. When Quinn and I checked in at the airport with our frozen turkeys wrapped in plastic bags and then placed in reusable grocery bags, they told us we couldn’t take them unless they were in a cooler because they would get other things wet. Darn. Then they went into the back room to see if they had an extra cooler for us. Unfortunately, not, which meant we had 30 min to get a cooler or we would have to leave our hard-earned turkeys behind. So while Quinn watched all our stuff, I quick called a cab to take me to the nearby Cost-U-Less, where I purchased a cooler bag that would fit both the turkeys, and then rushed back to the airport just in time. We managed to actually get on the plane and land safely in Ta’u! Of course, we were still a little concerned about getting back even though we were “confirmed” for a flight on Sunday (it is pretty normal for people to get stuck out in Manu’a for days passed when they had originally planned to return), but we were taking it one step at a time. In fact, not long after we arrived in Ta’u we were told that there was no flight on Sunday.  Oh well.

Life in Ta’u is a lot slower, even than life in Leone. There aren’t any taxis or buses so you just have to walk or have friends drive you if you don’t have a car. There are a lot fewer people and a lot fewer dogs. Everything is just a lot quieter and relaxed almost to the point of boredom. The island itself is beautiful and a lot of it is undeveloped or is part of the national park. On our first day there we hiked out to a beach called 2^nd beach. Little did we know that there was a convenient path and instead we took twice as long to scramble up and down and around the huge rocks along the shoreline.

2nd beach in Ta'u

One of the bad things about Manu’a is the amount of mosquitos and ants! I thought they were bad here before I got to Ta’u, but this is nothing compared to out there. Putting on bug spray is necessary even when inside the house. And basically our friends there have stopped fighting the ants and have just learned to co-exist. Every food item has to go in the fridge or it will be devoured by the ants, even things that aren’t opened yet. 

We had Thanksgiving dinner at Cat, Wes, and Mitch’s house which is right next to the elementary school. The two teachers from Ofu came over on a boat on Wednesday for the holiday so we had 10 people altogether. Everyone brought something to share. A lot of it came from boxes, but sometimes that’s the best you can do out here. Wes was in charge of the turkey and it turned out very nicely. We were all happy to enjoy the food and spend the thanksgiving with our friends that we hadn’t seen in so long, even though it’s tough to be away from your family during the holidays.



A Samoan Cocoa


 

Wes with the turkey!



 



The boat we took to Ofu

On Friday went back to Ofu with the two teachers who live there. We got picked up by their  neighbors who  have a fishing boat and like to fish for tuna. It’s about an hour boat ride from Ta’u to Ofu. Along the way we stopped to do some fishing. They can just follow these certain types of birds that swarm above the water where there are a lot of tuna and then they just let out their lines and drive through the birds. Then they reel in the fish and hit them on the head really hard with a wooden stick to kill them and then toss them in the bottom of the boat where you can hear them flop around for a little while. After reeling some in, they tossed the stick to Erin and asked “Fia sasa?” (“You want to hit?”) So then she took over the whacking of the fish heads. Then one of the fishermen started cutting up a tuna and passing chunks around to eat. I was feeling a bit seasick at the time so I didn’t try any but it looked kinda gross when everyone had raw tuna chunks hanging from their teeth. I tried some when we got back to the house and it wasn’t bad, but I prefer it cooked.

Ofu is the prettiest island that I have been to so far. Its beaches have even been ranked in the top 10 in National Geographic so I’ve heard. The snorkeling there is amazing! It’s the best that I’ve seen since coming to American Samoa. I took a lot of underwater pictures but like I said before, underwater photography is difficult, and the pictures don’t really do it justice. The beaches also had real sand! Many of the beaches on Tutuila and the beaches we went to in Ta’u have really coarse sand or sand that is mostly made up of chunks of coral. 

We also visited the bridge that connects Ofu and Olesega. There are only a few people who live on Olesega, but that is where the elementary school is for both islands. Kids from Ofu and Olesega have to go live with relatives in Ta’u or Tutuila to go to high school. The one school bus picks up all the kids on Ofu every day and brings them to the elementary school in Olesega. We crossed the bridge briefly and took a picture next to the welcome sign just to say we had visited another island. The main attraction was the bridge itself. It’s a great place to jump off into the water, but you have to be careful and not jump when the current is too strong or you can get swept away. The bridge doesn’t look that high from the ground, but, of course, it looked a lot higher from the top after stepping under the railing and peeking over the edge.  But it was fun and exhilarating once you could finally convince yourself to do it.

After getting back from Ofu on Saturday afternoon we learned via phone message that we had been “confirmed” for a flight that morning, but had missed it. This meant we would have to be on the standby list for the Monday flight. We called our school Monday morning to tell them we wouldn’t be coming in to teach because we were stuck in Manu’a. They didn’t seem very surprised.

We spent Sunday pretty much doing nothing. Sunday’s there are even worse than Sunday’s here in terms of boredom. We watched a lot of movies and waited until 5pm when we could go get freshly baked bread from the store down the street. In Ta’u you can only get bread on Sundays. You can’t get bread ever on Ofu or Olesega. So this was a special event. The bread was delicious and we even got cinnamon bread!

On Monday morning we headed to the airport hoping we would be able to get on the flight. The only way to find out for sure was to go to the airport and see what happened. The airport people asked why we hadn’t come for the flight on Saturday, but then said we were lucky because some people had canceled for Monday so there was room for us. We made it back only one day later than we had planned which is really not bad for a trip to Manu’a!

Real Frogs?!

