Cromwell Chapter Closes but the Story Doesn't End There.....

How did the story conclude on Cromwell’s Last Journey to Pago Pago? I married the woman I met five years after that chapter ended. Upon returning to Seattle in December of 2002, I kept in touch with her while she worked in Pago Pago with the cell number of her friend on the yellow piece of paper I got from the First Mate. I called her on Sunday nights and chatted for about 30 minutes before going to bed. This happened for a month then one Sunday night I called and was informed by her younger sister that she had quit and returned to Western Samoa. Just the way things were with her. No goodbye or warning that she was going home. Just like the night we were in the hotel room at Thanksgiving a few months earlier. I called the number in Western Samoa she gave me that was written on that yellow paper. The person who answered the phone didn’t know who she was. I thought I was a target of a prank as ladies stateside did it to me before. I later found out that it was the village community phone. Not every house in her village had a phone and for those who needed to use one, there was the village “public” phone to use and to receive calls. Of course it was not free! I just wasn’t familiar with protocol on how to reach her.

I didn’t dismiss her. I was to report to San Diego in February of 2003 to my new assignment. That is when I came aboard the Ka’imimoana and she was beginning her winter inport maintenance at Scripps Pier in Point Loma. I focused on getting adjusted to my new assignment. Finally, I had a ship I could call my own. On other ships I was either in training getting familiar with tempo of operations or substituting. And looking at the schedule of the “KA” she was due to have an inport in Apia, Samoa in May! I was excited, as I wanted to see Hana again. Any other woman I would have written it off but this one was different. How was I going to find her and re-establish contact? Was she married or will she remember me?
 

I went to Humphrey’s by the Bay one night for dinner with several crewmembers. There wasn’t a big name act that night but a Southern California R&B group with three female lead singers. One of them looked like Hana and the way she danced while singing captured my attention. She looked just like her or at least to me at the time any black haired brown skinned girl, despite of her ethnicity looked like Hana. I had no photos of her and only if I had taken that picture on that day last November! I returned to the ship that night and took out the yellow piece of paper from my wallet.

A few weeks later, we were underway to commence the season and to the first buoy station. I found the instructions on how to use the Iridium phone and made a call to her friend’s cell number in American Samoa. I told Della that I lost contact with Hana. My ship was going to Apia in Western Samoa and I wanted to find her and asked her how I can do that. Della said she knew where Hana lived and told me to call her a week later. My spirits had lifted for a week. However it came crashing when we received the news that the Apia port call was canceled. Reasons varied from lack of funding due to the start of the second Gulf War to whatever story you wanted to believe. The port call instead reverted to Kwajalein where we normally stopped in the far reaches of Western Pacific. The week had passed and I called Della. She claimed to have found her and that she was in the room. She handed the phone over to a girl but it didn’t sound like Hana. There was a time limit on the Iridium so I hung up and promised to call back. I couldn’t confirm whether the girl on the other end was Hana or not. I later found out she was not Hana. However, the money I sent Della did finance her methods to find Hana for me. I contacted a friend in Hawaii and asked what travel agency was best to use to get tickets from Honolulu to Pago Pago. He made his recommendation and I bought tickets to fly down to Pago Pago and see her in May. We were due to be back in Honolulu in May and depart after Memorial Day weekend. I put in for leave and when the ship pulled into Honolulu, I had my bags packed, left a pass down and two days later on my way to American Samoa. I talked to Hana, the real one this time, several days before I was to come down. She had just arrived in Pago Pago a week before I was to fly down. I asked her what did she want me to bring and she made a simple request…cookies. I also had a bottle of rum that I bought in Mexico I was taking. She was drinking rum and cokes the night we met.

It was a five and a half hour flight from Honolulu to Pago Pago. After clearing immigration and customs, I lugged the large suitcase towards wooden swinging doors that cleared passengers were exiting. I did the same and looked for her in the crowd and she stood out. I called for her and told her to meet me on the other side away from the crowds and traffic of people who cleared customs to meet friends or relatives. We embraced and kissed. I met her aunty who accompanied her to the airport and Della’s husband John who was a cabbie. It was seven months since I last saw her and prior to speaking to her on the phone a week before, I have not spoken to her since January. That night we spent the night together at Della’s apartment in Nu’uli but Della was gone due to legal problems. Hana ate all the cookies I brought down but conversation was nil. We still did not know each other and fell asleep on the floor facing the fan to combat the muggy night after lighting a mosquito coil. We awoke in the morning and Hana had already packed her clothes in my suitcase and told me we were flying to Western Samoa. 

