When a boy comes to school with a black eye and a cut on his
cheek, what would you, as a teacher, do? When a man is physically assaulting
his wife outside of a night club, what would you, as a bystander, do?
These are two situations I found myself in while in Samoa.
I’ll say it again: Samoa tested everything I had in me. Sometimes I acted
nobly, like when I stepped between that drunken man and his wife and tried to
get her in a cab. Other times, I listened to the powers that be, and did
nothing, like when one of my students came to school with bruises from his
father. Snap decisions one makes in
these situations cannot be controlled by society; it is completely up to the
person in that moment. I can’t say how I acted in these situations was the
smart thing to do or the right thing, but I would like to offer them for you to
think about what you would do.
(Also, these situations should in no way be taken to
represent Samoa as a whole.)
Outside of Club X can be quite the drunken scene late on a
Friday or Saturday night. Well, on one of these nights, I decided, for better
or worse, to wait for a friend outside the club. This one hour was quite
eventful. I decided not to stand by my friend Sio, the bouncer, but to stand
over to the side. This resulted in my getting harassed, which wasn’t unusual in
Samoa. What was unusual was that I stopped holding my tongue. As readers of my
blog know, corporal punishment is widely practiced in Samoa and Peace Corps’
response (unofficial and not worldwide, I’m sure) is to ‘lead by example,’
meaning we shouldn’t tell teachers or parents that beating kids is wrong, but
that we should just not hit kids ourselves, and hopefully, through some sort of
passive magic, people would do the same. I hope you too, reader, see the fault
in that logic. Anyway, after nearly two years of rarely addressing corporal punishment
directly (such as when I told one of my teachers not to hit kids with a stick
or lecturing some of my students about why I don’t hit them) I was tired of
ignoring these types of things. Well, standing alone outside of a club:
probably not the best decision anywhere in the world. However, I felt like I
could handle it. Besides, Sio was mere feet away. That did not stop one Samoan
man from rolling a large rock at me to get my attention. Of course, after this
he proceeded to harass me with catcalls. Another man saw what was going on and
came over to talk to me. He was very polite. “Please, I know you’re a
volunteer. Please forgive him. Don’t go back to your country with bad feelings
about Samoa. Please forgive him.” My response was that I shouldn’t have to
forgive a man for hitting me with a rock and sexually harassing me. He should
learn to be respectful in the first place and forgiveness wouldn’t be necessary.
This man, as good as his intentions probably were, wouldn’t leave me alone
after that. He went on to quote Martin Luther King, which was comical when I
asked him if he knew who King was. “I know he was African American.” But that
was all. Finally, I was left alone to stand in “peace.” However, my moment of
solitude was swept away when I noticed an older man harassing his younger wife.
He was yelling at her, pushing her, grabbing her. He tore the strap on her
dress leaving one of her breasts hanging out briefly before she realized her
dress was ruined. I watched while no one did anything. Ahem, Sio, isn’t it your
job to get that under control? As the man continued to abuse his wife, I
couldn’t stand by and do nothing. I walked up to him. “Hey! Hey! Stop.” I put
myself between him and his wife and tried to tell him, in Samoan, to stop. I
said, “Is this how Samoan men treat their women?” “Yes!” the wife firmly
replied. Once I stepped in, it got the attention of other bystanders and some
white guys even stepped in and starting speaking to the man in Samoan too. This
gave me the opportunity to put my arm around the woman, flag down a cab, and
try to get her away from him. “Are you OK to go home? You know where you’re
going? OK, I’m putting you in this cab and you’re going home without him.”
After the door opened, though, her husband was right there. Sio, finally taking
action himself, came over and pulled me away from them. “Sam, let it be. They
always fight like this.” A US Navy man from Columbia who had talked to me
earlier in the night came over too. “You need to be careful! If he had hit you,
I would have had to hit him.” Shortly after, the man and his wife, meekly
trying to keep her dress up with the broken strap, go into the club. I was
visibly upset by all this. Sio came over to try to console me. “I’m sorry Sam.
I know this doesn’t happen in America.” “No, it happens there too. But I
wouldn’t have had to stop it. Somebody else would have stepped in too.” After
that moment of excitement I walked back to the same spot I was standing before.
