Many people still live in open structures called "fales", often along the coast, using the beach as a street. Nonetheless, the simplicity is deceptive! In the evenings, Tula invited me over to help roll down the nylon mosquito nets hanging in the eves, to watch "The Golden Girls" on his new colour telvision, piped in through the nearby U.S. nuclear submarine Pacific fleet base station at American occupied Pago Pago.

Tula is a local chief, and commutes weekly to work at the island's agricultural college, part of the University of the South Pacific! All the kids except the very youngest speak fluent English as well as their native Polynesian.

After some kava exchanged with my imported Scotch, we chatted about our lives, and he suggested I consider moving to his village of Falealili, and that his sister was looking for a new partner, since her husband had died. I recalled something from Mead: "If... a wife really tires of her husband... divorce is a simple and informal matter... and the relationship is said to have 'passed away'." (Mead, C of A in Samoa, p. 108)

Tula looked at me quizzically, then broke out laughing at my confused expression. He suggested we should go for a walk on the beach, and he made it very clear he would support any marital considerations only after my divorce was completed! His son and sons-in-law had talked to him of our conversations while fishing on the reef, of course!

Then Tula talked about how his grandmother had met Margaret Mead, and he was concerned about Western misperceptions of Samoans! As we talked over a few evenings, he dug out his copy of Mead's book, to offer his chapter by chapter critique! So much for any naive misconceptions of "native/anthropologist" relations!

But he had complete confidence in sending his beautiful ten-year old Meta daughter to wake me at dawn with some water for tea to appear for my "guest lecture" at the village school....

The senior class (presumably of Mead's carefree adolescents?) was waiting....expectantly....