Coming to America...or Am I? Part 1

I'M HERE!

(Where exactly is here?) 

If we could edit each other's dreams, what would we change?

Well, that was a pretty ominous epigraph. It's making me want to write some kind of poem. 

Alright, so...I caught my first ever flight to Honolulu on a hot Friday afternoon. Sweat was in my hair, on my neck, even on my memory-deprived OPPO A3 phone. I had no time to reflect too deeply on anything. To appreciate that I was going somewhere I had never been before. I had a few moments whilst packing. I slipped my mum, dad and grandma's memorial pins into my makeup case. One can't be too sentimental when one has a big trip to the Free World coming up. 

The six hour flight from Samoa to Hawaii was by no means the longest or most stressful I have ever experienced. Remember, I endured the world's fourth longest flight (17 hours, whew!) twice in the space of, like, five days last year. But...I was still a little anxious when the cloud pockets started moving us around as we approached the Northern Pacific. One thing I immediately figured out is that there's a lot of turbulence around the Hawaiian archipelago. I would experience heaps more of it, flying out to D.C, and even leaving, towards Fiji. 

On the flight, I was seated next to one of my soon-to-be RPIL colleagues from Fiji. Ironically, she would end up being my roommate during our D.C field immersion. Life is cool like that, I reckon. Halfway through the plane ride, she asked if we could switch seats. This gave me her window seat, and I was so so soooo excited because I could now take a video of us landing in Hawaii. The beautiful ocean, The tops of palm trees. The...people. 

Ah, but all dreams must die. Mine did, quickly and quite hilariously. As we touched down in Honolulu, it was drizzling, the turbulence had made us tired, and...I could not see a THING! Just, nil. There were the usual orangey-red lights on the wings of the airplane as we descended, and I could just about make out the shapes of buildings in the nighttime haze. But that was it! I'm ashamed to admit (but I have to- won't learn if I don't) that I had for so, SO long ascribed to the colonizer's gaze. You know, Pina Coladas and alo'a shirts...It's pretty stupid, really. I'm Samoan, for heaven's sake. We have so many of the same darn problems. In the first week of our fellowship, we learned that any person from a colony or former colony inherits a colonial legacy. That often includes the colonizer's worldview, wherein native people are "subjects and objects" (a former boss of mine once gave us that wording as she tried to describe this phenomenon). We allow ourselves to be subjected and objectified, before (sometimes unknowingly) subjecting other indigenous people to this brand of objectification. 

Very quickly, I established that neither Hawaii nor this fellowship was here to play. Someone once wrote that when she was getting her malu tattoo, she wanted to look at the tufuga before the actual process started. She wanted to ascertain that he meant her "pain". That he was going to test her physical endurance and mental fortitude. I took one look at the graffiti in the last tunnel we passed through as we drove to Manoa Valley, and knew that this place and its people had weathered centuries of pain and suffering. I knew I would not leave here without having seen and felt it too, even in the smallest possible measure. 

READING RECOMMENDATIONS :)

💭 Every few blog entries, I'll recommend two books from my reading list. I'm a very eccentric reader, so I'll post everything from historical fiction to homicidal manifestos.  

1.

"...the minority must posses their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression."-  Thomas Jefferson

I know, I know...why ON EARTH am I promoting a collation of speeches by dead American presidents?❓ 

Well: why on Earth NOT? 

I'll say of my decision to promote this, only this: give the men in this book, the founders of what can still be a beacon of democracy and economic growth, a chance. American politics is currently at a strange and interesting crux: it makes us nervous but also it's our favorite joke on TikTok and Instagram. I was never really keen on it myself, no thanks to tRuMp and his...just everything he does, really! HOWEVER, after my Capitol Hill meetings and tour in May, I wandered into the Visitor's Center gift shop where I stumbled upon this gem of a book.  In its pages, and in words that are older than my great-grandfather from whom my surname comes, I have found so much wisdom, hope, and encouragement that I can't help but be inspired. Maybe, just maybe, you will too. 

P.S. read it slowly. The syntax in here is something else!

2. 

"...how can you be a teenager when you is only 12?"- Bette Greene

Oh, man! Where do I even begin? 

I myself was only about twelve when I read this and if I can be really honest with all you random strangers on the internet, I found it kinda romantic. This sounds like a scenario straight out of one of my final year Lit papers, 'Awkward Books', where we talked about censorship and 'morality'. It was one of those courses that would just answer all your questions with more questions. 

If you're into historical fiction that's more on the Y/A forbidden romance side, this might be for you. Be warned, though: the age gap between the protagonists is about ten years. You do the math, and you figure out what works for your own moral compass. 

Note: This book is a challenged/ banned list one. Take up the challenge of reading it, and see why. 

in the interim

in the interim: what happens here? 

"It's the in-between..(where) you can become invisible."- K.W

That's Chicago, from several thousand feet in the air, on a United Airlines flight from the mainland to Hawaii.

I love to travel but hate traveling. Planes are a hassle, you know? All this notwithstanding, I got on a six hour flight from Upolu to O'ahu a few weeks after my mum's funeral. Zero time was spent processing anything - I just went for it. 

Back in January, I was selected for the Resilient Pacific Islands Leaders Fellowship. It's an initiative of the East-West Center, implemented by the Pacific Islands Development Program and hosted at the University of Hawaii. It was a lot of luck, I think, but also good timing. My mum was so excited when I told her, and I'm very glad she at least knew I was about to embark on my first fellowship, before she passed on. She knew I was going to be okay. Mostly. Hah. 

I haven't written anything in here for about five months. What can I say? I've been living and doing and being. It's kind of ridiculous that half a year has already flown by. I've been feeling as though l've been living in some sort of transitional, interim period. I've developed a whole new routine. My house has transformed into a new space altogether - one absent of my mother's mince pasta on Sundays and her sun-dried laundry on Tuesdays. My cousin Samkeyes has come to live with me. According to our Samoan culture, it would be negligent of my extended family to let me live alone (a.k.a independently 😂). I've always had a very great sense of self-sufficiency. I've had to- I took care of both my parents and have paid all the bills since I turned twenty-one. BUT, and I never thought I'd say this, it's been the BEST thing ever having my cousin over. He's got my dad's amazing cooking skills, my mum's love of clean clothes, and our grandmother's storytelling (☕ tea-spilling?) propensity. Having family members is actually wonderful. It's one of those things we don't often take time to truly marvel at. In this chapter of my story I AM (finally) GRATEFUL to be part of a big extended family. Of course, as with all extended families, there'll always be specific people I gel better with than others. And yes- there are some that I still don't see eye -to-eye with. But that's life. A family is essentially a basic social unit. Probably the most basic one there is. Social units are comprised of humans and humans have flaws. Right now, I'm just trying to live the happiest way I know how: simply, honestly, and kindly. What have I learned in this interim? That first and foremost, it's important to be kind to myself. I can show up better for my loved ones, and love them better too, if I love myself. 

I've started reading again- this month's task is to complete Kevin Kwan's sugar-sweet Sex and Vanity. It's my first time reading a contemporary rom-com. I'm both proud and ashamed of that. My reading list is so vast and I've only just found the...COURAGE to venture into this gem of a genre. I'm very pragmatic. And cynical. BUT THIS- wow! It's turning out to be just what I need right now. 

I'll write more about Manoa Valley, all the cute guys I saw, and all the amazing food I had in Hawaii, in my next post. Did that sentence sound vapid? I'm glad. I'm learning, also, to stop taking myself so seriously these days.