I'm back!

So I'm back from working at the Summer Camp That I'm Not Allowed to Name. It was very exhausting but very rewarding. I also have a part-time film-related job coming down the pipe soon.

Until then, enjoy this 1930s travel reel by someone who really hated Fiji but really seemed to love Samoa.

Oh, and you could always click the button to view it in fullscreen if you don't like to watch your videos with the rightmost quarter-inch cut off. Or you could always just click here.

ADD-Infinitum

Since I've been home, I've been doing a lot of things, mostly looking for work. But another big thing is learning about my own ADD, or Attention Deficit Disorder.¹

I've known that I've had it since I was in 11th grade, but this past New Year's Day I happened to catch a documentary on it on PBS. It was fairly bizarre how closely it described me. I bought one of the books that they recommended, and it's been like my personal instruction manual. I don't think most people have it this easy when it comes to self-discovery.

But anyhow, one of the questions that has bugged me since just after I came home was: What will my next adventure be? Something in Hawaii? New York or LA? Juneau, Alaska which I'd presumably get through the family friend that works in the industry up there? Maybe even another overseas adventure. Will I ever have another adventure, or will I just settle into a nice job with a small production company in Charlotte or Greensboro and never look back?

Welp, now I have my answer. After more than six months at home, I'm about to start my next adventure: Teaching Video Arts to kids with ADD and other disorders at a summer camp in another state. Everyone who has been their loves it.

In some weird ways, it already sounds like the Rock. It has a very international staff, so once again I'm going to be surrounded by people from the United States, Australia, the UK, Mexico, Israel, Turkey, New Zealand, Canada & Ireland. It's also out in (a very different definition of) the middle of nowhere.

As such, I'm doing a lot of the same things to prepare for this that I did just before I left for the island (or returned there, in the case of my trip home a year ago). I went to the dentist and the doctor while I had the chance. I'm renewing my car's registration while I'm here to do it. I'm getting new clothes, because it's easier to do that here than there.

Unfortunately, my time at camp won't really be bloggable. I'll be awfully busy and won't be around computers very often, and my own laptop will probably be in storage with the video equipment, away from where I'll be sleeping.

I was hoping to finish up writing about my time in Samoa (where I left off I was about four days from when I left), but it looks like I'll have to take a break for now. I hope to stick in some kind of random updates over the summer when I get the chance. There's at least one more commercial that I made that needs to be posted here, and there's a few more Samoa-related links that I'd like to post. I should be back in September. Think of this as a show in between seasons.

Except that this show has never taken a break for much more than about a month, and this one will take a way bigger one and then suddenly end. So maybe something more like LOST.

What I'll do after camp, I still don't know. I'd really like to go to Hollywood and work with several of my friends in the heart of my industry. And in just the last few days I've been talking with someone from a major cruise line. We'll know in the future. Until then, stay tuned!

¹What, you though all of these footnotes (and excessive parentheticals) were normal?

Grand Samoan Adventure Grand Finale Part 3: New Heights

Welp, the taxi driver got his rainwater, put it in the engine, filled up his bottle again and we continued onward. Next stop was Falealupo Rainforest Preserve, a...get this...rainforest preserve (!) in the northeast corner of the island, rather close to the edge of the settled world.

From the 2003 version of the map that I had with me. Click if you need to see the vast majority of it for some reason.

The highlight of the preserve is a rainforest canopy walkway. It's a swinging metal bridge 40 meters (131 feet and some change, for those of you with good taste in measurements) above the ground. And it was still very wet and slippery that day. So of course, I had to try it.

The taxi driver elected to stay behind in the parking lot. I paid my $20T and followed the guide, who was about my age and spoke about 40% English, to my doom the metal tower that with the stairs that lead up to the bridge.

"Hey, uh, how high is this bridge?" I asked.

"Oh, very high." The guide responded casually.

"Um, has anyone ever fallen off of it?"

"Oh, yes." He replied casually.

"Really?! Did they die?"

