This is a picture of our campus without the rugby field.
Our house has the little red car parked beside it. The house to the right is one they use for visitors to stay in. The next one on the right is our cafeteria.
Lano Beach
This is Lano Beach about one half hour from where we live. It has beautiful white sand and you can snorkel out to the coral not far out.
In Samoa you can always find a game of volleyball and the beach is no different than anywhere else. In this picture they had to find someone to hold up the stick to act as a net.
The rest of these pictures are of a starfish like fish called a "Crown of Thorns". The underside is a bunch of succors that they hook onto things like the coral. The top side is a bunch of spikes that look like thorns and the fish is circular in nature thus the name "Crown of Thorns". They are poisonous if you step on them.
In this picture you can see the underside more clearly. They are ugly little suckers and dangerous too.
One of the workers uses a snorkel and goes down and pokes them with a stick and the crown of thorns hold onto the stick. The worker comes to the surface and dumps them into his outrigger canoe. When he gets enough they bring them to shore and the dig a hole in the sand and bury them. It take about 3 days for them to die.
These two girls were there when the outrigger came in. They took a stick and poked it and it stuck to the stick. They are holding it out in front of them.
The worker was out in the coral and in 20 minutes he picked up about 30
Hope this video clip works. You can see all the little suckers moving. Kind of gross.
Here on of the great sites in Apia, a McDonald's
This is the only McDonalds in Western Samoa. I know that American Samoa has two but here here is only one. If you knew how many times we had to trick our kids to keep them from seeing a McDonald's sign when we were traveling so we wouldn't have to stop there to eat. It has become a favored restaurant and we stop by there more than we should.
It is a busy place but there ice cream machine broke down about a month and a half ago and it is still not fixed. Welcome to repairs in Samoa.
We have a prison about three quarters of a mile from us. When we walk in the morning we often walk right through a group them as them are sitting on the ground or walking to where they work. They are often carrying big bush knife and many times they are sent over to get coconuts, bananas, or pick leaves off teh lemon tree for their tea. Sometimes it is a bit unnerving to walk through them when they all have these big bush knives but all the people here say they are good prisoners and not too worry about them. I think they have guards but I am never sure which ones are the guards and which ones are the prisoners.
This is the road into the prison. At the end of the road you can see their volleyball net and when we walk in the evening we can see them playing volleyball.
Here you can see them having a meal in their fale. Notice all the protecting wire fences and gates surrounding the prison making sure they cannot escape. The white truck is one of their transport vehicles.
Here is the prison looking across the road from our turnoff. You can see part of the prison herd, they have to grow and produce their own food. A few months ago Joanne was walking by and one of the guards pulled out his rifle and shot one of the cows. They were butchering the cow much like we would field dress a deer.
Oh sorry, we forgot to show the fence surrounding the prison, well here it is. I believe there is one more wire on the bottom but as you can see it is certainly enough to keep the prisoners from escaping. We were trying to get a picture of the guard towers but we must have missed that picture.
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