Samoa Journal #1 – Borders, Boundaries and Breakthroughs
Mynas? We’re going for a walk in Samoa, about as far away from anything familiar as we can get: Michael, Diana and I. They are from the Übersee-Museum in Bremen; I am from Bombay via New York. We gaze around with our European, American, Indian eyes, expecting to be enthralled. And we are, but then—mynas?
Yes, mynas, good old garden mynas I grew up with, lovely jaunty birds, many of whose orphaned babies my family has hand-reared. Samoan wildlife authorities in all their wisdom decided that mynas from India would help with the problem of cow ticks here and brought them over—the jungle myna in 1965 and the common myna in 1988. Naturally (unnaturally) this backfired and now the birds are everywhere, threatening native species and generally throwing their weight about. They look like the birds I know but they sound a bit different—shriller, more assertive. I get this. We immigrants need to be louder and bolder to make it in hostile environments. We know we’re outsiders.
The museum’s experimental journey, which I’m so pleased to tag along with, is very complex and the mynas this morning bring this home to me. Here we have a group of smart and well-meaning people from Europe, where immigration is one of the biggest issues. The Übersee-Museum’s Oceania project rightly aims to celebrate diversity and unpack some of the legacies of colonialism and immigration. It would be reasonably smooth sailing if they stuck to this fairly conventional mandate. But they are also adding natural history to the mix, and that makes for a fascinating complexity.
Just think about it: research shows clearly that human immigration has always ultimately benefited the host country. And research also shows clearly that introducing non-human living beings, whether plants or animals, usually harms the host environment. So our intrepid museum team must grapple with both these realities and come up with an exhibition that celebrates human movement and simultaneously frowns upon random species going where they don’t belong. After spending a day with them, I think they’re the right people for the job—they care, they are open, they know things, and they want to learn.
Back to the kava ceremony. We are sitting cross-legged on mats at the National University of Samoa, three motley Germans, one motley Samoan-Australian and one extra-motley Indian-American. The ceremony is about to begin, and I’m overcome with the surreality of it. I’m so very far from home, from both homes: they are both oceans away in either direction. And so very different. The tattoos. The garlands. The kava. The lavalavas. It’s a different universe. But wait. Is it? Plenty of tattoos in New York, plenty of garlands in India, plenty of sarongs in many places that go by different names.
I look outside and see really different trees but I also see gul mohur and hibiscus and croton, trees of my childhood. And most of all, when the performers dance, despite the unfamiliar movements and costumes and words and music, I’m overcome with such a feeling of familiarity it startles me. Is jet lag messing with my mind? No, it’s just the universal human condition. These beautiful young people are up on stage dancing and it doesn’t matter that we don’t understand the words and don’t know the steps and are ridiculously far from everything we know.
Polynesia to Potsdam to Pune to Pennsylvania—we all know what it is to simply have to dance! To grin madly for the sheer pleasure of being here on this mad planet, at once so huge and so tiny. To want to scream with joy and rage and simply just because. The students were dancing and we were all with them because we were them.
And suddenly, despite all the very real differences in culture and privilege and geography, this crazy trip doesn’t seem so crazy. Maybe that’s what this Übersee-Museum project is all about: finding that common kernel of sheer human tenacity and blitheness of spirit that we all have in us somewhere, and making it work for all of us. And maybe that’s what museums need to do: celebrate the differences as well as acknowledge just how much we have in common. Suddenly the museum people don’t feel like strangers. In the morning, they were hot and sweaty; I was grousing about my missing suitcase; in the afternoon, we are all enthralled and grinning back at the dancers. If I were learned enough this would be the moment to throw in an erudite reference to the dance of Shiva, but I’m not, so I won’t.
It’s only Day 1, and I’m already well and truly hooked: by this enchanting and interesting country, where everyone smiles but I know the women’s crisis hotline does a brisk business, and by the Übersee-Museum team, as they set out to ambitiously yet humbly make connections and grow collaborations with the National University of Samoa. Among strangers who aren’t that strange after all.
Samoa Journal #2 – Lining Up the Ducks
The second full day here, the team seems to be in a state of active waiting. Waiting to decide when to meet. Meeting to decide when to wait. The first citizen science event with students is tomorrow, and we are waiting for Kush, even though we know he won’t make it in time. Waiting to meet someone at the National Museum of Samoa. Waiting to set a schedule for next week. It is fascinating to be an outsider and watch the different cultural practices at play. To both parties’ credit, the Samoans and the Germans are doing their utmost to accommodate each others’ personalities and work out a comfortable way to collaborate. It’s not so easy when go-with-the-flow meets dot-the-i’s-and-cross-every-t-or-chaos-wins.
The citizen science workshop tomorrow is the culmination of years of planning. When Übersee-Museum staff decided to up their collections to the countries where the exhibits came from, and give it new life in whatever creative ways they could think of, they began the Oceania Digital Project and connected with the National University of Samoa. They found eager collaborators in the Environmental Sciences faculty, among others. Workshops, talks, plans to meet and innovate in person—and then came Covid. Like the rest of the world, suddenly all bets were off, all plans were moot, and people had to think of new ways to work. To their credit, the team carried on, and instead of flying to Samoa they found themselves where all the rest of us did: on Zoom.
Despite the challenges of working in three time zones (Germany, Samoa, India), they managed to do a lot. Funding arrived. Photo equipment, which luckily is resistant to Covid, traveled across the seven seas – well, maybe two seas, but a long distance. People at National University of Samoa could look at Übersee-Museum exhibits online. But there is only so much environmental work you can do from a distant environment. Which is why there’s so much excitement right now, that it’s finally happening.
So what is actually happening?
A group of university students, an artist, and some scientists go to a river—it sounds like the beginning of a joke, but it’s actually the first step in what could turn out to be some important science. This pilot project aims to connect students with their environments in a new way, blending art and science, combining culture with empirical data. It makes perfect sense to me, and if you think about it, any other way is really incomplete.
With Diana’s background in freshwater science and existing NUS projects already working in the same realm, the decision was clear.
“We came up with a citizen science project to collect manpower to collect the data that is missing. You can have many data points but with math, you can see patterns. Citizen science also raises awareness. If people interact with the environment, they care more about it. We’ll do a pilot. I would love to see that it’s not just presented, but used,” says Diana.
If this goes as it should, then science and culture will intersect in the most enlightening way. It is an experiment, yes, but an experiment with years of forethought behind it. It could end in one day of splashing about in the river making drawings. It could lead to a hundred-year project with student scientists starting a scientific study to map Samoa’s freshwater life in detail.
It could go either way, and I’m really looking forward to tomorrow. Will someone fall into the river? Will the students run for the hills or stay and follow instructions? Will Samoa’s next great artist find his or her inspiration in the waters of the Vaisigano river? Will someone walk into a museum or a science conference in a few years and see a rigorous research project on the watery wildlife of the South Pacific? In keeping with today’s theme, we have to wait and see.