"Yes." I couldn't tell if he understood me or was just answering everything in the affirmative because he didn't know what I was saying. But we were there now. I tried to tell myself that it was too late to chicken out now, and tried not think about how this would be a terrible place to die, and how far away the nearest hospital must be.

"We go up, then across then up, then up." said the guide, motioning an awful lot. I didn't understand. Were there two bridges? Was one much higher than the other? I pretended I understood, figuring that I wouldn't know what he just said if even he said it another dozen times.


I began my ascent. The metal tower at the beginning, constructed only about a year ago to replace a rotten banyan tree that previously held the steps leading up, was slippery but climbable. I held onto its one railing for dear life and tried not to look down.

Whoops.

We had reached to top, and now I was face-to-face with the bridge. It looked...incredibly safe. Giant nets on either side. No way you could fall off of that thing. I felt a lot safer.

The guide obviously felt very safe.

We posed for a bunch of pictures, then when we started walking across, I realized what kind of bridge I was walking on. The guide made me go first, which was totally not nervewracking or anything.

Ah yes, the classic "boards lying on top of ladders, suspended by cables."

It was wobbily but cool, as long as you watched your step and didn't have a foot go through one of those foot-sized gaps. I got to the other side without a problem, and the guide soon followed. It had actually been a lot of fun. We continued upward, this time up a long series of very steep wooden steps that wrapped around an enormous tree. We arrived at the top, and I do mean the top, to a view above the rainforest canopy.

It was a magnificent view, despite the cloudy weather. You could see miles of canopy in one direction, and the ocean in the other. And if you looked straight down, you could see how the canopy was so thick that the ground was barely even visible. I was glad to see that there wasn't a second bridge after all.

Check out how far above the bridge this platform was. If the bridge was 131.23 feet, and the platform was this much higher, then you should do the math if you just have to have an exact figure, because I don't.

In scientific circles, this is referred to as "really high up."

After a whole lot of pictures and laughing and carrying on, we headed back down. This time, we followed the steps around the tree all the way to the ground. And they were as steep and slippery as ever.


I was glad to be back on the ground. Very glad.

Grand Samoan Adventure Grand Finale Part 2: Water

I woke up the next day, Sunday, feeling better. Today I was going to journey to the end of the world!

But first, I had to figure out how I was going to get there.

The woman that was running the hotel and her sister were nice enough to give me breakfast in their kitchen. We talked a lot about where I would go and how I would get there. I eventually decided to round the island in a clockwise direction, so that I could go to all the cool touristy things in the village of Fagamalo while they were open on Monday, seeing as everything Samoan is closed on Sunday. They were very helpful and came up with a plan for me to see most of the island.

And it was terrifying.

I don't remember a lot of it, but it involved, among other things, about 6 different bus transfers. Including one at about 5 AM Monday morning on the opposite end of the island and another that involved riding a bus for more than a full circuit for some reason. And they were totally serious. I guess if you've spent your entire life on the island you don't understand what its like to not know where anything is,¹ or how wandering around in a strange place in the dark hoping to find a bus stop before you miss the one bus of the day might seem like a bad idea.

Welp, somehow they convinced me to try this, and assured me that God would be with me. They had a point with that one. I'm fairly sure that my surviving two years on the Rock, and even getting the job there in the first place² are divine miracles of some sort. Revving up my adventurous spirit, I decided to give it a try. They generously gave me some mangoes and New Zealand-style biscuits and sent me on my way.

A few minutes in, I convinced the taxi driver, a relative of theirs who was taking me to the bus stop, to just escort me around the rest of the day for 100 Tala. We forged on, under a threatening sky, to the end of the world!

A really threatening sky.

First stop on my free tourist map was the Nuu Black Sand Beach. Believe it or not, the sand there is...black! I asked the taxi driver about it, assuming he'd know exactly where it was, and he drove past it without a clue as to where it was. We asked someone at the next house we found a couple of miles up the road where it was, and then drove back and found it.

Guess what color the sand was?

Answer: A mix between black and regular sand color. Lots of volcanic sand.