Since the beginning of the year I have been asking my students occasionally if there are any activities they would really like to do or things they would really like to learn about. A recurring suggestion in my biology classes was to dissect frogs. I would always reply "Hmm that would be really cool, but I don't know if we'll be able to do it." When it was difficult for teachers to get basic things like chalk, poster board, and printing paper, I doubted I would be able to get all the materials for a dissection. Even if I could find somewhere to get them, the main object would be money. The teachers at Leone pay for most of their classroom materials themselves. At the beginning of the year I got 3 pieces of chalk and a few pieces of poster board. That lasted me about 3 days. As a volunteer teacher I wasn't going to be able to put out the cash for 50 students to dissect frogs.

Then I got an email. WorldTeach was offering grant money to World Teachers in American Samoa who submitted proposals to enhance our ability to support our school and/or our community. It was called a "Community Service Grant" so I wasn't sure frog dissections really fit the description, but with nothing else to do on a Sunday and nothing to lose, I submitted a proposal. A few days later I found out that I had been awarded a grant to pay for frogs and dissection kits for my biology students! Just in case something happened, I didn't tell my students right away, but we started a new unit on amphibians and frogs. I assumed it would take a while for the frogs and kits to come in the mail from the US since everything takes forever here, but it didn't take a long at all. Soon after, I got a text from Drew, our field director, saying my frogs were here.

I opened up the box at our house and right on top was a giant plastic bagged filled with dead, preserved frogs. It grossed out the roommates a little bit. There was also 30 sets of tools and magnifying glasses, and 30 dissection guides, which were written at a level way too advanced for my students. We still had a little bit more work to do to prepare them for the dissection, but I could finally tell them for certain that we were definitely dissecting frogs. "I have 30 dead frogs in a bag in my bedroom!" I told them. To which they responded, "EWWWWW!" "REAL FROGS?!" "Are they dead? Did you kill them?" "Where did they come from??" I had already explained to them that they large toads that are always seen smashed on the road are not actually frogs but toads. I knew a lot of them were excited to do the dissection, but I was pretty sure they didn't really realize exactly what they were getting themselves into, having never dissected anything before.

I prepared them the best that I could beforehand by doing worksheets, drawing pictures, learning the dissection tools and how to use them, and watching a youtube video of a frog dissection (they thought I had filmed myself since the video only showed the hands of the person doing the dissection).You can only get so much out of worksheets and videos. At some point you really just have to dive in and do the dissection. I scheduled it for the Thursday the week before Thanksgiving break (I needed to get this bag of dead frogs out of my room before I left for Thanksgiving) and told them to bring gloves if they wanted them and styrofoam plates to do the dissections on because I couldn't find any dissection trays.



This is me demonstrating incorrect cutting technique.



I was nervous about a few things. First, about my actual dissecting knowledge. I've dissected a lot of things so I wasn't nervous about getting grossed out, but I've only ever dissected one frog and that was about 10 years ago. I was also nervous about being the only teacher in the room while 25 kids who have never dissected anything are cutting open frogs. Amber came to help control the situation for the first period which was helpful. The other teachers were busy teaching and I didn't have confidence in their dissection abilities anyway. I was also worried that they would forget to bring glove or plates (most forgot gloves). I was also concerned about safety since we were using some sharp tools, and I want to make sure that nothing left the classroom. I didn't want kids making shanks out of the scalpels or taking the dead frogs to throw on other kids. I made them all write and sign a contract the day before the dissection which included things like "I will not use the scalpel on my partner, etc." I was expecting some of the kids to feel grossed out, but it didn't even cross my mind that some of them would get physically ill. I guess I've dissected so many things that I'm not bothered by this anymore, but there were a few kids who had to leave and throw up.

When I pulled out the bag of frogs at the beginning of the period, the class erupted with cries of disgust and again I heard, "Miss, are those REAL frogs?!" Kids recoiled when moved the bag anywhere near them. They were even further appalled when I reached my UNGLOVED hand into the bag and pulled out a frog for each pair of students. “Miss! You can touch them with your hands??” Most of them were able to get over it after 5 or 10 minutes. Videos and worksheets can only take them so far in their preparation. A lot of them really got into it and seemed like they started to enjoy it. Some of the highlights were cutting open the stomach to see if there were any distinguishable insects left inside like cockroaches, flies, and grasshoppers, and finding and cutting out the heart. Since there was only one of me and 25 of them, I spent both dissection periods running around the room trying to help every group. I ended the day covered in sweat and frog slime.

The week after, I asked all the students to write a reflection/critique about the dissection. I gave them questions to answer such as what they liked and didn’t like, what they learned, what they would have done differently, how they felt during the dissection, if they would want to do another dissection, etc. I got a lot of interesting essays. Here’s an excerpt:

Well, the frog dissection activity was both disgusting and interesting. At first I was excited and confident, but when Ms. Abby brought out the frog, I was terrified. I was on the verge of throwing up outside the classroom. It took about five minutes for me to calm down…

 But then he goes on and the tone of the essay changes in almost the same way that I observed changes in the students’ behavior and attitudes on the day of the dissection.

I would love to do this activity again someday. Activities like this make me excited to come to school every day. I would love to dissect a real life human body if it is legal. Thank you so much Ms. Abby for such a great experience!!! :)

Overall most kids said it was an exciting and interesting activity that they enjoyed and from which they learned a lot. I was surprised by the number of students who expressed concern that the frog was not really dead and would suddenly jump on them in the middle of the dissection. There were a few who told me that one dissection was enough for them, but most want to move on to bigger and better things! Everything considered I think it was a success from my point of view, as well as that of the students. I’m glad I was able to give them this opportunity!