This was a surprise for me as my plans were to find a place to stay in American Samoa and just enjoy each other’s company. She didn’t have tickets and I asked her why we were going there? In sparse English she told me her sister was waiting at the airport. She wanted to take the first flight that morning. I suggested we leave in the afternoon. I asked what was required and US citizens did not need a visa to enter Western Samoa. John, Della’s husband, drove us to the airport where we bought our tickets and waited for the next flight. Hana has a stunning figure and even to this day catches attention of many men. There were a group of Samoan men turning around to look and gawk at her while we were waiting. That was only the beginning of things to come with her getting the attention she receives.

It was a short 45-minute flight between the Samoa’s. Her sister, friends and May who I met at the club were there. I had to get used to the kissing of the cheek as a greeting. I had not a clue where we were at geographically. To be honest I had no idea that Western Samoa existed until I met Hana. It was definitely foreign and signs in kilometers. Though the language and the people were same, it was very different in contrast from American Samoa. We took a cab to her village and arrived at her home. I felt as if I were living in a fishbowl as her family rushed forward to the fale (house in Samoan) to see the stranger their sister/cousin/daughter brought home. Her older sister spoke English as well as her younger brother and interpreted. As for others that were there it was broken with occasional English here and there. I met the family and her parents. That doesn’t happen very much in America where a 46-year old man meets his 28-year old girlfriend’s parents but I am in another country and in another culture deep in the South Pacific. I’ve always said, “When in Rome do what the Romans do.” What I read about in tour books (though they missed a lot of points) or saw in photos of National Geographic, I was there in a remote seaside village in full 360 degrees! Stretching for the skies were lofty coconut trees that would dance with the winds and smaller banana trees and thousands of miles from western “civilization.”

As nightfall approached, where was I going to sleep now that we are at her parents’ house? After my plan to get a place to stay in American Samoa has been uprooted by this sudden diversion to Western Samoa, I felt like a teenager who was staying over at a girlfriend’s house but was commanded by her father to sleep on the sofa while she slept in her bedroom with her door locked! Hana made my bed and I asked her where she was going to sleep. She pointed towards the mat that was my bed. I thought it was unusual and what father would approve their daughter sleeping with a much older man that he just met for the first time? After all back home, she is 28 years old, an adult, and can do whatever she pleases, right? How naïve to think that I had a notion that Samoa was a liberal society when it came to this. I later found out Hana’s father was livid that his daughter pulled a stunt like that not only for one night but the entire ten days I was there. Who would have ever thought that one day he would be my father-in-law? What a way to start things off and this was not the only incident that would cause mix-up between two different cultures. I would gradually learn what Fa’a Samoa meant and she would learn a hybrid American culture mixed with Japanese.

My ten-day leave was coming to an end. Those ten days changed my views towards many things from politics, economics and learned how people survive and thrived in adversity. I would see Samoans carrying a large pole on their shoulders and leaf baskets full of coconuts hanging down from each end. They would walk for miles barefooted. When weekend rolled around many would enjoy the fruits of their labor at local nightclubs in Apia. First time I went to one the waiters was all Fafafiniis (boys raised as girls) and the police would come in at midnight to close the place down. No, there was nothing illegal being done but cutoff time was midnight. When you think like you are in the states the first thing that comes to your mind is a raid! But despite of hardships I learned that you could have a good time. My views towards politics, economics and being an American changed quite a bit in those ten days. But it was time to go back to Hawaii and continue the season. I said goodbye to Hana at the small airport and flew back to Pago Pago to catch my plane to Honolulu. I arrived at an empty Tafuna Airport and looked at the place where Hana stood ten days before and started a sentiment that afflicts me to this day. Yes, Hana was back in my life and I kept my promise to her that I would be back for her but the separation due to my job and the distance between us would make the emotion seem normal. Our time together was only a dream and really didn’t exist. In fact she didn’t exist and only a figment of my imagination. The tropical beaches, coconut trees and a land that knows no winter was paradise conjured up by peoples from four season countries for novels or movies. I arrived in Honolulu early in the morning and a friend picked me up at the airport and it was back to work.

