Mango Mania

Talofa all

Last night when we finished work the girls were heading down to the mango tree to see what they could pick so I decided to go along. The air was full of the smell of rotting sweet flesh and of course the ripe mangos were not at the bottom of the tree. People passed and had a good laugh at the sight of the library staff trying to throw things to make the mangos fall down. Luckily we were rescued by a hunky male who decided to climb the tree and pick the mangos for us. Next problem was trying to catch them as they fell ................. not so good at cricktet me!! Yummy though. Wish the mango season went all year round.

Samoan Santa?

Where is Santa and the Christmas spirit in Samoa?

Things have been mighty quiet around here. There is no maddness, no diary full of Christmas party bookings/clashes, no decorations and hardly any ads on the TV from the shops.

Has Samoa gone to sleep or is Christmas coming in Samoan time?

Luckily Adam has agreed to me putting up my tree now as it is a month until Christmas and only 3 weeks til we fly home. I am having to create my own Christmas spirit. Luckily for all of you I have done some Christmas shopping so you will get presents!! I am also planning a Christmas dinner with a couple of friends who will be in Australia at Christmas time so will do something before we all head in separate directions.

Oh and we are off to Manono Island again this weekend with the netball club for our end of season "do". We are all staying the night in the fales. I wonder how much sleep will be got on Saturday night......................

Library Update

Well it's taken 6 months but I can finally log into the library electronic databases - yay!! This is such a relief. At least now when Distance students come in needing information I may have half a chance of helping them. 1 step closer the the goal of electrifying this library by the end of 2009!! Of course the internet connection still works like a slow wet week but I am learning the art of patience. "As long as it works - eventually" - is now my motto!

Next exciting thing on the horizon is that I have received a 500GB database of Agricultural journal information from the USA. This is a subscription which is updated annually. We now have access to Agricultural journals dating back to 1993. This can be networked and made available within Alafua, Samoa but not to the other islands as yet. It will be great to have our own local database that is not relying on the internet connection for access. Very helpful for the staff and students when researching.

Have also been very busy here with writing Annual Reports and Action Plans for 2009. I am glad of the experience I got at UCOL with these and with aligning the library objectives with the overall objectives of USP. As I had a "list" of many things I wanted to tackle next year this task was reletively easy. It is also a chance to make the mother ship aware of things that need working on in Samoa and where we may need assistance with funding etc. Things not achieved can carry forward to 2010 etc. How organised!!

Today is the last day of the Exam period. Many students heading home last weekend and the next batch will depart this weekend which will make it very quiet around here. Just a few post graduate students left finishing off their research. We are therefore starting to tackle the major weeding project and getting rid of composting journals from the 1960's onwards!! That should be fun. We will have lots of free shelf space after this and I hope to create a journal display area and make our Reference Collection more prominent. We are awaiting a whole lot of nice new Reference books (encyclopedias, dictionaries etc) from a special fund held in Fiji. Yippee. Hard copy encyclopedias are still very helpful here as battling with the online versions is tiresome.

I am also keenly awaiting the arrival of Matua II 041 the ship that is bringing 40 boxes of Children's books and Adult fiction to Samoa from the lovely libraries that donated these in New Zealand. This should arrive Sunday and the books will be available for collection next week. I will then have the lovely task of opening up the boxes to see what is in there - just like Christmas! Dividing up the books to the needy schools is going to be difficult so I will have to enlist the help of the Ministry of Education and the Public Librarian (as long as the books don't all end up in her collection!!)

Last but not least we are also now at the end of the Schools Library Assistant course. I had a full day of revision with the students last week so that took some preparation. Not wanting to bore them half to death I tried very hard to souce some videos on Customer Service in Libraries and also on Covering and Mending books. Much better to show them something than to blah blah blah at them. After much perseverence with my internet connection and many failed attempts to download I finally managed to get 2 Goofus and Gallant in the Library videos off YouTube and burn them to DVD to show in the class room. I know this may be no mean feat to you but to me it was a minor miracle to achieve this!! The revision day went well and the students did not snore too loudly so I think it was successful. This Friday is graduation day. Adam is also invited along (which he thinks is appropriate as he assisted me in planning and testing my class sessions). I have been given fabric and have had my first Puletasi sewn so will be wearing that to graduation. Photos to follow shortly .........

The Samoan Touch

Hi all

It's been a while since I last posted (sounds like a confession?!!). Normal life has taken a hold. We haven't been away or done anything different or exciting (other than living in Samoa ;-)) Actually I have been playing a bit of Touch Rugby in the last few weeks. There have been tournaments each weekend with 3 games of half an hour each. Somehow I have managed to stumble into Touch at the very end of the season and have been caught up with the top 8 teams in the league!! Anyway they welcomed me but then swiftly plonked me out on the wing where I could do the least damage. I have been fast trying to learn the Jordan, Bounce, Save, Noodle and the Helmet (which all have other names as well just to confuse matters more). After much perseverence I think I have mastered the Jordan which is the main move for the team so at least that is something. It has been heaps of fun and now I have some contacts for next year's season which starts in February. Good fitness build up for netball.

