I Live Ewa

The sun shines unforgivingly like the firey eyes of God himself raining balls of fire burning down Sodom and Gomorah. This is Gods country. The bottom of the food chain. Take Fort Weaver road down straight down into the pit of the lake of fire. Countless cars pour into the God foresaken land in the late afternoon, the sun burning their faces as each car slowly inch down through the Weaver. Once you pass all the fake poster town houses in the beggining of the Weaver, once you hit the end of the golf course, you've reached old Ewa, the beach. Home of Crack heads, drug pushers, wanna be gangsters, and people with a dream of one day leaving. The roads are smoothe untill you reach old Ewa. The grass is green untill you reach old Ewa. The Weaver is lined with countless houses. Everyone's crap gets treated here. Don't forget the old nukes left over from World War II. Yea, their in Westlocke, which is somewhere out here in Ewa. My pops knows where they are. He served his country for a little less then 30 years. If Alkaida wants to put a hit on the U.S. No doubt Hawaii will be the first on the chop block. We are a big military base and a smart strategic target. Japan saw that, why wouldn't everyone else. And whose gonna get hit? Why Westlocke, so much nuclear power in those bombs that we in Ewa would be dead and not even know it. All we would hear is the screetch of the bomb slicing through the air like a dead wounded animal, and when it hit we'd be dead instantly. No ones supposed to know about Westlocke and the nukes. And with new technology and rockets, our enemies wouldn't need to do more than just push a button. Just a little secret no one wanted to tell us. If I know, why wouldn't our enemies know. Every mourning the Weaver is lit again with the lights of cars. You have to wake up really early to beat the traffic. The houses here are just that, a place for the working people to rest, eat and leave all over again. It takes an hour to get out of Ewa. And once you get out, everyones heading toward town for work, so you have to deal with another hour or two fighting that traffic. If theres an accident on the Weaver, you might as well turn right around and go home. No one really wants to be here, just that here is easy on the wallet. This is my country. The place I return to everynight to rest my head. A hell of a home.
I go to church right up the road. I wear a ie faikaga to church since it is a church for the Samoan people. The faifeau or reverend, pastor, gives his sermon in Samoan. The sunday school I go to is strictly based on teaching us the gospel in the Samoan language. My teachers and elders don't want us the youth to lose our language. In a way Samoans are like the Congolese. Just we've submitted ourselves to the Lord. We've Americanized our culture. If this is possible I don't know. I feel with the influence of American it's tainted the way of Samoans and our culture. We've shunned our island gods and dieties and accepted Jesus. Mufi Hanneman's father signed the document in Samoa that we would be a Territory of America, where we submissed to God. I still wear a lava lava, pareo, sarong, skirt, at home and around where I live. My father is first generation to Hawaii. We are still live life pretty close to Samoan culture. Its very awkward when my home life gets mixed with my life at school. Life there is very, how do I say, American. I hate when people use part of my culture and language without knowing what the hell it means. That "chee hoo" that alot of locals here say, for example, "Ho brah, cruise parteh tomorrow cuz! CHEE HOO!", stems from my culture. It's called a fa'aumu, and it's has only two functions that I know of. It's used when dancing traditional Samoan dance, and it's during meetings of high chiefs and giving of Ko'ogafine mats, which serve as a type of money. When people do it out in public, at random and not during one of these two, it is very disrespectful. I've gotten a slap or two for doing this.
I live two lives. The one at school and the one at home. Every knows the life I have at school. Everyone at school has the same life. We all walk class to class like brainwashed guinepigs being spoon fed peices of food through a maze of confusion. Some of us find our way though, some us stay in one place, some of us go backwards. Not many people know of my life at home. Not many people care. I don't really care. E le kea a'u.

Literary Circle

Lexicographer

1. Dima- Congolese Lime tree.

2. Dimba- Kikongo word for listen

3. Tata Ndu- Kalinga cheif

4. Nganga- Kikongo priest of traditions.

5. Gree-Grees- African god necklace.

6. kakakaka-

7. Dundu- kind of antelope.

8. Nganga- Kikongo priest such as Tata Kuvudundu. Teaches the sacred african traditions and culture

9.Lenzuka- The poor people and people with bad luck in the village. They all attend Nathan Price’s church as a last resort.

10.Kamikaze deseise- acute viral infection involving the respiratory system; an acute febrile and highly contagious disease.

11.Episcopotamians- different type of missionary. Catholic?

