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.