My Birthday

I’ve enjoyed some special and memorable birthdays on my sojourn on the planet, and right up there with the best of them was the celebration of my 59^th, this past Saturday the 27^th.  On this day Junior’s church was having a fundraiser.  It was a beer bash.  You heard right – a church used a beer party for a fundraiser.   I take it a beer bash is a somewhat common way of raising money for certain churches, although I would not expect so for a Mormon or a Baptist Church.  But Junior’s denomination is Pentecostal and the consumption of alcohol is not taboo for them.  As Benjamin Franklin is quoted as having said, “Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.”* A beer bash is used to raise money for any sort of thing.  Say a member of the church needs surgery that can only be performed off-island.  The church members may just throw a beer bash to help finance it.  It just so happened that Junior’s church was having a fundraiser on my birthday to reconstruct their church building.  Pay $20, and it’s all you can eat and drink. 

Oka

They have a DJ playing music, blaring, actually, which is how they like it, over a mighty powerful set of speakers.  The food consisted of oka, taro, banana and pork.  Oka is a local preparation of cubed raw fish in a mixture of coconut milk and chopped cucumbers and tomatoes.  Most food places here sell oka, but they mix in an additional ingredient which seems to be mayonnaise.  The mayonnaise makes it much richer.  The oka at the beer bash didn’t have any mayonnaise and it made it so much better than I’d had before.  The taro is boiled and sliced, and, I think, the bananas are green bananas which have been boiled or baked in coconut milk.  The pork was roasted.  All the food was good; maybe a little on the bland side, but good.  The beer was Vailima, which is brewed in neighboring Western Samoa, and could be considered the national beer.  I like it just fine, I’m pleased to say. They had a keg of Vailima.  They also had cans of Coors light.  The party was a happy hour affair, lasting from 2 to 4 p.m. to help minimize the risk of anyone getting too snockered.

Junior and his lovely wife, Lina.  Lina, having been told to be on the lookout, had found me at the airport in Honolulu while I was in line at the counter and where she was returning from a five day seminar in LA.  What a lovely lady!

The ladies of the church served as waitresses and brought plates of food and cups of oka and made sure your beer cup didn’t run dry.  They also from time to time walked around with trash bags to gather up the trash, helping to keep the place nice and tidy.  And there was dancing.

Samoans are passionate people.  They LOVE to sing and dance.  All the buses have music blaring, mostly local radio station V103, which plays an eclectic mix of popular American dance tunes, reggae, hip hop, and Polynesian dance tunes and ballads.  On one of my bus rides, the driver, with one hand on the wheel, was gesticulating to a Polynesian tune with the other, first, opening his hand and sweeping it out, then at a crescendo, grasping at his heart as he sang along with the music.  It was a delight.  Many of the folks here seem to know all the words to all the songs on the radio in English and in Samoan.  They played the same mix of music at the beer bash, and you could easily spot the enchanting and rhythmic Polynesian influence on many of the dance moves.

The crowd rooted on the dancers, singing and clapping with the music.  Junior told some authority figure at the party that it was my birthday.  Next thing I know someone was making an announcement – in Samoan - and Junior said to me, “That’s you.  You gotta dance.”  So, I danced.  I asked Kalara, who is the girlfriend of one of my co-workers and who was seated at my table to join me.  It was a hoot, and everybody started throwing one dollar bills at me, so many, that they had to bring out a box to collect them all.  One gal came and plastered a dollar bill onto my sweaty forehead.  Soon others joined us on the dance floor and everybody had a rollicking good time with the palangi (the white guy).  I got lots of hugs and handshakes. The money thus collected became part of the funds raised.   After that dance was over and I sat down they got a line dance going.  I’m just sitting there basking in the feeling of the obvious care and respect these people have for each other.  The acceptance apparently causes people to feel less inhibited on the dance floor, and, as Margaret Mead noted in her Coming of Age in Samoa, even a jester got up and busted some moves, to everyone’s great hilarity.  Mead’s observation that human kindness is the virtue most respected among Samoans kept reverberating in my head.

There is a continuum of human sexuality.  It gives us stunningly sexy women, and manly men, but it also gives us effeminate men and manly women – with ALL manner of variations in between.  I find the rich variations in the manifestation of the human spirit utterly delightful.  I am so grateful that not everyone is like me; that we’re all different and we can celebrate those differences IF we’re guided by loving thinking.  There is a class of individuals in Samoan culture composed of effeminate men who inhabit the far reaches of the continuum.  They are known as fa’afafine (fa fa fee nay).  Here is is wikipedia article about the culture. They openly dress and act as women, and there was one at the party.  There was no contest as to her being the best-dressed person there.  She was welcomed and accepted as a member of the crowd, although there was a little sniggling going on by a few.  I assume the fa’afafine are accustomed to that sort of thing and she gave no impression whatsoever that she was disturbed by it.  She accepted her fair share of invitations to dance, as well.

Anyway, a beer bash church fundraiser on a little tropical island was a helluva way to celebrate my 59^th birthday.

*The actual quote was not about beer.  Rather it was about wine:  “Behold the rain which descends from heaven upon our vineyards, there it enters the roots of the vines, to be changed into wine, a constant proof that God loves us, and loves to see us happy.”

Next:  Picture Day.