I returned to Samoa in November of that year. It was the first time I took a direct flight from Los Angeles to Apia by Air New Zealand. This stay was much longer than ten days but explosion of my gall bladder at her sister’s house overshadowed everything about this visit. I spent most of the time in hotel rooms in pain while her older sister nursed me back to health. It was at this point I had lot of respect for her sister. I didn’t go to the hospital not because I was in a developing nation but my insurance would likely not pay the bills I would incur. So I toughed it out though I thought I initially had a heart attack. We changed hotels, as the first one I was at could not extend my stay in an air-conditioned room as I laid in misery. I returned to Seattle after three weeks in Samoa. A month later I was in surgery at Virginia Mason Hospital getting my gall bladder removed after thinking I had suffered “another heart attack.” The veteran paramedic who responded to the 911 calls had determined it was gall bladder not cardiac. The ambulance took me to Group Health Hospital in Capitol Hill where prognosis determined that I needed surgery right away! I wound up in Virginia Mason Hospital schedule between two surgeries. The results were critical enough to warrant quick action. I missed my Seahawks game that I had bought tickets and wanted to spend time with my son and daughter. They went with a friend while I watched from the hospital window the crowds walking towards the stadium. My daughter came and picked me up from the hospital day before Christmas Eve. I forgot to get my prescription for painkillers and spent Christmas Eve in bed in pain while my daughter took care of me. I did not have Hana’s phone number. Only cell and hotel phone numbers where her older sister worked. The surgery took a lot out of me and I did draft and sent a letter to her and with usual no reply. I did not give up but other obstacles appeared in our way. There were pressing legal issues that required a service of an attorney. Fortunately he was a good lawyer and cleared it up for me but the ship was not going to Apia as everyone had wished.

I devoted the beginning of 2004 in convalescence recovering from surgery. Nights were spent in front of the fireplace in meditation. I joined pre-streaming Netflix to rent eight DVDs at a time and watched movies to pass the time. I wanted to be in shape to start sailing in April. I needed to find my way back to South Pacific. I haven’t received a letter from Hana and I wasn’t sure when I was going to come back so I wrote another letter where we almost separated for good. I wrote to her telling that if she found someone else that I could not blame her. I didn’t say go find someone else but she did!  A terrible misinterpretation of my letter to her had her engaged. I had no idea that she was going to marry her old boyfriend that she was seeing prior to coming to American Samoa a year before to see me. I still considered her my girlfriend during those 18 months of minimal contact. In 2004 the ship pulled into Pago Pago, American Samoa and I thought for sure if I bought her a ticket, she could fly over and spend a few nights with me. However, rules changed and Western Samoan citizens were now required to get a permit from the Attorney General’s office. So that didn’t fare well and we missed seeing each other in 2004.

A year passed and the 2005 schedule indicated that the ship was to pull into Apia in May. I wasn’t sure of her status and I presumed she had married or at least a steady boyfriend. I called her sister who was at the hotel she was working at and asked about Hana. Of course first question was “Is she married” at which the older sister replied “no.” Second question was “does she have a boyfriend?” of which she covered it up by again saying “no” and continued with “She is waiting for you.” I didn’t have Hana’s phone number at the time (her fiancé did though!) so the only correspondence I had with her was letters. I never received a reply from her so that gave me an impression that there was someone else in her life and I was a thing of the past.