Welp, next up were the Alofaaga Blowholes, one of the top tourist attractions in the country. The driver knew exactly where these were- In the village of Taga, waaayyyy off the beaten path. He drove to the turnoff of the main road, then about a mile down a bumpy unpaved and ungraveled road with no one in sight. Then, in the middle of nowhere, there was a small fale where a man collected entry fees to see the blowholes. We paid him and kept going. It was about another mile down the path until we actually got there.


We arrived at the blowholes, which are a series of natural tunnels in lava rock next to the ocean. When waves crash through them, the water shoots out like a geyser. And it's awesome. The taxi driver filled up the water jug for his car's radiator while I looked around for things like coconuts to throw into the blowhole and watch shoot out.


And here's the big one in action:

Or maybe more like just barely in action, then not in action, and then totally in action.

And then while leaving, we realized that I had crossed a white line that no tourist was supposed to cross, for fear of them getting knocked over by the blowhole waves and maybe even washed out to sea. And the line was about as far back as I was when I took the above video. I seem to have crossed it while standing right next to the blowhole. Oh well.

Once back on the road, the driver insisted we stop at this one okay-looking overlook, which was really just an excuse to put more water in his car's sketchy radiator, which was close to overheating.

Eh, the east side of American Samoa has better.

We made it about another 20 miles before steam started rising up from under the hood. We pulled off and went to a house. The taxi driver, plenty dedicated to his work, grabbed his water jug, ran out into the pouring tropical rain, and asked the homeowner if he could have some water that was gushing from his overflowing rain catcher.

Pictured: Exactly what I just described.

I went back to wondering what I was doing.

(To be continued).

¹An Island Trope I never got into an entry- Directionless- If everyone you know has spent their entire life on a single island, they never need directions. Thus, you won't really know how to give directions when you meet someone from a different place.
²A pretty interesting story that I'm surprised I never blogged about.

Grand Samoan Adventure Grand Finale Part 1: Arrival

There are currently two airlines that fly from PPG airport to The Independent State of Samoa™, Polynesian Airlines and Inter-Island Air. Polynesian lands at the recently-restored old airport near Apia, right in the middle of the island of Upolu. The ferry wharf to Savai'i would be a 30-minute taxi ride away. Inter-Island lands way down at the much nicer airport that's right next to where the ferry to Savai'i leaves from. Not a hard decision who I should be flying with.

Or at least, it shouldn't have been.

Inter-Island doesn't have online booking. Fair enough, I called the phone number on their website and was told that the Saturday that I wanted to fly was fine, but that I'd have to come in to their office in person and bring my passport to actually book the flight. Fine, I'm used to this sort of thing by now. So I tell my boss I'm going to be in late the next morning, drive over to their office at the airport, wait in line for a good 30 minutes to learn-

They're not flying on Saturdays. That's the day they do maintenance.

I walk over to Polynesian's office, do a lot of panicked running around that I can't recall the reason for, and then book my flight with them. A few hours later I realize that I've booked a less-than-ideal itinerary and have them change it (they did this for free, which is good enough customer service that it almost makes up for the last time that I flew with them). Miraculously, I was still able to get another flight, despite all of the people headed to Apia for the Jazz and Blues Festival.

A few days later, its time to leave. I'm all packed and ready for this trip, and mostly packed for the final trip home that will be only two days after I return. I've left a good old-fashioned "Let's go exploring!' as my Facebook status, setting the tone. I have my good friend John Raynar drop me off at the airport, where I see:

It says "Inter-Island Air" on it, if you're like me and usually too lazy to click these images to see the big versions.

That's right, the airline that I had been told I couldn't fly with that day had a plane all ready to leave when I got there. The guy at the check-in counter didn't have a clue, but the people in the Inter-Island office said that due to the demand caused by the Jazz & Blues Fest, they decided to skip out on maintenance and schedule a flight at the last minute for Saturday anyhow. That's what I get for trying to plan out a flight a whole week in advance on the Rock. I don't think I want to fly with anyone who's been skipping out on maintenance anyhow.

