Thursday, July 11, 2019, 6:30PM (Wednesday, July 10, 2019, 11:30PM in New York)

Hi guys,

Yesterday, I didn’t do much. I was supposed to sign a memorandum of agreement (MoA) with the Samoa Ministry of Health and showed up around noon, but , the liaison for me there, was out at a funeral. I drove down to the Samoa Cultural Arts Center and walked by to see if folks were tattooing and Paul and Ata Sulu’ape were then and the Tulou'ena. Ata is another son of Petelo Sulu’ape, as I learned today. I caught Paul’s eye, and he chatted with me for a minute but when I asked if I could come up and watch, he said no, come back later.

I wandered around town looking for things we need, like dish sponges, a pump for the water bottle (I didn’t find that), and stopped to have a few long blacks (basically an Americano with an extra shot of espresso), ate some fa’au lifu (something caramelized in coconut milk, in this case taro), a manapua (this is what Hawai’ians and Samoans called the Chinese pork bun, which they have adopted), and two shells of kava I bought from a sketch guy by the bus stop at one of the markets.

I kept going back and forth to the Ministry of Health at 2, then 3, then 4 before I finally got her (my phone was dead, so they couldn’t call me, and I couldn’t get it to charge). I found a couple tattoo studios that do electric tattooing, but I didn’t go in or anything. I think the tufuga will have as much volume as we can handle since I want to conduct interviews also.

I tried to go see the Samoa soccer team play again after that, but I got there too late and they had already lost. I went back and made curry rice with cabbage, fried eggs, and tuna. It was impressively not bad. Then I went back to the soccer stadium and watched Papua New Guinea play Vanuatu. Vanuatu did better than Samoa against PNG, but PNG still won 2-0.

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Wednesday, July 17, 2019, 8:54PM

Hey guys,

Haven’t been able to stay up to date because we became so busy this week. A lot has gone on. I met up with my friends Whitey Chen and Blue Chen-Fruen, who hosted last year’s tattoo festival, and they gave me the lowdown on who to talk to and who not to talk to, then they took me to meet with Su’a Sulu’ape Alaiva’a Petelo again. I met him last year but under much more formal circumstances. Whitey brought Su’a a bottle of whisky, and we sat in the fale at the Cultural Center and talked. Mostly Whitey and Su’a talked in Samoan, but once Whitey told him all of our plans, Su’a agreed to participate in everything we’re doing and to help us. On Sunday, Whitey found a guy who wants to get a pe’a, be documented in our film, and let me collect saliva samples from him all day long.

On Monday I recruited two Samoan brothers from came from Australia to participate in our study. They are getting pe’a, which take about two weeks to complete. I am collecting samples from them every day. Yesterday, I recruited two women getting malu to participate in the study. While we sit there, I have been interviewing Su’a about his life and tattooing. He’s been incredibly accommodating. Today he bought me lunch.

We did have one snag. Apparently the voltage here is higher than in the USA. So I plugged in my bioimpedance analyzer without knowing that and fried it. I needed a step-down transformer. I sent Kat up to the Ministry of Health to see if my friends from Yale working there have one or a scale we could borrow. They realized they had a scale they weren’t using and brought it down to us.

Our filmmaker arrived yesterday too, so he’s been getting a lot of great footage. I just saw a close-up where you can see how the ‘au (head with needles) goes into the skin and sticks a little as it pulls up. It’s a slow motion shot that really shows the interaction between the tools and the body.

We’re going to Su’a birth village on Saturday to film his father’s grave and interview him in his house. His father was a preeminent Samoan tattoo artist in the 1940s-60s. I think one of the most impressive things about Su’a is that he has about 7 biological kids and then he informally adopted and raised about 10 other kids. He has 37 grandkids and greatgrandkids. I’ve been taking lots of notes, but it’s too noisy there to record him, as his grandkids are swarming around us all the time with music blasting and other stuff.

In other news, my mustache wax disappeared from the bathroom, and I’ve had terrible diarrhea since Sunday. I forgot to not allow someone to put ice in my drink. My guess is the ice was made from tap water. And the mustache wax issue boggles my mind. I didn’t bring a backup this year, and it made me crazy having a fakakta mustache today. I had to buy some heavy hair pomade to make due. Oh, and I ran out of clean underwear several days ago and haven’t had a chance to do laundry or wash them in the cold shower. So I’m wearing everything again. Samoa.

Love,

Dad