1970, Apia, Western Samoa

My first solid memories occur in Western Samoa.  We lived in a two story house that had the name of Hansesn's house.  I remember it being white, large and a lot of greenery all around it.  We lived on the edge of a banana plantation, and sugar cane grew all around our property.  My parents chose to not allow us children to have any sweets, like cookies, cakes or candy, but I would grab a sugar cane once in awhile, and suck the sweetness from the cane.  I turned five years old in this house, and I remember fond memories of my father singing to me playing his guitar, by my bedside at night.  We had a couple of dogs, Rusty and another name I cannot recall.  We would bbq pig in the backyard, Polynesian style, and a lot of people from my father's United Nations office would come over.  It was in Samoa that I experienced having terrible embarressements  like worms and lice.  My eldest brother had to have his head shaved, but I had my hair washed over and over.  At the time they sold DDT shampoo for lice, which people insisted  killed the lice very nicely.  My mom was a head of her time, and refused to use this shampoo, which a few years later was discontinued, due to it causing brain damage.
It was also in Samoa, that I experienced the devastating consequence of pretend playing that my cat Nahina was a tiger, and my brother and I tied her to a tree.  I was only five and my brother seven, and we walked off and forgot about her.  It was days before my mother asked if we had seen our cat.  My stomach turned a thousand knots, and a sick feeling came over me.  After dinner we all searched for our tied up cat, and to my deep dismay, we found Nahina alive, but her neck was worn down to the flesh, and she was covered with larva and flies.  My mom was a nurse, and did what she could to save our poor cat, but unfortunately too much damage had occurred.  She died a day or so later, leaving behind four motherless kittens.  I remember the feeling of guilt and sadness and shame so well, I have never forgotten that horrible moment.  My first experience with death though, was when I found our dog "sleeping" on the garage cover floor.  I tried frantically to wake him up, but it was of no use.  He died of ring worm, which was a common killer for dogs in Samoa.
Another traumatic time was when my seven year old brother climbed to the top of a coconut palm, and fell and hit his head on the driveway.  He was unconscious and there was so much blood everywhere.  After returning from the emergency room, his head again was shaved, and had a patch work of stitches.  This would be the first of many falls that my brother would have out of trees.  Personally, the only fall I had out of a tree, was when I had acidy ants in my eyes, and I could not see.
When we lived in Samoa, on the anniversary of Robert Louis Stevenson's death, there would be an annual march up Mount Via, to the top, where the author of Treasure Island is buried.  Here he lived his last few years as he wrote that famous book.  I have a photograph of me standing next to his grave, at age five.  I always loved that author, especially his book of poems.  On the march up the mountain, the villagers would sing a song that had his words from one of his poems he wrote.
On another occasion, our weekly gardener used to boast about how much he would swim in the ocean, and encounter sharks.  One day he did not show up, a shark got him after all.
I have mostly good memories from Samoa, but they are laced with sadness here and there.  Carol King was a popular music artist in the seventies, and my parents would play here music record on the weekends.  One night however, her song, "You've got a friend" was blaring in the background, as beer bottles were broken in the kitchen sink.  My mom was crying and packing a suit case, and I sat next to her on the bed, asking why she was so sad.  I was too little to understand what my mom had just gone through. Years later I learned that my father had had an affair, and was terribly drunk, and my mom wanted to leave him and return to Sweden.  It took fifteen years for me to like Carol King's songs again, I associated them with so much sadness. The circumstances changed, because we did not return to Sweden right away.  My mother would finally leave my dad, when I was fourteen, after yet another affair and drunkenness.  Why did my dad drink so much?  Well, I think it was a social thing at first.  There were a lot of U.N. social gatherings, and there was alcohol everywhere.  People smoked and drank, and it was just what they did.  My dad however became dependent on it over time, and along with all the pressures of his diplomatic position, perhaps escaped to alcohol to cope.  It unfortunately would cause problems in my family for all the years we were together.
On a happier note, my parents always encouraged us children to be independent and try new things.  I remember my brother and I traveling with our babysitter Solianna and her daughter, my best friend, Peppe, on a small 4 seater plane to her home island of Pago Pago.  We spent a few days there without our parents, and had one adventure after another.  I have often looked back on that, and thought how brave my parents were to send us off at so young of an age.  You might think it to have been reckless perhaps.  However, my early experiences of independence, and adventure, has helped mold me how I am as a parent today.  I have sent my children on trips to relatives, like my middle son, age eight, on a flight to Washington.  Or our teenage boys to my little brother in Maui, and my daughter age twelve to a friend in Colorado.  All three of them went with a school trip to the east coast as eighth graders, and I did not worry as many moms might do.  I love the confidence such a trip builds in one self.
We spent about a year and a half in Samoa, before we left for Sweden for the summer, then headed to our next destination, Jakarta, Indonesia.  Stay posted, next Sunday, I will write about the two years in Indonesia.  It is there that my baby brother was to be born.  Until next time, happy travels.