Anyway, I weighed myself with my luggage by stepping on that giant scale one last time, checked in (but knew better than to check a bag with Polynesian), and got ready to go. My Polynesian flight to The Airport that I Don't Want to Use went off without a hitch. I got some great pictures, because they don't care enough to make you turn off electronic devices:

Taking off. You can see Maliu Mai Resort by the sand.

Leone from above. I honestly can't tell what's a real building and what's a foundation left bare from the tsunami.

Approaching Upolu

Aggie Grey's Hotel in Apia from above. This is where I stayed with my parents when they visited in Summer 2009.

Click to see a usably big version.

I had a rough outline of my trip planned out: Land at Fagali'i Airport near Apia, take a taxi to the wharf, take a ferry to the village of Salelologa in Savai'i, spend the night at this awesome-sounding inn specially designated for backpackers like myself in that village, spend Sunday traveling to the very back of the island and seeing everything that I could, watch the "last sunset" from the western tip of the island (called this because its about as close as you can get to the International Date Line and still be on land), spend the night in a beach fale back there in the village of Falealupo, spend Monday seeing everything on the way back to Salelologa, spend Monday night at the backpacker's inn again, and then take the ferry back first thing in the morning in order to get back to Fagali'i in plenty of time for my 4:30 PM flight back to AmSam.

I grabbed a taxi right after we landed and agreed on a fare to the wharf ahead of time, like the travel guides recommend (he still managed to rip me off). Had him stop at an ATM to pick up some Samoan Tala (One Tala was worth about 44 cents American at the time), and at a store to grab some sunscreen and bug repellant in a spray bottle roll-on dispenser, both in odd New Zealand packages. Apparently, I could have brought both of those things on the plane with me, because flights out of a US territory aren't subject to much security, or something like that.

We arrived at the wharf and there was a boat sitting there already. There was a lot of confusion, because the taxi driver spoke about 60% English. But going by my watch, there was still plenty of time until the ferry that leaves at 2 PM was supposed to get there. I had plenty of time to grab lunch and relax by the pool and beach at the nearby Aggie Grey's Resort (not to be confused with the hotel in Apia, though its the same company). I grabbed a free tourist map and some more Tala from the ATM, too. (Cash is very important to have in a society where almost no one has a credit card reader) Life was good.


I rode in the same taxi back to the wharf, paid the driver entirely too much, waited around for the ferry that seemed incredibly late, and got on. This was on the brand-new MV Lady Samoa III, a rather large ship that has nice, almost airplane-like seating, a "business class" section for people willing to pay more for a tiny bit more comfort on a 90-minute ferry ride, and a TV that entertains the passengers with American Idol reruns.

Seriously.

Sitting there, I looked at my watch. It was almost 3! Could this ferry that was supposed to leave at two really be a whole hour behind schedule? The next ferry, assuming it was on schedule, might get here before this one ever leaves. Even for Samoa, that was pretty bad.

Then it hit me: My watch was an hour off. The ferry was right on schedule.

Western Samoa had switched to Daylight Savings Time since I had last visited, and American Samoa never did. My watch had been an hour off the entire time. And since BlueSky only covered American Samoa, my cell phone still had Am Samoa time on it as well.

I may or may not have been able to cram in one extra activity with the two hours I would have saved, but maybe not. The important thing was that I was riding on the ferry and would still get to Savai'i my first day, as planned. If fixed my watch, enjoyed the (most likely pirated) onboard videos, watched the view from the deck, and relaxed some more.

It's practically a national holiday when the big ferry arrives in Savai'i.

I arrived and grabbed a taxi, asking him to take me to the Salafai Backpacker's Inn. He'd never heard of it. Not knowing what else to do, I guessed he could take me to an Internet cafe where I could look up the ad where I spotted it and figure out where it was located. But first, and ATM stop, because I would have to pay for my room in cash. Then I spotted the "Salafai Inn" along the road and made him turn around to get me to it.

