These are random pictures that we took while Donna and Bill Flake were here. Donna took a lot of them as she is much braver than we about going up to someone and asking to take their picture. We are sensitive to their private life and are usually traveling so fast past something that we miss the action. Thanks Donna for these pictures.
In each village there is a central fale. They have the village meetings there and the chiefs sit in an order with each type of chief sitting by a pole. We have only seen a few village meetings so this was a treat to not only see a meeting in progress, but to get a picture. This one is a little unusual in that they are sitting on chairs instead of on the floor leaning against the posts.
This picture was taken in Savaii at the school by the canopy walk. These kids were playing a game of hit the flip-flop. One of them would stack up two or three pair of flip-flops and another one would use a flip-flop to scatter them. Very imaginative - use your shoes for the game pieces!
It is winter in Samoa and these are the winter flowers. They grow in this pyramid formation yet each one is a separate blossom.
This family lives exclusively in their fale. Note that each day they stack the foam mattresses in a corner. They have some sitting area and some food storage area. At night they would put up mosquito nets and perhaps a fabric partition. The outside walls are the old fashioned woven kind rather than the plastic tarp ones.
This woman is washing the family clothes in this fresh water pond. After they wash them in an area like this, they will lay them out on the lava rocks to dry. She is standing in the water, so you get a two-fer; a bath and a washing machine all in one.
This is family life in a fale. At the far back on the right is the umu- cooking house. Life is just so simple.
At Vaiola, these guys lifted this car body off the ground, posing as a tow truck for us, They were big enough boys that they probably could have lifted our car. This is an old auto body that they are practicing painting and apparently disassembly. Fun guys.
This picture at Vaiola is a classroom outside in the shad of the tree. We didn't have classrooms like this when I was growing up.
Donna was fascinated with the beaded fale. They take shells and plastic pieces and beads and other things and make strands that hang down between the fale pillars. They also never take the plastic wrap off of the artificial wreaths. I also love the antenna that is propped up against grandma's grave. A tradition here is to put the most prominent ancestors' graves in the front yard; that's what the large white cement thing is.
In the picture below, we are having a picnic lunch as part of our day of traveling around the island. Not a bad spot for lunch.
After the picnic lunch, we traveled to Upolu East Stake in Lalomanu to teach the technology specialists. One of the wards was still having Primary and so they poised for this picture.
I love to hear the little children sing, they sing Very loud and when they have a fun Primary song, you can hear them far away. They love to sing!
Elder Schaefermeyer is connecting a video camera to the outlet on the wall. He is also demonstrating Samoa safety procedures. Note the chair to climb upon the table, the two tables put together with one more chair to step on so he can get to the top of the ladder (4 chair stack) in order to get to the camera input connector in this chapel. He is also wearing safety shoes, hard hat, gloves, glasses, and harnes :)
We had a great time at Mermaid Beach with Donna and Bill. Bill is holding a star fish. They are blue here and they are everywhere.
Earlier in the day we went to the Coastal Walk. A film crew and contestants are on Samoa filming "Australian Survivor - Samoa". They have been everywhere we want to go. Well, they finally left and as we were walking along the path, Bill found a survivor torch that had been left.
We all had to poise with it as you can see from our poises. Nice lavalava Shanna, I never can get these to hang straight!
If you get to watch this Austrailian version of the show, the torch belonged to Sue. We took it with us and left our contact information with one of the village guys who takes care of the Coastal Walk area. We figured Sue would want this as a souvenir.
It turns out that the participants don't get the torch, the executives get the torches. We should have kept it! Oh, well, good deed is done it is back in the hands of the film crew.
We had a great time hosting Bill and Donna and were very excited that they could come and experience Samoa. They certainly got to see more of Samoa with us than he did as a young missionary. He had no idea of all the beautiful places on the islands of Samoa.
Enjoy the pictures, we enjoyed taking them and we'll take more.
Love to all, have a blessed Samoan day!
Manuia le aso
These are random pictures that we took while Donna and Bill Flake were here. Donna took a lot of them as she is much braver than we about going up to someone and asking to take their picture. We are sensitive to their private life and are usually traveling so fast past something that we miss the action. Thanks Donna for these pictures.
If you get to watch this Austrailian version of the show, the torch belonged to Sue. We took it with us and left our contact information with one of the village guys who takes care of the Coastal Walk area. We figured Sue would want this as a souvenir.
