Praise for Mango Rash
“In the turbulent 1960s Pokerwinski and her family move to American Samoa just as the author is between girlhood and womanhood, and just as the territory is balanced between Samoan and American cultures. Part travelogue, part family drama, part coming-of-age story, Pokerwinski deftly explores our fascination with teenage angst and exotic locations. Here, in loving, lush, and particular detail, is a welcoming yet troubled paradise for the reader to explore. As the Samoans would say, Mango Rash is matagofie – beautiful.”
~ Sue William Silverman, author of The Pat Boone Fan Club: My Life as a White Anglo-Saxon Jew
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“MANGO RASH is a beautifully written coming-of-age story, where friendship and humour travel the same sun bleached pathways as loss and tragedy, through the heart and mind of young teenager Nancy, whose loving portrayal of tropical Samoa and its people will stay with you long after you turn the last frangipani scented page.”
~ Lene Fogelberg, author of The Wall Street Journal bestselling memoir Beautiful Affliction
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“Nan Sanders Pokerwinski tells her memories of her year in Samoa fifty-some years ago with a light narrative touch, soft humor, and a poet’s eye for detail— ‘the ocean’s brackish bouquet.’ She has a novelist’s skill for making her characters real and individual. Her memoir is a travelogue not just to Samoa but also into a young girl’s mind as she toys with the edges of adulthood, with Margaret Mead as her travel guide. Yes, this is young Nancy Sanders’—late of Stillwater, Oklahoma—coming of age in Samoa.
~ John Enright, author of the Detective Apelu Soifua Jungle Beat Mystery series
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“A coming-of-age journey that feels both exotic and deeply relatable … MANGO RASH is warm, witty, and poignant, rendered with lyrical language and keen insight.”
~ Jenny Feldon, author of Karma Gone Bad: How I Learned to Love Mangos, Bollywood and Water Buffalo
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“Neither miles, nor years, can erode the lasting sights, textures, and life lessons of the South Pacific, in Nan Sanders Pokerwinski’s keenly aware teenage voice. Amidst the coconut milk, aitu spirits, and green mangoes, she learns ‘The Samoan way,’ the spirit of pitching in, the island notion that obligation to others is not a burden at all but rather a mark of respect and devotion. There is poetry here, and insight, and postcard perfect beaches if you dare to find them. ‘Even on the brightest day, sunlight barely penetrated the canopy.’ And even in the darkest moments, Nan’s fresh outlook penetrates the dense jungle of new experiences, toward the light of real, if hard won, wisdom.”
~ Mardi Jo Link, author of Bootstrapper and The Drummond Girls
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“In Mango Rash, an Oklahoma teenager arrives in an unfamiliar and often contradictory paradise, sixties Samoa, and faces a year of experiences that range from the typical questions of how to make friends (and find boyfriends!) to the life-changing challenges of catastrophic weather, drownings, and unexpected illness. Sanders Pokerwinski writes authentically of these tests, of her growing love for the country and its people, and of her rising consciousness of racism, bigotry, and cultural difference. This memoir explores a rare time in a rare country, a rare time in a young life, and in the light of Samoa’s timeless sun, an even rarer discovery: life’s transience, even in so beautiful a place as paradise.”
~ Anne-Marie Oomen, author of three memoirs, including Love, Sex and 4-H (Next Generation Indie Award for Memoir); editor ELEMENTAL: A Collection of Michigan Nonfiction (Michigan Notable Book 2019)
USA
Behler Publications
Mango Rash
A Behler Publications Book
Copyright (c) 2020 by Nan Sanders Pokerwinski
Cover design by Yvonne Parks - www.pearcreative.ca
Map by Brenda Huckins Bonter
Some names have been changed to protect their privacy.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
FIRST PRINTING
ISBN 13: 9781941887066
e-book ISBN 9781941887073
Published by Behler Publications, LLC, USA
www.behlerpublications.com
Manufactured in the United States of America
Sources of Samoan proverbs
Brown, Rev. George (1914) “Proverbs, Phrases, and Similes of the Samoans.” Report of the Fourteenth Meeting of the Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science., edited by T. S. Hall. Sydney, Australia.
Schultz, E. (1950) “Proverbial Expressions of the Samoans.” Translated into English by Brother Herman. The Journal of the Polynesian Society, Volume 59 (2): 112-134. Auckland, New Zealand.
“Happy Talk” music by Richard Rodgers, lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II
© 1942 Boosey & Hawkes, Inc.
All Rights Reserved. Used With Permission
I GOT YOU BABE
Words and Music by SONNY BONO
Copyright © © 1965 (Renewed) COTILLION MUSIC, INC. and CHRIS-MARC MUSIC
All Rights Administered by COTILLION MUSIC, INC.
All Rights Reserved
Used By Permission of ALFRED MUSIC
Please Let Me Wonder
Words and Music by Brian Wilson and Mike Love
Copyright © 1965 IRVING MUSIC, INC.