We pulled up and there was no one at the front desk. No one anywhere. The whole place seemed deserted, but open. Not exactly the happenin' youth hostel that I was expecting. Finally, someone who worked there turned up and confirmed that yes, this was also the Salafai Backpacker's Inn. I thanked them, paid the taxi driver, learned from the clerk that I paid the driver too much ($5T instead of $3T, a difference of about 88 cents American), and had her take me to my room. The ad for the inn had said that there was air conditioning, a refrigerator and a TV for just $50T a night. As it turned out, the TV was only in the lobby, and if you wanted the "Backpacker rate" of $50T, the mini-fridge and A/C would stay unplugged. Also not what I was expecting.

Oh well. With the ability to finally, finally keep my backpack full of stuff safely behind a locked door finally mine, I left it out of my sight for the first time that day and ventured out of the hotel into the village of Salelologa.

Whoo.

All the stores and restaurants are closed because it's a uh...Saturday.

Also not what I expected. I had always been told that Savai'i was a naturally beautiful place, full of adventures to be had and was completely unspoiled. But Salelologa was just like the worst parts of American Samoa- just developed enough to completely lose its "unspoiled" status, but not developed enough to have any real man-made enjoyments or comforts. I walked around and saw that the restaurant that they had recommended to me at the hotel was closed on account of it being not open. I got dinner from a roadside stand selling barbecued chicken, hit the ATM again because this village was the last one I would see for a while with an ATM, and headed back to my room. The whole hotel was still creepy, creaky, old, and almost deserted. The room across the hall was taken, and I'm pretty sure that was it for the entire two-story hotel.

Everything about Savai'i so far was so...not what I had expected. The Backpacker's Inn was nearly deserted, the Backpacker's rate wasn't that great of a deal, the village was a dump, I had forgotten how almost no one spoke adequate English in the entire country, and worst of all, I was alone. Not just alone, but "a whole day's journey from anyone I knew or even anything familiar" kind of alone. What was I doing here? And why was I doing this so close to my trip home?

I fell into a troubled sleep, hoping the next day would be better.

Scratch that, I had no A/C, so I ended up messing with the window to the extent that only I could, stacking the thin mattress from the extra bed on top of the one I was using to double my padding, considering turning on the A/C even though I hadn't paid for it, and finally knocking myself out with one of the sleeping pills that I had brought. Then I went into a troubled sleep, hoping the next day would be better.

You can see a more complete photo album of the day here.

This Island Earth

It was strange when I first returned home. So many things I had to get used to. First and foremost, the cold. It was mid-November. It wasn't just cold compared to Samoa, we were hitting record cold temperatures for that time of year. And then we went up to Maryland to visit relatives for Thanksgiving, where it was even colder. There were times where I was convinced that the heat was turned off. But who cares? I was OFF the island! I was FREE! And I was spending Thanksgiving with my family for the first time since 2007!

Yes, I was happy. But life was still strange. I kept opening up the fridge whenever I got thirsty, because I expected to find a filter-pitcher of water inside, not remembering that the water from the tap was fine to drink as-is. And then I kept leaving my dishes in the sink, because I hadn't lived in a house with a dishwasher in years. When I had my first interview, I left the house wearing an outfit called a "suit and tie" and found that my windshield was covered in something called "frost," and that to get rid of this stuff, I needed to find something called an "ice scraper." And then I cleared my windshield with it and drove down a highway with almost no potholes, a 55 MPH speed limit and ways to get around cars that were driving too slowly. And then came this stuff called "snow." Bizarre. I gave out a few lava-lavas for Christmas presents and I had to explain what they were.

Then there's the odd reminders of the life that I left. A plastic, light-up coconut tree in the backyard, which looks really weird covered in snow. The salu (Samoan broom) that I got my mother for Christmas one year that sits behind the TV when not in use. Eating corned beef for St. Patrick's Day dinner. A refrigerator magnet for an All-Star Game that says "ASG." Coconuts selling at the local Food Lion for $3 each. Then there were the imagined ones. A worker on the tarmac at Charlotte-Douglas Airport is carrying a salu? Oh, a giant cone. A sign in Maryland is advertising Aiga clothes? Oh, Angie's clothes. Yeah.

Anyway...