Since I had to meet the ship and relieve my partner there, my supervisor told me I could take leave and go early to reunite with Hana. Believing her sister, I left Seattle for Apia. I took a flight to Pago Pago and rode the midnight puddle jumper to Apia. I was on leave so NOAA saved bucks on per diem and hotel. I never considered that Hana and I had broken up. When the small Polynesian Air prop job flew over night covered Western Samoa, I could see the dimly lit villages and fluorescent-lit streets. I knew she was down there somewhere. What does she look like since 18 months? Did she really wait that long for my return? Or was she going to tell me about her engagement (I didn’t know about till later) and that we were history. What would I do during those ten days I was waiting for my ship if that was the case? The plane landed and I had to go through immigration, which was no problem, then pick up my suitcase and go through customs, which was again no problem but I needed local currency. I had probably the last set of Traveler’s checks issued by Bank of America and cashed those for Western Samoa Talas at the local airport exchange. Everyone except me and government workers had cleared the airport. As I finished my transaction I grabbed my suitcase and walked out of the exit and there she stood waiting for me! “There you are!” was my initial reaction. She came with her friend from the neighboring village to come and pick me up. I paid him back by paying for part of the gas for his big American-made Dodge Ram pickup. We got to her village way past midnight and the bed was already made for us and we pillow talk and retired for the night. We picked up where we left off and secrets that happened during my absence would be admitted later. That didn’t matter any as we were physically together again. It was at this time that Hana was no longer Hana but Levene.

The ship pulled in and we met the boat at the wharf. It was there I met her cousin who was a pilot for the port authority for the first time. He was angry at her wondering why she was waiting at the wharf for a foreign vessel full of palangi sailors! What seem like a tense argument turned into a handshake between the cousin and me. She explained to him that I worked on that ship that had just arrived and I was there with her to meet them. I left Apia three days later and stood at the fantail to look at the mountains of Upolu that divided the island as the ship pulled away from Apia.

I returned to Samoa at the end of 2005 and spent a memorable week on the island of Savaii at Regina’s Beach Fales in Manase. I went back twice in 2006. The ship had a port call again in Apia in the summer of that year and at the end the year, I returned to spend a month with Vene. At sea I had plenty of time to contemplate on whether I should marry her or not. I thought it was her who was not interested in matrimony. I asked her in 2005 if she would come to America if we got married? Her reply was yes, if my job transferred me to Hawaii and we lived there. How ironic that it would occur six years later. Then I asked what type of wedding she wanted if we decided to get married. A quick ceremony presided by the magistrate at the courthouse and that was it! Before I was to head back to Samoa I decided I wanted to take her hand in marriage. Where I would ask her and what to say was my next step. But she waited for some time for me to ask for her hand. What would happen if I were to go to the airport and she wasn’t there?

The time has come and I asked the nephews what was the word for marriage in Samoan. It was faaipoipo and I practiced it over and over. I made plans to take her back to Manase at Regina’s Beach Fales where we were last year and propose to her there. I mentally choreographed getting on my knees and practicing my little speech. The day came we went to Manase in Savaii and several days before made reservations at Regina’s and for the ferry that took us to Salelologa and drove to Manase. After winding down and settling in to our environment, I told her I wanted to talk and got on one knee, held her hand and said “I thought about it and it isn’t the thought of being married that scares me but trying to live in this world without you is more frightening. Will you marry me?” Her response was a straightforward “Of course!” However, I had not the time to go to a jeweler and buy a ring to present to her at the time of proposal. I did not know her ring finger size and though I was in Hawaii for several days, I wasn’t sure how to take it back if it didn’t fit. One mistake I made during this time, I shaved my beard off in a drunken binge one night at the hotel room.

I picked up a ring set at a jewelry store in Apia owned by German expats and put it on her finger. We talked to her father and through Vene informed him of my objectives. He gave us his blessing and asked me to take Levene and her son to my country where they will have better future and life. And if the marriage was not to work out, send my daughter back home. He spoke from his heart, wisdom from his life experiences and his deed as High Chief of the Matai of the village. At this time I believed her son was her stepson as that was the story she gave me since 2003. It was unfortunate circumstances in prejudicial beliefs that foreign, especially American men did not like children from other marriages and baggage to a relationship. How far from the truth and this was to be a point of contention when I found out the truth.

The engagement was official and made plans to marry when I return to Samoa next year. As usual I went back to Hawaii to take the ship to Bellingham, Washington for dry dock maintenance. However, I did not know at the time that I would be transferred off the Ka’imimoana when I reached Bellingham.

I made plans to take my son and daughter to Samoa with me but my daughter appeared to be hesitant and did not make preparations to go. My son got his passport and in June of 2007 we took off for the South Pacific. We left Seattle on Summer Solstice in the Northern Hemisphere and that night arrived in Pago Pago, which was Winter Solstice in the Southern Hemisphere. Not that we noticed any difference as we were in the tropical zone. My son and I spent the night in Pago Pago, consumed two large bottles of Vailima before catching a flight next morning to Apia.

