My Peace Corps house in Samoa had cement walls, electricity, a tin roof, glass Venetian blinds, a tile floor and running water. Collectively, quite an assortment of unexpected gifts from the Polynesian gods. Some of my fellow volunteers resided in huts and used filthy outhouses built on piers which supplemented the tropical foraying fishes lurking for meals below them.  It was fitting that they may have eaten the same fish later.  Something about you are what you eat…comes to mind.

      From my house which was in Samoa’s one and only city of Apia, it should have only been a lazy two-mile walk to my teaching job site, Marist Brother’s School. Should have been.

      My house and the road I faithfully trod sat a few feet away from the beach.  I almost always walked along the water in the morning. If I ever needed a bus I turned left at the first trail, traipsed through a village called Vaipuna (rhymes with try tuna) and waited under the leaky eve of the village bakery. But those same Polynesian gods who dealt me a good hand in the poker of housing pulled out more than a few of my aces regarding public transportation. 

     Waiting is a pass time Westerners are not good at.  Samoans excel at it.  Evolution has taught Samoans it is a good thing to wait, particularly if the sun is hot, the hurricanes are strong or if food supplies are scant.  Evolution has taught Westerners waiting is bad because winter will kill you if you don’t lay in a good supply of Doritos and a couple of logs. 

        I found waiting for that bus an asinine exercise in cosmic stupidity – mine of course. Because – if I needed a bus that meant rained flowed from the skies and if it rained I would be late.  And although apparently Samoans didn’t need clocks to wait, Westerns needed them to eat their Doritos. My task masters, the Catholic Marist Brothers who ran Marist Brothers School where I taught, originally came from New Zealand and apparently they too ate Doritos and on time.

      Back to stupidity – waiting for that bus caused the following events to transpire.  I waited and waited and waited. Then it rained and rained and rained.  You do not know rain if you have lived in California, Connecticut, or Korea like I have.  Rain in those places  just kinda fell  from the firmament above. Wet stuff. Sure I’d seen down pours. Mostly things like mists and fogs came to mind.

       Samoan rains descended in torrential waves, curtains, and oceans. Lasting days or even weeks. Soooo, although Samoans didn’t mind waiting, they didn’t like waiting in the rain because they learned if you wait in the rain you will missi ole passi (miss the bus) and if you missi ole passi you will have to walk in the rain.  Evolution taught them to be most judicious in their movements. For example singing is good judicious movement, eating is positive judicious movement and duh… making more Samoans is at the apex of the Maslow’s scale of proper movement, but walking in the rain is very, very, very  bad. Almost as bad as being on time or working in the sun.

        Therefore, as I waited alone under my baker’s shop eve cascading waterfalls pummeled the earth and I heard a rumbling.  I could not see the rumbling because even though the sun was up, the rains came  down and like a mathematic equation rain and sun cancelled each other out and visibility beyond twenty feet. As the rumbling rumbled closer a strange thing occurred - from under the rocks – beneath the banana trees, behind the mountainous hibiscus bushes, inside the few Samoan huts nearby, more and more large soaking wet BIG Samoans bolted immediately for the bus. The bus slid to a stop ten feet before me. Its one headlight blurred a hole through some rain.  The bus was already packed. People sat on people in the rows as custom and space necessitated. Some rows were stacked three deep upward from the seat to ceiling. Chickens, pigs, fifty-gallon oil drums, bundles of edibles like taro, coconuts, and tied fish also packed the bus. But there was no anger, smiles abounded. The people around me rush the door. My mouth held no smile, it was a agape. How? I thought.  How in god’s creation can more humanity fill that bus? But it did.  People just sat on more people.  They were now stacked four people high.  That made the transmission of T.B., V.D., herpes, cold sores, athlete’s foot, and bad debt very contagious. Most of which I would be well acquainted with before my two years in Peace Corps service transpired, but please don’t tell my wife.

         The bus drove off with me still under the eve but not before insults pelted me. They were not mean spirited disparagements. Samoans tend not to be mean spirited. But they love spectacle. And a wet, flabbergasted, skinny Peace Corps volunteer science teacher was fair game to hoot at and hoot they did.

        “*Aikai!” they yelled. 

        Laughter built.

        “**Kefe!”

        Unrestrained laughter echoed.

        “***Ki’o!” screamed someone and the bus came alive. Hands went to mouths, some heads shook left and right in delight. Thighs slapped with joy, a joy of communal sharing. Even the bus driver beeped the horn at me as it left me standing alone in a wet wake of numbness. Bus laughter reverberated in my ears and almost drowned out the downpour as the rains consumed the departing vehicle  . and me.

 

        And that’s why I walk in the rain years later.

        Hate buses.

 

                                               The end  

 

 

*Eat Shit  (a greeting) said with a smile.

**Circumcision (an insult of fighting worth)

*** Wet smelly dump (a fact)