Thai terror and missing home

It has been four days now, since arriving in Chiangmai Thailand, sorry to say but this place is a shithole. It is so polluted that spending a mere ten minutes outdoors causes one to clog up for hours. The streets are filthy, seems no one takes care of their yards or their own houses, ugh! I went to the food market and frankly if I wanted to get sick quick I would eat some chicken from there!
That being said, the people a lovely, ok im not in the mood to write, we just finished a four hour session on abortion and teenage pregnancy and frankly my thoughts are still on the matter and the different sides of this story, extreme sides! We are now off on field visits, we will be visiting the Thai family planning to see how they operate. Should be interesting. Ill update you on that later!

Corporate Crap in communication

So the long awaited GSM technology for our outdated cellphones is supposed to come into place by the end of this year. Mind you its been a long time coming, very long, like since 2002 they started saying "it will be up in two months time," that two months has brought us this far :) But what is the real story about the delay, of GSM. Well here it is, while working for Observer I did some investigation into it, I found the full story but unfortunately at the time SamoaTel was one of Observers main Advertisers and as we all know, without them newspapers will not survive, so the Editor basically said no stories about major advertisers, how about that for balanced reporting.:) THe story has developed thus far and I followed through it interesting and intrcate weavings of corruption. Here is a brief descrip.

The Government signed an agreement with Telecom Samoa Cellular when they first entered the country that they would be the sole mobile phone provider. At that time SamoaTel (Samoa Post and Telecomunications) was a pathetic discorganised Government body, with little to no substance. That being said, they were doing a good job with their small budget, but since it was established first it already had the towers and and advanced facilities and equipment ahead of Telecom. So when Samoa decided GSM was to be adopted, SamoaTel had the towers but Telecom Samoa had the rights to implement the technology on Mobile Phones. The catch was, Telecom did not have the towers or facilities to introduce GSM and SamoaTel was not willing to share its resources, so thus the gridlock. SamoaTel of course were legally prohibited from introducing GSM on Mobile Phones as the Government signed the contract with Telecom. So here we had everything to enable Samoa to use GSM (in 2002) but a piece of paper was stopping the process for four years all because some ass-fuck signed an agreement without thinking forward. So how was the Government going to get out of this one. Easy really, they create their own mobile phone provider in the form of DigiCell to take up the other half of the market. Now you might ask, but DigiCell is owned by an Irish man, indeed it is, but 50% of the local shares are owned by CSL and CSL as you may know is owned by the Government. So now DigiCell can share the use SamoaTel towers, and Telecom builds from scratch. So where is the piece of paper? I dont know, but its obvious some ammendments were made during the arguing process and the Government came out on top. So why the infatuation with communication, simple really, Samoa rates one of the highest as fastest growing mobile phone users in the world since the introduction of this technology to the country, so a lot of much money is to be sucked dry from the people thhrough a piece of metal with wiring inside and the Government is making sure they suck it not anyone else. So if this is happening, what else is happening in this beautiful Paradise of ours? Its true indeed eh' "Absolute power corrupts absofuckinglutely!"

Some truths we choose to ignore

I was born on the island of Savaii in the village of Safua and Lalomalava, I went to school in the village of Fusi, my mother takes me shopping in the village of Salelologa, and every week I associated with people from the rest of Faasaleleaga and some from other districts in Savaii. These stories I will relate below are events which I witnessed first hand or were told to me by my friends or family, others are events or situations that everyone knew about but it was the general concensus was that it was none of our business and we were not to interfere, the rest of us did not know any better. These are events which occured while I was growing up, they happened to people I knew, to people I did not know and to those I did not wish to know. These are some general statements, or straight facts on some of these incidents.

A fellow students ear was half torn by a teacher who tossed at it as a form of punishment.

The wife of an influential matai in the district was having an affair with the captain of his village rugby team. Everyone knew this, the rugby boys, the womens committee, the family of the wife, the family of the husband, the only person who did not know was the husband.

Four female relatives who have related their 'first break' to me were cases of rape. They did not know any better and to this day they still think that being forced to have sex is the proper way of losing ones virginity.

Case 1: She was taken by a man to his house, much older than herself, she was a student, and he chased her around a room until she had no energy, he then had his way with her.

Case 2: She was drunk and her boyfriend took her home, she refused the advances but he was stronger and she ended up crying after as she was bleeding and in much pain.

Case 3: The girl was 14 the guy was a family friend, he took her into a room and raped her, she thought it was his right.

Two lesbians from one village were brought forward to the village council for daring to express their sexual orientation, both committed suicide the next day. The general consensus was that was best for them.