Essential Question pt. 5

"If your afraid now, be afraid, be very afraid."

Heres a newer idea of technology, brought up by Robin Williams. Internal technology, technology implanted into your body. Phones, music, computers. How close are we to this becoming a reality. What human rights will does this violate? Do you want to become part computer. It seems very sifi right now but this concept is very possibly in the future of humanity. Today in English class we talked about our blogs and if they were really better than just writing a paper up on word document. I remember hearing Mrs. Watson say that she is amazed how we, with the html codes and stuff are teaching the computer to show and display us as we want to be displayed and showcased. But how much are we teaching and showing it, so much as it is teaching us and showing us. I mean we have to learn a whole different language in order for the computer to recognize what we want and show what we want, in terms of HTML and stuff. Not to mention learning how to type as well. We learn the computer language, why can't we just speak it it reagular english and have it know what we're talking about? Why do we have to type, why can't it learn to speak english and communicate with us? Why is any of this important? Why do I have so many ideas of how to better my own life? It's human nature. It's greed, it's laziness.

Essential Question pt. 4

Are you serious? Yes, unfortunately here is one of the newest progressions in the clothing industry. Whether this will be come a fad in the future is beyond anything I can conjure up in my mind. But of course anything can happen. Heres the latest fashion in Africa. In America we're putting lights in our clothes. In Africa they're still getting used to the idea of wearing clothes. My essential question again is what do we as human beings value more, Progress or stoping Poverty and Peace. I do not think you can do achieve both at the same speed. If you advance in one, the other will slow up. When I say progress I mean in technology and the highest notch of human living.

Essential Question pt. 3

The new iphone seems like everything a 21st century teenager could want. It's all your basic nesecities in rolled into one phone. It it the epitamy of the article we read in the beggining of the second semester english. The article that was essentially a users manual to some hardcore technological device much like the iphone. Again my essential question is what do we as human beings, or as Americans value more? Progress or peace. I do not need a phone that takes pictures, plays movies and music, can be used as a remote control, is a computer as well as countless other unimaginable roles. But in a way this iphone is just one step closer to the next big advancement in humanity. One day we won't need any of those things. We'll just keep advancing and advancing untill all we have now is obselete to that of future inventions. American companies such as Apple, could use there money to help starving people in Africa, but they don't. Why? No one knows. Could they take a year off from advaning to help give to people in need all around the world, yeah it's possible, but it doesn't happen. Of course if I could make iphones that I probably would not take a day of when there is money to be made, and personally, when stepping back and looking at that fact, I feel pretty bad. It's horrible that this is how I feel but I think this is just human nature. I pray for the "human nature" of future generations.

Portal Game

Lately in English class we've all touch grounds on where exactly all of us were in the book. Page 64. Being this far in the book, our substitute teacher thought we were pretty well informed about most of the characters we've been introduced to thus far in teh book. So he decided that we do a little game. And that game was called the "Portal". The object of the game was to take on a character in the book and become him/her. We would become him or her when we walked through the door of class into the new world. We were to write, using the voice of that character, about everything we saw outside the classroom doors. Our job was to capture and immitate that character's voice to the best of out ability. So here is my attempt to become Leah Price, the Price family's Congolese maid.

I don't remember how I came to arrive here in the future year of our lord 2007. Nothing that I had seen in my life in Georgia could have prepared me for this new America. It seems that I have arrived at some sort of school, probably a highschool. The way people dress these days are so vast and different. All the boys wear different assortments of collared shirts, nothing like I've seen. The colors here in the future are brighter more noticable and full. And the girls, well Rachel would be amazed at how the girls dressed here. If father thought painting nails were signs of prostitution, then I was standing in the lowest parts of hell itself. The girls here wore tight shirts and painted nails, peircings every where. Father would give these girls the whole bible for the verse. I really did not like this place. If this is what the future looks like I hope I don't live to see America fall this deep into sin. I pray for my children if ever I have any.

Poisonwood Bible Quotes

So we've recently been reading the Poisonwood Bible, and we've been asked to find two quote from each chapter that have significance in the story, and to explain that significance in this blog post.

"The airport police wore khaki shirts with extra metal buttons and , believe you me, guns."

"Each one of us arrived with some extra responsibility biting into us under our garments: a claw hammer, a Baptist hymnal, each object of value replacing the weight freed up by some frivolous thing we'd found the strength to leave behind. Our journey was to be a great enterprise of balance. My father, of course, was bringing the Word of God-- which fortunately weighs nothing."