And again, my presence drew a lot of attention. Eventually another man came
over to ask if I was OK. Samoa has this saying about sisters being the pearl in
their brothers’ eye. This man told me that and said, “Don’t take this the wrong
way. But you’re my sister right now and so I’m going to stay here to make sure
no one bothers you.” Which he did. He told me I just shouldn’t stand where I
was standing. “But is it really a matter of where I’m standing? Don’t I have a
right to stand wherever I want?” Eventually he was going to leave, but Sio had
gone inside and since he seemed to be the only other person who would protect
me if need be, I asked this man to wait at least until Sio came back so no one
else would bother me. When Sio came back, he told me to go sit with Sio.
Finally I listened. It was a night of standing up for others and having others
stand up for me. I can’t say I tried to help that woman because I thought it
was the right thing to do. I just knew that nobody else was helping, so I had
too. I also thought that since I was a young white girl that the man would
stop, out of shame or who knows. That was probably stupid; I could have taken a
punch. But that didn’t cross my mind at all. But I ask, why was my involvement
in that situation the only thing that got anyone else involved?
Club X was the scene of a lot of drama. Don’t get me wrong;
I love that place. This blog is not meant to glorify my actions; it’s also to
say thanks to people who helped me. Another night outside of Club X I was
extremely upset and crying, about what is no longer important. Who knows what I
looked like or what people thought, but one woman came over to me to console me
and to make sure I was alright. She stood with me for a while until other
people I knew came over to me. There’s nothing wrong with asking if someone is
OK when you see that they are visibly upset. Sometime just seeing that another
person, whether or not you even know them, is helpful.
What do you do when a student comes to school with a black
eye and a swollen face? I asked my other students what happened. “His dad hit
him.” Later in the day I found out that not only did his father beat him, but
that he used a thick stick to do it, a stick that the Samoan teachers and students
cringed to hear was used. This was one of those situations where Peace Corps
instructed us to stay out of it, for our own safety. But even back home, you do
something about this. I didn’t know what to do, so I asked our Peace Corps
nurse. She told me, of course, to stay out of it, but to keep an eye on the
situation. My getting involved could make the situation worse. She also said to
talk to my principal about doing something. I didn’t have to. Mesepa publicly
asked the boy what happened. When he mentioned the stick, the students gasped.
Mesepa said if it ever happened again, she would report the boy’s father to
Samoa Victim Support and he would go to jail. Good for Mesepa; I have no doubt
that she would do this since she reported a student’s family member the year
before for sexual abuse. However, why wait until the next time for the boy to
get beaten before doing anything? That being said, why didn’t I just report him
to Victim Support?
Around the same time this happened, one of my best students
came to me during morning assembly when all the students are outside marching
and praying. She had been sweeping the cement floor, so she sort of had a pass.
She came to me to tell me she might not be in school next term. She started
crying. “My parents were fighting last night and my dad kicked my mom out of
the house. We might move to Savaii after this term.” Samoan students never cry
to their teachers about things like this. I was honored in a way that she felt
comfortable enough to come to me with this. I told her that parents fight
sometimes; all parents. “I bet after a few days your mom and dad will miss each
other and you’ll go back to your house and it will be OK. Maybe you’ll go to
Savaii for a while too, but I think you’ll be here for school next term.” I
tried to console her the best I could. She said her dad was really drunk. I
guess I didn’t really know what to say. Her and her mom did move back to their
house and she finished the school year at Falefa. However, a week later, some
of the students came to me with reports that other students were drinking
behind the school that morning. I did some detective work to find out who it
was and what they were drinking. Apparently it was two year-eight boys who were
notorious troublemakers and my year-seven girl who had cried to me a week
earlier. I called them in to talk to me too. Eventually they all lowered their
eyes and nodded that yes, they were drinking. Unfortunately, my Samoan wasn’t
good enough to give them a proper talking to, so I told Mesepa about what had happened.
And luckily, that year-seven girl had good enough English that I could talk to
her about why she shouldn’t drink. Two weeks later she was one of the five
students I brought to Girls Leading Our World. Moral of the story: parents,
don’t think your kids don’t see what you do.
