Rained out

It's Friday, 5:30 pm, and on our way home in the constant drizzle, we go by the open air market, where local growers usually sell their wares. You only really catch them in this market on a Friday night, and it is almost sacrilegious not to come in and check their latest offerings. We pick up some cucumbers, cherry tomatoes, pineapple, and the local mixed drink of banana, some kind of nut, and some kind of something else. Don't ask me what. I just know it's good.

We got into the house and started a discussion of how good our life is (after all, it IS a Friday). Living a life in Baltimore may be enough for some people, but you do miss out on some of the quirkiest experiences. In the east coast, especially, people follow an established script for dealing with everything, whether it is calling about cable services, seeing your doctor, or just driving to work. You don't really deal with people. You deal with companies or departments or agencies. Take your pick, it is well laid out and structured. Out here, you have to ambush someone to get any sort of reply to your email, you know the first name of the person handling your cable service account, and you actually get to spend more than the 30 minutes with your doctor as mandated by your HMO. It's just different, that's all.

We cautiously look outside our house, and finally see a sky that is not raining, after FIVE full days of getting drenched. We take our wine glasses (not filled with water, thank you), and just sit outside on our camp chairs (we still have to get our outside bench, but we'll get to it soon). We crank up iTunes to play all Bob Marley, and just look out over the Pago harbor. It's 7 pm and hardly any cars (or honking of) reach us in our house up in the hill. The only lights that we see skirt the mountains standing majestically along the island. Virtually none are seen on its slopes. Humanity worships the mountains here, bringing out their pitiful electric candles and hoping that the seas don't rise up in indignation. They most definitely don't impinge on the mountains domain.

Slowly, ever so slowly, we shed our "working" skins, if there is such a thing in American Samoa. One co-worker actually advised me to "slow it down" today. Imagine that. We can actually slow down on a Friday? I thought that was just for the government people? We slowly (well, compared to some) sip our $10 bottle of pinot, and talk about how other people's lives are going to hell (come on, you can't help it if you were in our position). No, we don't have it perfect, but damn it all, we definitely have it better than most.

Bob is singing about stirring it up, but we're just too lazy to even get up from our chairs. We're supposed to meet another couple for dinner at Sadie's Inn (a lady of the night who appreciated the charms of Samoa), and we just couldn't summon the strength to get on our (almost) new scooter and drive down the five minutes to the restaurant.

Aaaaah, in whatever way you slice or dice it, life is good. Easy skanking indeed.