Ava Ceremony

We are kind of famous here. And by famous I mean we made the front page of the local newspaper! Well at least our group did… the picture of Chelsia and me were on page 3, but who’s counting? The pictures are also online on the newspapers website if you want to see the extent of our celebrity (http://www.samoanews.com/?q=node/76469).

 

The newspaper article was about the ava ceremony that our group participated in. An ava ceremony is the traditional Samoan ceremony to welcome guests. It is usually hosted by the Matai (chief) from the village and only the Matai from the visiting village participates. In this case, our head teacher Isaac acted as the Matai and our language teacher (Tamari) acted as the hosting chief, and welcomed us to Samoa. We were all also allowed to participate and drink a bit of the traditional ava drink that goes along with the ceremony. It is a mild narcotic that to me tastes a bit like coconut water. You only have a sip though so there isn’t any effect from the drink.

Overall the ceremony was a blast. We listened to them welcome us in Samoan, had the traditional ava tasting, and finished off with a little singing and dancing. It was so much fun and so interesting. The only downfall was that we had to sit with our legs crossed on the ground the whole time and since it lasted 30 to 45 minutes my legs were dead by the time it was finished (I’m not very flexible).

-S