For some reason, I have this notion that my presence alone
can deflect problem situations. I was like this as a kid too. There was a night
in Samoa when I was at a neighbor’s house vising the mother and kids. The father
came home drunk, more drunk than I’d ever seen him. He started verbally
harassing the mother and even asked if I knew if she’d been visiting any other
men that day. He started putting lotion on his hands and then rubbed some on
his kids’ arms. My thought here was, “He better not touch me with that.” He
did. I pulled away and said, “Don’t touch me.” He backed off. Even though I
knew I shouldn’t be there, I stuck around, worried that if I left that the kids
might be in danger. I wanted to stay either until the kids went to bed or he
went to bed. After maybe forty-five minutes more, it was clear that nobody felt
like sleeping and the thought that my safety might be in danger wouldn’t leave
my head, so I left their house. After that night I decided not to put myself in
situations like that one anymore. I didn’t want to be the Peace Corps volunteer
you hear about that gets kidnapped, or raped. My safety would come first.
Again, I want to say that these vignettes in no way stand
for all of Samoa. As a matter of fact, one of the most physically imposing
moments I encountered with a drunk male was with a tourist from New Zealand.
After successfully welcoming the new group of volunteers with a fiafia party,
we took them out to a nearby bar. Here, we all quickly realized there were two drunken
New Zealanders who had had way more to drink than anyone else. Eventually one
of these guys made his way into our group. He stood next to me and towered over
me. I turned to him. “You need to get out of my space. You’re in my space and
you need to go stand somewhere else. See, we’re all in a group here and you’re
kind of ruining it.” He backed off. Kiri, one of the new girls said, “That was
better than any skit we could have had in training.”
When a girl on a bus is being verbally harassed by another
drunk passenger, what would you do? When your teacher is being embarrassed by a
drunk man, what would you do? What if you are that girl and you are that
teacher? And no one stands up for you?
Yes, you need to pick your battles. I think I tried to point
that out with the previous stories. But what about when you’re on a bus and a
girl, your Peace Corps volunteer, is being harassed by drunk men? Well, no one
ever stood up for me in these moments and it would have been really nice if
someone had. There was one time when I was the last person to get on a packed
bus. A drunk old man sat across from me, near the bus driver. He even had a
bottle of vodka in hand. “You’re pretty.” He wasn’t speaking quietly, and other
people were even giggling. I just nodded and tried to focus elsewhere. “Pisikoa
oe?” (“You’re a Peace Corps volunteer?”) “I love you. Nice body.” More giggles.
Then when he realized I was ignoring him, he became more vocal. “Hey! Palagi!”
His calls subsided for a while. But eventually he remembered I was there. He
yelled at the top of his lungs, “Palagi! I love you!” Embarrassing as this was,
and disrespectful too, no one said anything to him. On a different bus once I
sat toward the back of the bus because a man got up to give me his seat. I
usually never sat near the back of the bus because usually it was full of men
and it was kind of like Peace Corps Samoa 101 to not, as a female, sit in the
back of the bus. But this time I did. It resulted in me being harassed by yet another
drunken man. It started with just him asking if I was OK, but the more this
questioned is asked, the more annoyed you get with it. I just kept saying,
“Yes, I’m fine.” He escalated, eventually trying to grab me, and making kissing
noises toward me. Two of my students were in the seat across from me, which
only made me more embarrassed. This guy was relentless though, and I eventually
said, “You are being really disrespectful now and you need to stop.” A friend
of mine from the village was standing next to me and wrote me messages on his
phone, “Sorry about that guy. U OK?” After I again told the drunken man he
needed to stop, he pretended to cry, which got a loud laugh from everyone on
the bus. Only when he started grabbing another woman’s arm, did anyone finally
say anything. She told him to stop too. But that was it. No one told him to
leave me alone or be more respectful, which was really disappointing to me
since it was one of my village busses and people knew who I was. And I was
being disrespected in front of a few of my students. Maybe that’s why I was
more vocal with him.
The point of this post is in no way to make Samoa or its
people look bad. I would go back to Samoa tomorrow if I could. The point is to
make you think about what you would do in a situation where a young girl is
being harassed, or someone who doesn’t look like you, who isn’t “from around
here” is visibly upset. Do you stand up for them? Ask if they’re ok, if they
need help? Do you put your safety first? And when should you do that? Or do you
turn a blind eye of purposeful ignorance?
