The Samoan Islands are smack dab in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, so pretty much everything but coconuts and bananas have to be shipped in from off-island. So when homesickness kicks in, the only thing to do is to resort to mail order. And while dealing with the post office is rarely ever a …
When people ask me where I’m from, I never quite know what to say. I was born in St. Louis but I grew up in Illinois. I went to high school and college in Michigan. I studied abroad in Spain and taught in American Samoa. My grandparents were from Arkansas and as recently as last …
When moving to the South Pacific, you can’t just load up a U-Haul truck and drive there. Everything’s got to go by plane or by boat. This gets expensive, so you have to learn how to edit your possessions down to a bare minimum. So before we moved to Samoa, my family had an auction. …
The greatest breakfast of my life was at a Holiday Inn near Midway Airport in Chicago. It was a continental breakfast buffet, and it wasn’t the food that was so great as it was the situation. You see, I had just flown in from American Samoa, after two years of living on the island. Outside …
In American Samoa, the streets have no names. Not officially, anyway. Sometimes people refer to “the main road”, which crosses the island, or “the airport road”, which leads to the airport. Sometimes roads are named for the village they run through/to, like “the Ili’ili road” or “the Fogagogo road”. But while these unofficial names are …
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