Day 325, Year 1: There’s A Moon Out Tonight . . .
Date: Thursday, September 7, 2006
Weather: Beautiful, Sunny Day, Again With No Rain
Location: Pago Pago Harbor, Tutuila Island, American Samoa
The weather has really turned around and we are having wonderful sunny days again. Today we toured the island on an aiga bus that Penny on Long Tall Sally contracted with to take us on the tour. It was a tiny bus, but ten of us climbed in and had a great day. The driver was Junior. He is twenty-eight and has lived the last eleven years in Seattle, Washington. He moved there right after high school and just came back to American Samoa. Mark and I had already seen the island, but it was great to see it all again. It is really is a beautiful island from mountain top to seaside. And tonight it is even more beautiful under a full moon. The moon rose right behind Rainmaker Mountain which made for a very dramatic entry.
Mark made a couple of people connections today. We stopped for lunch near the TV studio where he worked when he lived here. He walked over to take a picture of the outside of the building and to say hello to the receptionist that he met a couple of weeks ago. When he went inside, she was not at her desk, so he walked into the engineering area to see how it had changed. When he did, a Samoan man introduced himself and said that he had worked with Mark as his apprentice when he was here. Mark was so glad to see him again. He had not been able to remember his name, but once he saw him today, he knew he was the person. Later in the day, we were driving by the home of Marvin Leach and his wife Fa’afatai. We visited there when we first arrived, but Marvin was off island and Fa’afatai was not home. Today when we stopped, Fa’afatai was home and she invited us to dinner tomorrow night. Marvin is back in the US with health problems, but since Fa’afatai lived next door to Mark when he was here, I know they will have many memories to talk about. Mark was in Marvin and Fa’afatai’s wedding. The best man at that wedding eventually became governor here. Mark has pictures from the wedding and we are going to try to find a place to scan them in so he can give Fa’afatai copies tomorrow evening.
Tomorrow promises to be a very busy day. We have a “to do” list that is a page long. Hopefully we can get everything done and we ready to depart mid-afternoon on Saturday. Amidst all of the “getting ready” for passage jobs on Saturday, we also hope to visit with Evelyn one more time. It will be amazing if we can really pull out of here late Saturday afternoon, but we do need to do this, ready or not.
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| 060907 Day 325 American Samoa–Bus Tour East and West |