We arrived at Faleolo Airport in Apia next morning with Vene and Liva (her son) waiting for us at the airport. After the introductions we caught a cab to a rental car agency and picked up my vehicle. After that it was a stop at the courthouse to file an application for a marriage license and a ten-day waiting period that was considered banns of marriage. After filling out applications we were to meet with the magistrate so we waited for about half-hour or so. When we met with him, he looked over the paperwork and my visa. He noticed many entrance and exit visas stamped from my previous visits. The usual questions of how long we knew each other and since I was married before a divorce decree from the State of Washington. After reviewing all the documents the magistrate waived the ten-day bann and told us to return to the courthouse at three in the afternoon and he would marry us. Since Vene and I “lived together” for five years that was probably enough where a bann was not needed. In addition, Samoa is a conservative Christian country so our period of co-habitation was most likely viewed as “living in sin.”

After we had lunch at Roko’s and telling her sister we were to be married that afternoon, we wondered around different places in Apia. We returned to the courthouse for the civil marriage. My son was to be a witness for my side, despite the fact that he was only 15 at the time and she called her cousin who happened to be shopping at the food market to be her witness. Liva was there to witness the marriage as well. The ceremony lasted a full three and a half minutes and with the magistrate’s signature on the wedding certificate we were officially married. Now came the tricky part of telling her parents’ that we had already wedded and that no dowry was established. This would be the second big error we committed with her father. The first of course was sleeping together under his roof four years earlier during my first visit to her family’s home. I had no idea of the stature of a High Chief at that time. When we reached the village, everyone was shocked that we were married. My impression was this was the type of marriage Vene wanted when I asked her several years ago!

The fervor died down as we spent our honeymoon at the same place in Savaii, Regina’s Beach Fales in Manase. The boys came with us so it was a semi-honeymoon but memorable. I spent five weeks in Samoa before going back to the US and continue the sailing season. In addition, I gathered documents required to bring Levene to the United States since we were legally married now. Now came the wait and wrangle with the bureaucracy to bring her here and prove to Immigration Services that we were legitimately married. For 2007, we spent our first Christmas together and my son again came to Samoa with me and had a good time with Samoan style New Years family reunions. We were now married but the strain of separation was beginning to show.

In 2008, Levene went to New Zealand to the US Embassy for her interview and if accepted her Immigration visa. She spent time with her brother, his wife and family while waiting the process. In September of that year I went to Samoa to get her and bring her to Seattle. I drove to Livermore, California to my parents’ place and left the car at Oakland airport for the long flight to Samoa. I spent two grueling weeks in Samoa, as the only thing people could talk about was Vene leaving. Finally came the day we were to leave and I could not wait to get it over with. Friends and family members came to say goodbye and brought gifts. Every photo taken that day faces were glum and two pictures that symbolized that day was one taken of her and her son at a friend’s house (I still believed he was her adopted son at the time) and another photo of her and the niece she raised in her infancy. The smiles were gone but the eyes told the story.

My plans were for Liva to finish school in Samoa and join us afterwards. I felt that American schools were ill prepared for students like him. This despite of talk of diversity, ESL and “assimilation.” American schools had no programs for students like him to adjust as whatever they had were always the first to be axed during budget cuts. I saw this first hand with Mexican migrant children in Washington State. Liva was doing well in Samoan schools as their system challenged the students to excel. I looked at some of the courses he took as a freshman. He was studying topics that were normally taught at community college level.

The hour came for goodbyes and her family lined up in receiving line by seniority. I had asked no one follow us to the airport, as it would only prolong the agony. The crying and melancholy atmosphere made it difficult to leave and many alternative thoughts raced through my head. Perhaps I should leave her here and I “commute” back and forth like I did before we were married. But it was too late now. We said our goodbyes, got into the car and drove to the airport. Along the way we stopped to pick up several CDs of Samoan music that an old flame from years ago gave her. We reached the airport, paid our departure taxes, got the exit visa stamped on our passports and waited for the Air New Zealand flight to arrive, pick us up and take us to Los Angeles.