Copyright Renewed
All Rights Reserved Used by Permission
Reprinted by Permission of Hal Leonard LLC
Quiet Nights Of Quiet Stars (Corcovado)
English Words by Gene Lees
Original Words and Music by Antonio Carlos Jobim
Copyright © 1962, 1964 ANTONIO CARLOS JOBIM
Copyright Renewed
All Rights for English Speaking Countries Controlled and Administered by SONGS OF UNIVERSAL, INC.
All Rights Reserved Used by Permission
Reprinted by Permission of Hal Leonard LLC
Morton, Julia F. (2013). Fruits of Warm Climates. Echo Point Books & Media
Reprinted by Permission of University of Miami.
Sutter, Frederic Koehler (1984) Amerika Samoa: An Anthropological Photo Essay. Honolulu, Hawa'ii. University of Hawai'i Press.
Reprinted by Permission of University of Hawai'i Press
Calkins, Fay G. (1962) My Samoan Chief. Honolulu, Hawai'i. University of Hawai'i Press.
Reprinted by Permission of University of Hawai'i Press
Table of Contents
Author’s Note
Map of Tutuila, American Samoa
Prologue
Chapter 1—The Samoan Way
Chapter 2—Island Girls
Chapter 3—Sadie Thompson and Orange Samoa
Chapter 4—Fiafia
Chapter 5—Mango Rash
Chapter 6—Double Ugly
Chapter 7—Shifting Sands
Chapter 8—Between Sea and Sky
Chapter 9—Taboo
Chapter 10—Anthropology
Chapter 11—Language Lessons
Interlude—Medical Marvels
Chapter 12—Heat
Chapter 13—Kinship
Chapter 14—Hard Rain
Chapter 15—Reconciled
Interlude—Ephemera
Chapter 16—Attached
Chapter 17—Wind
Chapter 18—More Wind
Chapter 19—Waves
Chapter 20—Samoan Follies
Chap
ter 21—Uma Lava Pisupo
Chapter 22—Mistaken Identities
Chapter 23—Snapshots
Chapter 24—Family Matters
Chapter 25—Home
Chapter 26—Return to Paradise
Chapter 27—Like a Woman
Chapter 28—Arrivals and Departures
Chapter 29—Samoan Sickness
Chapter 30—My Samoan Chief
Chapter 31—Last Dance
Chapter 32—Tofa
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
Glossary
To Neva and Harold,
who dreamed
and dared
and encouraged me to do the same
Author’s Note
As I was writing the story that would become this book, I kept asking myself, Is this my story to tell? I’m not Samoan. I lived in American Samoa for less than a year. What right do I have to identify myself with that place and its culture?
The answer came down to this: Something about that place, that culture, and the experiences I had during those eleven months of my adolescence affected me so deeply that decades later, the memories are still steeped in emotion. Those memories, and the story of how they came to matter so much, are indeed mine to share.
Memories, of course, are notoriously shadowy, slippery things, and writing about events that happened more than fifty years ago is tricky. When possible, I have sought to corroborate my memories with letters, diary entries, photographs, personal communications, historical information, and other resources. It was reassuring that, while these sources filled in some blanks, they did not contradict my recollections.
I have used terminology and place names that were in use at the time. Between 1962 and 1997, the nation now known as the Independent State of Samoa was called Western Samoa, so that is the name I use for it here. In addition, hurricane-like storms are typically called cyclones in the South Pacific, but in American Samoa in 1966, everyone called the terrible storm a hurricane.
Conversations have been reconstructed as accurately as possible, though sometimes edited to be more concise. I have tried to be faithful to the chronology of events, but have compressed or expanded time as necessary for narrative flow.
Some names and identifying details have been changed, either for privacy or to avoid confusion when more than one person had the same first name. No characters are composites.
In short, I have done my best to tell this story in a way that is both truthful and artful. Others who lived through the same times may remember or interpret the experiences differently. They have their own stories. Mine is simply one palagi girl’s perspective on coming of age in Samoa.
—Nan Sanders Pokerwinski
PROLOGUE
This old album I hold on my lap—its cover worn along the edges like well-traveled luggage, its gilt embossing faded to a dull vein—overflows with snapshots. Each one preserves a moment attached to a memory. As I turn the pages, it’s as if I’m trawling for pearls, lustrous shells, souvenirs of my time in Samoa. At first, the moments I retrieve are slithery as palolo—wriggling sea worms that slide from a fisherman’s grasp and scatter on the sand. Slowly, slowly, more substantial memories surface, and with them, sensations: the scents of frangipani and coconut oil and smoke from cooking fires, the tattoo of sticks on wooden drums, the scratch of bare feet on pandanus mats. The aching awareness of impermanence.
It’s all here in this album, and for me, in this one photograph. Here I am, a barefoot teenager in a tank top and a lavalava—a length of hibiscus-printed fabric wrapped around my waist. I stand beside a black boulder that’s nearly as tall as I am, and at my feet, there’s a blur of rushing water—the edge of a waterfall. Behind me, vines with leaves as big as my face flash in a patch of sun and vanish into darkened jungle.