Touch gets played rain or shine (there is no hail here!) but when it rains it really rains. I have had 2 weekends of being soaked through to the skin now with rain dripping off my nose and hair and running into my mouth. Last weekend I had to wring out my top on the field to try and lose some weight from it! Apparently I have "tries in there" and I have been trying hard but so far my only chance was in the middle of a torrential down pour and as hard as I tried I just couldn't pull in the spinning bullet that was thrown to me so it went plop through my arms and dribbled over the try line (yes I was that close!!) Very frustrating and annoying.

Nothing like a bit of Samoan touch in the pouring rain that fast turns into humid heat with bugs flying everywhere and eating mangos picked fresh off the trees, peeled by hand and eaten on the side line with mango juice running down your arms!!

The Power and the Rain

I am sitting on our verandah under the shelter of the corrugated iron roof and it is chucking it down with rain which sounds great. The guttering is overflowing in many places as it can’t cope with the volume of water. Bring it on I say though as only in Samoa can it rain this hard but there still not be enough water in the dams to run the Hydro Power stations!! For the past 8 days we have had power outages whenever the Electric Power Corporation has felt like it and they call it “rationing”. This morning there was an announcement on the radio as to which areas were going to have “rationing” at what times. In Vaigaga we were meant to have 12.00pm – 3.00pm this week every day so why is it 6.00pm and we have no power? This is Samoa. We have just cooked our dinner on the BBQ in a pot (re-heated food from last night). The BBQ is proving to be very useful in these times. It is very hot here, especially inside when there are no fans, and there is not much breeze but the 5 children from across the road have got the right idea. They are running up and down the street splashing in the puddles in the pouring rain and they are naked!! What a life aye? That is probably their shower for tonight!! There is thunder and lightning now so best they head inside before their bits get fried!

Carnage in the Library

Yesterday when I opened the library door I was very surprised to find a bird flying about inside. The poor thing must have been stuck in there all weekend. We opened up the doors as wide as we could and I tried to shoo him out but to no avail as the ceilings in the library are quite high so he just kept flying up out of reach. During the morning little bird sat on the louver windows while his mates clung to the mesh on the outside and they chirped to each other. When not doing this he flew up and down the length of the windows trying to find a way out. Unfortunately in the afternoon I heard a massive twang and turned to see feathers floating in the air. Poor little bird had hit one of the ceiling fans and come worse off. I looked for him everywhere but could not find him. It was not until later that evening when Adam came to pick me up that he spotted the bird on the floor underneath Silia’s desk. He is R.I.P. now. Wrapped in the Fiji Times daily newspaper and given an appropriate send off. This happens all too often for my liking so I’m open to suggestions as to how to get the birds out of the library …

Palolo Deep

The weather here has been hot and on Sunday we were both keen for a swim, so we decided to go to the Palolo Deep Marine Reserve. This is a marine reserve in Apia, just around the corner from the port.  None of the beaches in Apia are very appealing so we had not bothered to go the Palolo Deep before, even though it is supposed to have some good snorkelling. 

We managed to catch the high tide on Sunday morning and had a good time snorkelling out over the shallower waters (waist deep) to the ‘deep’ where there is a 'hole' in the reef, about 10m deep and 200m in diameter. Along the edge of the hole there is a great variety of coral and fish and even in the shallow water you can get close to all sorts of fish.  No photos this time, we decided that we should give the camera a break from the water. 

This spot is nice and close to town, so I am sure we will become regular visitors whenever we feel the need for a swim.  

Bike Update

At last we have an update on the condition of Angela’s bike. 

Some of you might remember that our first bike ride here in Samoa ended with a buckled back wheel and some broken spokes on Angela’s bike.  We then found that there are no bike shops or places to get replacement parts over here.  We managed to order some spare parts and the necessary tools from an online bike shop in NZ just in time for Latika and Hedley to bring them when they came up for their visit. So a big thanks to our ‘couriers’.

Armed with all the parts, tools and my bike maintenance book I got back into trying to get Angela’s bike back on the road.  It still wasn’t as straight forward as I hoped – there were problems with more spokes breaking, needing some longer spokes, trying to find Locktite in Apia…..   Then there was the fact that the wheel was very badly buckled and trying to straighten it up was not an easy task. Anyway, last week I finally got it back in one piece and rideable.

 Naturally we were both keen to get on the bikes and go for a ride, so on Saturday we decided to ride to netball training.  (Angela is helping to train the Samoan development squad and they train on Saturday afternoons).  Unfortunately training is at 1.00pm, so we set off from home in the hottest part of the day – about 33°! We got to Apia Park OK, no problems with either bike, but realised that riding around in that heat is a silly thing to do!! We waited at the courts until about 1.30, but no one else turned up. Practice must have been cancelled, but no one had told Angela.  So we rode to the closest shop, picked up some iceblocks and sat under the coconut trees by the sea. Then we rode around the shoreline and back home without any damage to the bikes.  It was good to be able to ride again, even though it was hot, we had to dodge a few dogs and fight our way through the Apia traffic.  

Elections

For those of you that are caught up in the hype of the American Presidential Election don’t forget that it is the New Zealand general election this Saturday, November 8.  

Angela and I decided that we should have our say, so headed down to the NZ High Commission on Friday morning to cast our votes.  After going through all the necessary identification checks and filling in a form to get out ballot papers we were finally allowed to cast our votes. Then there was a bit of an origami test to fold up the ballot paper and seal it into the correct pocket in the envelope.  Anyway, our votes have been cast and we will stayed tuned for the results next week.