A day of interesting events.

We started the morning with a trip to Aggie Grey’s resort.  This huge hotel complex has been completely booked for 3 months by the producers of the TV show “Survivor”.  The show features a cast of people chosen for reasons other than their ability to survive.  Characteristics like emotional rollercoastering, bitchiness and machismo-ness make better TV apparently.  Get two teams of crazy city folk competing for limited food, and you can make a lot of money.

As a prize for the said competitions, Thursday’s prize was to be two hens and a rooster.  Being an American TV show, risk must be brought to an absolute minimum of course.   A signed veterinary certificate was to be provided to the producers after ensuring that the chooks were fit for human consumption. 

Hence the trip to Aggie Grey’s resort.

There are a handful of us whities here in Samoa.  And there is an entire township temporarily living in Aggies Grey’s I discovered.  All twentysomethings; all loose-cat lefties who choose painting designs on TV props over corporate ladder climbing.  A fascinating anthropological study at the least.

Actually we were here for the second time.  The producers weren’t happy with the size of the first chooks.  And they wanted better layers.  That way they could ramp up the TV tension by having the competitors bicker and fight about whether to keep the chickens as egg producers, or kill them for a nice big meal early.  Nice theory guys.  Unfortunately Samoan hens aren’t interested in laying a big juicy egg every day.  You need specially bred layers to lay every day.  But they were healthy and a certificate was signed.  I was careful to include a disclaimer about “…fit for human consumption provided they are properly slaughtered and prepared”.  I don’t need some L.A. hairdresser suing me because they accidently smeared chicken crap all over their undercooked drumstick.

On the way back into town we stopped at the Lotto shop.  It seems that one of my team had won the Samoan Lotto but wouldn’t tell us how much he had won. 

While we had stopped, our attention was drawn to a strange lady on the other side of the road.  She was clearly not in a sane state of affairs jabbering aggressively to invisible cars and other mythical creatures.  No one was getting hurt though until she suddenly decided to turn her angry mutterings at a truck coming by.  I’ve never seen such a lean on a truck as it screeched sideways to avoid her.  To make sure we knew who was in charge, the lady then showed us all her bum and ran off.

Then was the huge bull with a nasty infection in the neck (beautifully roped down by my boys), the skinny cow owned by the Samoan equivalent of Billy Connelly (no one home), the calf with only three feet (horrible rope injury), the boar castration (the old feed-and-catch trick failed for this crafty bugger – and he has really sharp tusks), the repeat pig vaccinations (“ummm, yeah I think they are all dead now, not sure really”), and lastly back to the office for some cartography (that’s map making right?  It’s amazing how far a basic GPS machine, Google Earth, and an old pirate of PhotoShop can get you).

Not a typical day.