let me in!

Locked Out
In order to get things done, sometimes you need to make the amazing trek into the city of Salelologa. Buses are supposed to go in tune with the ferry schedule which is every two hours from 4a.m until 4p.m. However there is no set schedule at all.
Lasela and I decided to meet in the bustling city to get some much needed shopping done as well as some of the work done on the internet that we promised our villages.
My tina, Moana (like ocean), had to go into the city as well. She told me that we were going to take the 7:30 bus. So at 6:30 she began calling out my name to make sure I was ready to leave right then. Thankfully I was. (My mom in America has always trained me well on a similar use of time. If we are supposed to leave at 11:00 to go somewhere, she will start complaining at 9:00 that no one is ready yet and we have to leave right away otherwise we will be late.) We walked over to a neighbor’s house to wait for the bus. She instructed the neighbor’s son to wave down the bus for us when in was passing.
About four busses passed by. Some people have particular busses they prefer to take. I don’t know if it is because they prefer a certain bus driver, or if they know something I don’t. I was talking to Max about this last week because he always takes the “Beautiful Savai’i” bus. He said it is because it is the least crowded bus usually. He thinks people do not use that bus as much because about five years ago that bus got into an accident, and Samoans never forget.
We finally got onto the bus, and thankfully it was the same time Lasela got onto her bus on the north shore of the island. When we were approaching Salelologa I began receiving text messages on my telephone from Lasela. She was locked out. The code to the building would not work for her. A local boy was keeping her company trying to befriend her, which was not the attention she was looking for in her time of need. She began calling around to avoid contact with her new “uo” to see if they somehow changed the code on her without telling first.
My tina left the bus, and I took it all the way to the wharf to go to the office. I tried to get in….and failed… and tried again. We were about to head over to the Digicel store to buy more phone credits to call the office to see what was going on because it felt like there was a deadbolt on the door. I decided to try it one last time…and it worked! I felt so bad for Lasela for being stuck outside in the heat for so long, but at least we were finally able to head into the air conditioned office!
Later that day whenever we left the office we kept having the same problem…It took us several times to get inside…when I told other people about it later, they thought it was pretty funny because apparently that problem only happens to us.
This is probably why me and Lasela are such good friends…we are both special when it comes to opening doors..