These two quotes from Leah's first part in the book gives a very good view on how things are going so far, and where exactly we are. She gives us a very strong sense of setting in Africa as she explains the airport scene with the guns and stuff. I chose the first quote because it sets up the setting so well. I chose the second quote because it shows how much the trip is weighing down on the family, especially the girls. I think this is a metaphor for how the whole trip together will be. I think it is a very good metaphor. As we see all the things that weigh down the girls, on the contrast, Nathan Price brings the Word of God, which just so happens to weigh absolutely nothing.

"Leah runs everywhere and climbs trees, but Adah can't, she is bad on one whole side and doesn't talk because she is brain-damaged and also hates us all. She reads books upside down. You are only supposed to hate the Devil, and love everybody else."

"So Noah cursed all Ham's children to be slaves for ever and ever. That's how come them turn out dark... Their day for the Zoo is Thursday. That's in the Bible."

These two quotes are very key, especially coming from the youngest sister of the family. Ruth May Price gives us alot to look at in her small chapter. She gives alittle perspective on her older sisters Leah and Adah. She tells us of Adah's deformity. She tells us that Adah hates all of them. Here is a very significant part of what I think her role is in the story, which is repeating everthing she hears. She says, " You are only supposed to hate the Devil, and love everybody else." This is a prime example of that, in which she probably learned this in sunday school of from her mother or father. The second quote I like as well, it is about the famous story of the Curse of Ham. She, again, is just repeating what she heard or learned from father or from another religious person. I took the liberty of doing alittle research on this story. It is a true story in the Bible, but I have found that no where in the Bible did it say that the decendents of Ham were dark skinned. BUTHam, I think, from some shaky internet sources, the Hebrew translation of the name Ham, is dark, burnt, or very hot. The other two brothers' names mean fair and dusky. TAKE THAT MRS. WATSON!!

"Boy, what a place. Already i was heavy-hearted in my soul for the flush commodes and machine-washed clothes adn other simple things in life I have took for granite."

"I shut my eyes tight, but even so, the tears ran down. I wept for the sins of all who had brought my family to this dread dark shore."

These are the quotes from Rachel's first narrative of the Chapter. the first one i chose because it shows a little of the feelings of the girls when the first arrived in Africa. We see that they are finally wiseing up the fact that there are less fancy things where they are. They are begginging to be greatful for what they had and sad for what they took for granite. This I feel is very important because they can learn alot from these feelings and it will be interesting to see if they do learn, especially Rachel who is the most materialistic of all the members of the family. The second one is just more emphasis on what I've just said. Rachel, obviously really does not want to be in Africa. I think she is very angry and sad because she had to leave America out of nowhere and stay here in a place where she is very uncomfortable.

"These women are pillars of wonder, defying gravity while wearing the hohum aspect of perfect tedium. They can sit, stand, talk, shake a stick at a drunk man, and reach around their backs to fetch forth a baby to nurse, all without dropping their piled-high bundles upon bundles. They are like ballet dancers entirely unaware they are on stage. I cannot take my eyes from them."

"It is true I do not speak as well as I think. But that is true of most people, as nearly as I can tell."

These two quotes i believe are very important. Comming from Adah, the disabled one of the family, they are very observant and very descriptive. I like Adah's narrative more than all the others. The language she uses is so interesting and grasps my attention. I can see alot of what she describes easily, alot easier than that of any of girls. I like the first one because it is a very good parallel or use of measure that I plan to use with Orleana Price. Here we see the role of African women, who Adah describes very reveringly and majestically. Then we see that she is very fond of these women, I think that the girls will ultimately take alot and learn alot from these African women. The other quote, I chose because it tells alittle more about her. This chapter we learn of Adah's disabilities and challenges. But we also learn alot about her many strengths and views of herself and views of her sisters.

"But father needs permission only from the Saviour, who obviously is all in favor of subduing the untamed wilderness for a garden."

"Some people find him overly stern and frightening, but that is only because he was gifted with such keen judgment and purity of heart. He has been singled out for a life of trial, as Jesus was."

These two, are from the second narrative of Leah. I chose the first one because it has alot to do with the Genesis quote at the beggining fo the book. I think the quote is a metaphor for Africa and taming the people by spreading the word of God. Which is the ultimate goal of Nathan Price. The second one shows Leah's loyalty to her father. She compare her to their Saviour Jesus Christ, maybe Leah puts her father right up there with Jesus in sense of her influenses.