I am on the brink, poised between child and woman, between where I’ve been and where I’m bound, between all those moments that flowed toward this one and those that cascaded downhill afterward. Yet my face registers neither apprehension nor exhilaration, only absolute comfort. In this one moment, I am where I’m meant to be, at home in my sarong, my suntanned skin, my surroundings. I have yet to learn about ma’i Samoa, Samoan sickness, but already I have been imbued with the healing Samoan spirit of malosi.
Chapter 1—The Samoan Way
I saw that island first when it was neither night nor morning. The moon was to the west, setting but still broad and bright … The land breeze blew in our faces and smellt strong of wild lime and vanilla … Here was a fresh experience; even the tongue would be quite strange to me; and the look of these woods and mountains, and the rare smell of them, renewed my blood.
—Robert Louis Stevenson, The Beach of Falesā
So here we are, finally, in Pago Pago—palm trees, surf-washed beaches, perfumy air, the whole bit—and all I can think about is getting out of these clothes. Sweat is pouring from parts of my body I never thought would perspire, and the atmosphere is too saturated with its own moisture to soak up any of mine. A flutter of breeze, feeble as a butterfly, stirs the air. It’s nothing but a tease, utterly incapable of cooling.
This get-up that seemed so stylish when we set out on our journey—the perfect travel ensemble for a girl of sixteen, my mother assured me—was fine in Oklahoma City and Los Angeles and other points along the way. But here in Samoa, my outfit, so absurdly wrong for both climate and culture, only reminds me how out of place I am.
It was 5:30 a.m. on a September Sunday in 1965 when our Pan Am flight from Honolulu touched down at Pago Pago International Airport. As the jet taxied in from a runway that jutted into the Pacific, I squinted through the window, eager for my first glimpse of the island where my parents and I had come to live, hopeful that this pin dot on the map, six thousand miles from home, would be the paradise I’d envisioned, the setting for my transformation from flatlander to islander, from small-town girl to woman of the world.
The sky was still too dark to reveal much beyond the tarmac, the backdrop of mountains just a shadowy hulk, like a heap of rumpled bedding in a dim room at dawn. I could make out a low-slung, modern building with lava-rock walls and a roof that looked like thatch but was covered with wood shingles instead of palm fronds. It had to be the terminal, yet why did it look so deserted? The flight had been full—planes from Hawaii came only once a week—and most of the passengers surely expected friends or family members to meet them. Where were they? And wasn’t someone supposed to meet us?
As the plane rolled toward the building, another structure came into view. Oval-shaped and about the size of a large living room, it had no walls, just a high, rounded roof—this one made from real palm thatch and supported around its perimeter by poles that rested on a raised platform. I recognized its type from photos I’d been studying since I’d learned we were moving to Samoa: a Samoan fale, the traditional building style used for houses and meeting halls. But in the pictures I’d studied, fales were small and spare. This one was jam-packed with people—really big people. Some sat cross-legged, others slept on woven mats.
How … primitive. A shudder wormed under my skin and wriggled to the top of my spine. Have they been crammed in there together all night, when there’s a perfectly lovely, up-to-date building sitting empty just steps away? Is this how people live here?
I glanced at my parents—my mother beside me, my father across the aisle, both staring into the semi-darkness. My mother, sensing my gaze, patted my hand without looking away from the window and smiled, a bit tight-lipped. Was she trying to reassure me or herself? Either way, it was going to take more than an absent-minded pat.
When the plane came to rest and the engines stopped whining, the people in the fale rolled up their mats and moved toward the chain-link fence that bordered the airfield. Barefoot or wearing rubber flip-flops, they strolled toward the plane as if they were taking a morning walk down a beach, not bustling toward an airport gate. Taking … their … time.
A flight attendant swung open a door near the cockpit, and I followed my parents down the crowded aisle, my sky-blue Pan Am flight bag bumping against my hip and excitement thrumming my anxiety into submission. Our adventure was beginning—our adventure—and after living all my years in Stillwater, Oklahoma, where excitement amounted to incessantly circling the parking lots of Main Street’s three drive-in hamburger joints, I was more than ready for a taste of something exotic. I’d always thought of myself as an adventurer, even if I’d never had a true adventure. I had adventure potential. I was sure of it.
As I stepped onto the metal stairway that was wheeled up to the cabin door, I felt Samoa before I saw it. The air was so dense with warmth and moisture, it weighed on my skin. Even my hair felt heavy, and I suffocated in the travel outfit I couldn’t wait to shed: a one-piece dress with dotted red bodice and straight, pinstriped skirt; a matching pinstriped jacket; sheer pantyhose; and red calfskin pumps with two-inch heels. My parents, too, looked more like they were on their way to church than about to set foot on a South Sea island. My father’s suit was charcoal, my mother’s pearl gray. As we snaked through a sea of floral prints to claim our baggage, did we look as ridiculous as I felt?
No one seemed to notice, or care. When we’d stopped off for a few days in Honolulu on the way down, smiling girls in ti-leaf skirts had draped leis around our necks, and a photographer had snapped pictures we felt compelled to buy. Here, no flowers or flash bulbs or ukulele players greeted us.
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