*LOST-Style Flashback that starts with the next entry*

Adam's Story Part 3: The Aftermath

With the story of the Japanese tsunami in the news, I keep mentally going back to the tsunami that I witnessed on the island in September of 2009. I've made a couple of entries on this topic before. But I've never gotten the chance to tell what I did in the days following. As longtime readers of this blog may remember, there was a very little posting by me in the month or so after the tsunami. I had been a bit busy, to say the least.

My interview the following morning with Channel 7 didn't happen. The person they talked to in Western took up all of their time and the Skype connection was pretty terrible that day anyhow. I think if I had gotten to do the interview, it mostly would have been me yelling "WHAT?" over the Internet static.

I didn't go to work for several days after the tsunami. Oh I worked, but I didn't go to work. Joey had somehow made a connection with someone in the Archive department of the UK branch of the Associated Press. I never quite found out why it was going there. But anyway, I spent the next several days driving around the island and filming the destruction. That's where all of the pictures in this album came from.

It was a weird, sad, but exciting experience. Instead of my usual job where I sat in front of a computer all day and went out to stores to film ads about once a week, I was venturing all over the island, meeting people and collecting their stories. A pastor's wife had just barely escaped up the mountain before the wave crushed the inside of the church. A matai (village chief) had risked his life by driving up and down the main road of his seaside village with a bullhorn warning everyone about the coming wave before finally getting to safety himself. Maliu Mai Resort had been hit, but was in good enough shape to reopen after about a week. At the remote village of Fagamalo, at the tail end of the island's main road, I saw the military come in and drop off supplies and tents for everyone to live in, and the village matai divvy them up amongst the affected families. Things everywhere were, smashed, broken, and dirty. Some places only had foundations left, something I saw when I did a mission trip to places hit by Hurricane Katrina.

Then there was Poloa. The village of Poloa, located on the very western tip of the island, had been hit worst of all. So badly, in fact, that they had shut it off from outsiders and you had to get special permission to visit. I met the matai, who was an elderly man who spoke through a tulafale or "talking chief" (spokesperson) who sat beside him the entire time. In exchange for me interviewing him and getting his story out, he would allow me to film the village. He, like the rest of his village, had relocated to the village at the top of the mountain for the foreseeable future. Most of the villagers were now living in a Red Cross station. I kept in mind all that I had learned about Samoan customs and higher ranking people, the rules about sitting and all that, and the interview went very well. I was granted access to the village.

Poloa was, as someone had forewarned me, a ghost town. As if a symbol of the entire village, even the welcome sign at the front had been washed off of its post and was laying on the ground. Almost nothing was spared. Most of the village was in splinters. The destruction was so bad that I really couldn't tell you how many houses had been there before. Everything was just rubble. A cinderblock shower laid on its side in the middle of everything. The only real building still fully standing was the church (interpret that however you like). Even then, the inside was a mess. All of the pews were thrown together in a giant heap. The pulpit was upside-down and most of the windows were broken. Bingo cards were scattered around and bingo chips were spilled everywhere.

A few people were still walking around. The one that I really remember was a guy sitting in the driver's seat of a ruined car, as if he was going to start it and drive away. He waved to me like nothing was wrong. Maybe he was traumatized. Maybe he lived there now. I'll never really know.

After that came the school. Like the church, everything was piled up into one or two heaps. Unlike the church, the walls were gone and there was a good bit of roof/ceiling missing. Books, computers, chairs, younameit, were everywhere. A lone cat sat up meowing desperately at the top of a bank on the mountainside, as if it were just as traumatized as the guy in the car.

It's comforting to know that all of the kids from that school got out of the village OK. In fact, there was only one casualty for all of Poloa. I think one of my few regrets about my time on the island was that never visited Poloa again to see how it had progressed. I wouldn't blame anyone if they never moved back.

I was on what BlueSky called a "residential" internet speed back then, before the island was hooked up to the fiber optic cable, so it was incredibly slow. Something like 100 Kb/s, so I really had a very small pipe to get all of the footage that I had through to the AP. I knew that this would take a LOT of time, so I felt like any time when it wasn't uploading was time wasted. Every day right after I woke up, I'd start uploading footage and pictures to the AP server. I'd make sure a decent-sized file had started uploading before I left, and I'd start a new one as soon as I got back. And of course, another one needed to be uploading when I went to bed.

