You can take the girl out of Samoa but …

In some ways it feels as if time is just flying by.  Here it is October already, a whole month has come and gone and I didn’t post anything.  Shame on me!  All my good intentions for posting regularly down the drain… oh well.

In my defense, I have been pretty busy most of the time.  This is a real good thing for me right now.  I’ve been going regularly to the gym and actually working out when I do go there.  I mean, I’ve gone before with hubby, and mostly just kinda going through the motions while waiting for hubby to be done so that we can go  home.  Pretend like I’m working out while really just doing as little as possible, and cursing the clock for not going any faster.  What can I say, I hate exercise.  This time though, I’m actually breaking a sweat and surprise, surprise, I’m even enjoying it. 

There are  other Polys that are regulars at the gym with me, three Samoans and one Tongan.  After working out a sweat one day, we sat around and just talked about Samoa and the life that we remembered.  We also talked about some of the issues that we see so often up here with some of our fellow Samoans.  All of us are mothers so we understand what a challenging job motherhood can be.  We all know what its like to want to choke your kid for being stupid, to slap them silly for daring to talk back, for forgetting their manners, etc, etc.  But we couldn’t help but cringe with embarrasement at what we saw the other day.  To top it off, it was in church for crying out loud.  A couple of us witnessed the outrageous behavior so this isn’t hearsay at all. 

What happened, you ask?  Well, basically a young Samoan child was getting really whinny in church.  She looked like she was about 5 or 6.  So instead of simply taking her outside to the foyer to quiet her with a snack or a drink or whatever the child needed, her big Samoan mother chose to make a production out of getting out of the pew and stomping out of the chapel, dragging her child by the ear the whole way.  And her face, oh my gosh, if you could have seen her face, you would have sworn she was about to murder the child or anyone else who got in her way.  You can see the palagis looking at each other almost as if they’re trying to decide who should call the police.

Now as I was saying, I’m a parent, a mother of 3.  I know all about exasperation and frustration, and being fed up with whinny kids.  But, there’s a line we just don’t cross.  At least not here in the good ole USA if we want to go home with our families and not be escorted to a nice gray cell by the police.  I mean even if you’ve reached the point of no return, surely there must be some semblance of sanity left in there that tells you that this kind of behavior is not ok in this country.  Yeah, in Samoa, we all know you can get away with beating your kids within an inch of their lives (not that I condone this at all) but my goodness, in America, and in public???  What the heck??  Guess, in some cases, you can take the girl out of the island but you can’t get the island out of the girl. 

Of course, we don’t necessarily want to lose what makes us Samoan, we don’t want to forget who and what we are, we don’t want to let go of our beautiful cultural heritage, BUT there are many other things and behaviors that you should bury under a rock in your village before you board that plane for the land of milk and honey - behaving like an out of control cave woman in public is definitely one of those.