Bangkok, Thailand      April 1967     Ann was born during the Vietnam War


         My life starts with my parents life decisions.  Both of my parents were from Sweden, and met in Stockholm in the 1960's.  It was a popular time to travel to other European countries and sell language courses, so that is exactly what they did.  They were engaged to each other at the time.  So off they went to Italy.  My mom loved art.  She was a nurse by profession, but painted and drew as a hobby.  My father was talented in many languages and loved to write.  When they were getting ready to return to Sweden, they saw an advertisement for a ship to go from Italy to Algeria.  They both had a heart for adventure, so instead of flying home to Sweden, they boarded the ship bound for Algeria.  It is here that they got married.  My mom did not understand the vows that were said in French, but she answered yes in French, and so did my dad.  Algeria had recently been through a devastating civil war, and there was extreem povery among the locals.  My father started working at a French radio station, since he spoke French.  By 1964, my eldest brother was born.  All the little children called their fathers" Baba" on the street, so of course that is what my brother came to call his dad.  This tradition carried through to the rest of us siblings.  We still call him "Baba" today, instead of "dad".
By 1966, my father was offered a position within the United Nations in the Congo, Africa, due to his excellent language skills.  He would eventually acquire seven languages to his linguistic skills.  Plans changed however, almost last minute, and his assignment changed to Bangkok, Thailand.  The Vietnam War was raging, and their neighbor flew across from the Thai border to Vietnam dropping Agent Orange.  I was born in the spring of 1967, and my birth certificate is written in Thai, with a U.N. translation into English.  Since my parents were Swedish citizens, and the Thai laws are different than the U.S. I acquired Swedish citizenship, but was also considered a Thai national.
We lived my first four years in Thailand, and my very first memories are faint but occur right about age three and four.  We had two monkeys, two ara macaw parrots my parents bought from a flea market, two large turtles we could ride on, an amadillo, and a cobra trained dog named Joey.  We were not allowed to go play in our cobra infested back yard,  unless Joey our dog was with us to protect us.  My brother and I learned to speak in Thai.  My first language was Swedish, my second language Thai.  English would be my third language, a few years later.  By 1970, we had another brother.  My parents gave us all Swedish first names, and our middle names were from the country we were born in.  So my eldest brother had an Algerian middle name, and my little brother and I had Thai middle names.  My youngest brother would eventually have an Indonesian middle name.  Sometime by early 1971, we moved from Thailand to Western Samoa, out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.  We took a large cruise ship named Himalyia to get there.  Oh, just to add to the confusion of my background, my parents went on a trip to Nepal when I was one, where I learned to take my first steps.  We also visited Sweden when I was one, before returning back to Thailand.
Next Sunday I will continue my life's journey, and write about the next place we moved to, Samoa.

Summer 1978, our return home to Sweden after our escape out of Afghanistan

           Our escape out of Afghanistan in 1978, led us through the countries of Iran, Turkey, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia (which is what it was called then), Hungary, Greece, Austria, Czechoslovakia (the name of the country at the time), Germany, Denmark, and finally a ferry over to Sweden.  We traded duty free cigarettes for gasoline, which was a more valued currency during the gas shortage of 1978.  After returning home to Sweden for awhile, our parents enrolled us in Swedish school again.  It was during the fall that I found out that I desperately needed glasses, and the whole world became clearer to me.  I never knew that the birds I heard were actually visible on the tree branches, and that stars in the night sky were not supposed to be a blur.

By the end of 1978, my father had acquired a position in the northern territory of Australia, and we were off again on another adventure.  Now I could translate sentence by sentence from my journals at the time, but I have decided to instead look through the journals, and summarize to you what happened.  However, before I tell you about our two years in Australia, I have to summarize for you where it all started.  You see there was a me before my journal in Afghanistan, even if it was not in the form of a journal.  So here goes...  A flashback to the beginning of my life.
I will enter it as separate blogs, to organize my thoughts.

October 13, 2012
RETURN to my blog, sorry about the 3 year absence

Dear Readers of my blog,
Last night I went to see the movie ARGO, about the 1979 Iranian hostage crisis.  It inspired me to return to my blog writing.  Seeing the scenes in the movie, as the "film crew" tried to drive through the bazaar in Teheran, reminded me of my family and I driving our Volkswagon station wagon only a year before that, after escaping war torn Afghanistan, and driving into Iran.  Foreigners were not very welcomed, and even if we were Swedish, our nationality was not written on our foreheads, only on our passports.  It was a frightening time driving through the land.  Yet my parents tried to still teach us the Persian culture as we entered the land, and we visited magnificent mosques and persian ruins and palaces.  I don't think I realized as an eleven year old how dangerous of a place we were in.  I have realized this as I have grown up, and now looking back, after seeing ARGO the movie.
Since I wrote in 2009, my principal Mr. Eberhart of Ahlman Academy has passed away.  It has been almost a year now.   Mr. and Mrs. Eberhart did incredible good things.  They helped sponser their Afghan neighbors, and provided for them during their first time in America, after escaping Afghanistan.
Since I wrote in 2009, my own life has been an interesting journey, and I will update for awhile daily.
Good night,
from thetravelsofann