At one point, I needed to call into the AP office that I was sending these to. Unable to get to them directly, or even the AP HQ, I finally called their Honolulu bureau and explained my situation. The person I talked to there was very helpful and very sympathetic to the situation on the island, and he was able to connect me to the New York bureau, who connected me to the DC bureau, who connected me to the London bureau, where I left a message to the guy that I was supposed to talk to, because he wasn't there. He got back to me later.

As I mentioned in the first entry about the tsunami, the radio stations were knocked off the air and one was brought back on in a very limited capacity (mostly the harbor area) on a small generator for less than half a day at a time. Both of the TV channels that I was in charge of were out for more than a week as well. I spent a bit too much time wondering if I would have a job for much longer.

At about the end of the second day, we managed to get the WVUV-FM broadcasting in my part of the island again from its secondary transmitter on top of the mountain near Pava'ia'i. It was a strange, bare-bones kind of broadcasting, with almost nothing but our on-air talent giving out much-needed emergency information, but it was a big back toward normalcy. It sounded like "the voice of the resistance."

There was a lot of PTSD going around. I had at least one friend who was terrified to go anywhere near the water for months, which was pretty rough, considering that she had to drive along it for more than a mile during her daily commute. Another family picked up everything and climbed up the mountain on the one-month anniversary of the wave, because the expected it to come back that day. We ran ads urging people to seek counseling for more than a year.

Finally, the healing began. People who had lost their homes were given FEMA tents and supplies. They began the slow, slow process of applying for FEMA aid, which was still causing headaches when I left. The Hawaii National Guard was sent to the islands to help. Military helicopters dotted the skies occasionally. One of the world's largest planes made a landing at Pago Pago Airport and dropped off giant generators and much more. They and the ones that came later restored power to places that had lost it due to one of the island's two power plants getting the brunt of the wave. Ruined homes were demolished, and some were replaced. The island's many churches pitched in, including my own. I spent a single afternoon helping to demolish what was left of a home. I would have done more, but thankfully, I still had a full-time job. The wrecked bridge in Leone was replaced with a quick fix, and later a real bridge. The Pago Pago post office added hundreds of new P.O. boxes to replace those that were lost at the Leone location. Both radio stations came back on the air full-time. They started playing music again, then commercials, starting with stores announcing that they were open again. Pago Plaza, the building where I worked that lost its entire bottom floor, was completely reconstructed and had several new and old clients moved in before I left.

I did just a few more interviews. One with the LA Times where everything I contributed was cut in favor of quotes from someone that I had introduced the author to who had seen the actual wave. Another was with my college's newscast that I had once been a part of. I was glad to see that the remembered the interview when I visited the school just last month.

After about a week, we moved both of my TV channels' main computers down to the cable headend (the main control building for the cable system) in Tafuna and hooked them into the system directly, as the cables running to the station had been broken in several places. I updated it daily by carrying down a hard drive with the next day's schedule and any new programming or commercials on it and dumping it all into the machines. It stayed that way for months. Back in the station, everything, and I mean everything was powered by a massive series of extension cords hooked up to a single generator. A lot of tripping, stuck doors, unplugged equipment, and sweatiness (due to there being no A/C) occurred , but after seeing the destruction on so much of the island, I really couldn't complain. Eventually, the regular power was restored and the cable system fixed.

And yet not everything has really healed. When I left the island, most of Leone was still just flat land with only a few houses. Lots of families were still living in FEMA tents, to the best of my knowledge. Both the replacement power plant and post office were still in the early planning stages. While the tsunami alert system had a solid date set for completion, it still didn't exist yet. Plenty of buildings remained untouched and would probably stay that way for some time. One of the most glaring examples is the Pago Pago Community Center, which still had a boat and a shipping container still sitting inside it.


It was a weird experience. I'm glad I got to write about it.