The Samoa portion of our cruise for the season is officially over. We left Pago Pago this morning around ten o’clock. I started to enjoy Pago Pago the last full day I was there. I found a small fast food joint called Evie’s Taco Hut above the main post office that actually had Samoan food! While my crewmates enjoyed tacos I had Samoan Oka and fried bananas. The lady who owned the store looked at me funny when I asked if she had Fe’e, Samoan squid, because her lunch special menu said so. She didn’t have Fe’e but Oka and bananas were listed on another board so I ordered that. She asked where I knew about it and told her I was married to a Samoan. The Oka was delicious and what a relief from gross fish sandwiches from Mickey D’s of which I wound up going to dinner because of lack of eateries in Pago Pago.
When I went out for dinner I walked through the village of Fagatoga and the sensation of being back in Samoa returned. I watched the boys play rugby while not too far from the field, kids were playing volleyball. I should have done that earlier in the week but like mainland America itself, if you do not have a car, you cannot get anywhere efficiently. Oh yes, you can go by bus but the ride to Nu’uli where most of the eateries is a long one and who knows what the fare is. After lunch I met a woman in a gift shop whose family is from the same village as “L”s. I called “L” afterwards and she knew the family and was trying to recall the woman. So the time spent in Pago Pago ended in a positive note. I will not be back in American Samoa for another two years, providing I am still on this boat. As we left Pago Pago I took some photos for the 2010 yearbook. It doesn’t look much difference from 2008 or 2003 for that matter.
Even though I have been doing this for years, that “underway feeling” always slither when your body gets filled with that juvenile sense of adventure. I always get the “underway feeling” as the boat begins to roll from the swells after we hit the open sea. You know you are underway and have a job to do. You feel the roll beneath your feet on the deck and the wind whistling around structures while the blistering tropical sun beats down on your neck or the exposed skin. You exist in a life and escapades that others can only live through pages of a classic novel. Imagination gets carried away to believing yourself as a reincarnation of some ancient mariner or characters such as Ishmael, Billy Budd, or Mr. Morgan if away from terrestrial home too long.
Heed the splash of the bow wakes as she dashes through the sea on my journey home at which she will take me. The salt spray strikes your face as you transit between decks or your task requires you to be on the outside exposed to the elements. When she starts to move, you do not mind being fixed on a tiny piece of real estate of 224 feet that glides on the infinite sea. You depend on her out here and she will get you to your destination in this life’s dimension you are familiar with. Unlike the sea if you challenge it, the sea will always win. The sea can be beautiful like a desirable woman or deadly and angry like one that is scorned. You take good care of the ship and treat her like a concubine. You are good to her and she will return it in kind. She takes you away from but will return you safely to the arms of your loved one, where my sea journey always ends.
We should be at Jarvis Island on the equator next Thursday for several days. We are steaming north towards the equator at ten knots. As I left the Samoan Islands today I looked back at Tutuila like I did with Saipan, Galapagos, Marquises, and many other places I’ve been. Some I have returned to while other places I know I will never see again. I watched the mountain peaks of American Samoa sink beneath the waves of the sea and fade into the haze on the horizon. I then looked towards Western Samoa and waved goodbye to people I again left behind and love.
I bid you goodnight from the open seas of South Pacific.
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