Sampling the "local" foods

I finally broke down and tried the canned corned beef and hash that I bought out of curiosity 3 weeks ago... it was nasty. Turns out however, it can be made edible, as was proved to me by my friend Hideyo. He cooked it with the ramen noodles and green beans and it suddenly became quite tasty. Lesson learned: don't eat canned meats straight from the can.

Weekend Travels

Spent the long weekend traveling to Western Samoa (technically now just "Samoa", but that gets confusing), an independent country about a 20 minute plane ride from American Samoa.

Western Samoa is Samoa 2.0
Seriously, everything is just a little better there. Plenty of sandy beaches, good food, beautiful people (not fat! apparently diabetes is much more of a problem in the American version of Samoa). I traveled with a group of people I've met here and we spent some time in the capital of Apia, then headed to a surf camp on the south shore. The pictures below give a much better indication of how pretty it is than I could with words. The shore we stayed at was hit hard by the tsunami last September, but the resorts there are already rebuilding. A few of the pictures show the beach fales we stayed in; just a mat and a mosquito net was all we needed, it was great. We felt really safe apart from the one night we woke up with a man in our fale shining a flashlight at us.

Religion is big both in American Samoa and Western Samoa, but I enjoyed hearing the Christian version of the good Bob Marley song No Woman No Cry ("No Jesus, No Life") and noticing that instead of speed limit signs they just had signs that read "Slow down, hell is full".

Now I'm back to work, and the research is going really well! I've collected almost half the surveys I need and I think with a month left I'll be able to get more than enough. The interviews have been more tricky, but we'll have to figure out a way to make it work. Hope you all are enjoying the summer too!

More Western Samoa Pics

Western Samoa!

Fun Fact

Ordering a cheeseburger here is considered a "side order".

Moving Forward

Finally got IRB approval!

Picture Explanations

My internet was being wonky so I couldn't write anything next to those last pictures, but I'll sum it up now:
The bottom pictures is from LBJ, the hospital where I'll be working (once I finally get my final IRB approval, ugh!). The middle 3 are from an amazingly beautiful hike I went on with friends Christin and Krista. The land is owned by a Samoan family, but the government pays them so that it can be used by the public for free. Apparently this is not enforced, because the crazy grandpa of the family tries to charge $5/person to get in. Luckily Christin has done this before and we were able to get by just offering smiles and 2 cans of corned beef which we brought along as bribing material. As usual in Samoa, it rained hard and briefly at random points during our trip, but I managed to get a few shots when the sun was out. The top picture is from a beach bar called Tisa's that we went and hung out at on Sunday afternoon. They have amazing piña coladas and a nice sandy area. It's on the east side of the island, so I got to see some of the scenery on that side, it's much more natural and pretty than the middle section. So while I'm super frustrated about my IRB delays, I've found some pretty awesome ways to distract myself!

Distractions

Poem

Poem by John Enright, a poet living in American Samoa:

Regulators

When you've lived a while within the sound
of surf and mosquitos and swirls of children

between blindingly green ridges of jungle
emitting birds and bird sounds and moving

through the spectrums of saffron and shadow
and squall-closing grays, when the

news become who is pregnant by whom
and why who is leaving the island,

then come to me and talk about your
air-conditioned plans for the regulation of

whatever it is you've been brought here
to set straight by mainland standards.

We'll set up a time line that will most
closely resemble a slowly drifting cloud.

Settling In

No new pictures today, just a brief update. On Friday I had an amazingly productive day (I've been told not to get used to it) and met everyone at the hospital and clinic that I needed to meet and found a nursing student who can be my translator and assistant with the interviews! This weekend I've also gotten to meet some of the other palagis (non-Samoans) here on the island. There are mostly groups of people doing either marine biology work, recent law school graduates, or working with the government in some other way. It seems that people come for anywhere from a few months to 2 years, but people rarely stay longer than a 2 year contract. I also got to take my first ocean swim yesterday right in front of the house, the water is just about the perfect temperature this time of year (I hear it's more like bathwater in Jan/Feb). Probably just relaxing the rest of the day and tomorrow I'll head back to the hospital. I'd love to hear from you all, let me know how your summers are going!

RAIN

Pictures from the apartment! I'm renting a room for the 2 months from an amazing girl named Christin and this is our common area. Out that front window is the ocean...











This is our resident cat Famous. Very cute, but mostly annoying. I'm not really a cat person and the surprise biting attacks don't help. He did however curl up in my lap this morning and only bit me twice in the process... so maybe I'll come around.







View from our front porch, also where my bedroom window looks out. It looks kind of gross because it's been raining ALL day today. In the sun the water is a pretty amazing color.










This is another view from the front porch

The view out the back porch. About a hundred yards from the ocean the land rises really quickly and becomes mountainous. You can't even see all the peaks because apparently the tops are almost always covered in mist (today just lots of rain).














Tomorrow I'll go to the hospital with my adviser to meet everyone and hopefully get things going on my project. I'll also get some pictures when the sun is out and of other places soon!

Getting Started

I'm new to the blog thing, so bear with me. The purpose of this is to show my friends and family what I'm doing this summer (probably mostly pictures), but I'd certainly like to know what you all are doing also, so please don't hesitate to write me!

Just in case you don't know where I'm going and why, here's the background:
I'll be in American Samoa for about 2 months doing a research project on the barriers to prenatal care on the island. My adviser has worked in this region for over 10 years because they have an unusually high prevalence of type 2 diabetes (close to 20%!). Last year I was working on analyzing a data set collected by a Brown medical student on gestational diabetes (a type of diabetes that arises during pregnancy, she also noticed high levels of this in American Samoa). Since gestational diabetes is tested for during a very specific time period during a woman's pregnancy (typically between the 24th and 28th weeks), receiving prenatal care during this time is especially important. Prenatal care is also necessary for a variety of other reasons that improve pregnancy outcomes and the health of both the mother and baby. However, we noticed that the usage of prenatal care was actually pretty low; women were not coming in for prenatal services early enough, if at all. So... here follows my project! I'm trying to figure out why the women aren't coming in frequently and/or early by administering survey and conducting personal interviews with women coming in to the hospital.

After a 22 hour journey to get here, I arrived last night. We're 7 hours behind here in Samoa. This is getting long, so all I'll say now is that it's absolutely beautiful and the people I've met so far are great! Pictures to come soon...