I interviewed a friend of mine named Doug, he is from Samoa. Samoa is an island in the South Pacific. It is considered to be a Polynesian Island. The Polynesian Island was founded by a white man named Captain Cook. Doug had told me that the Samoans and the "Howlys", or white man, have a special bond ever since then. When Captain Cook came to the islands the Polynesian people welcomed him right in. .
I asked Doug about some of the different aspect of the Samoan culture and this is what he told me about clothing. He said some people were normal modern clothing, or what we consider to be normal modern clothing. But it is traditional for men to wear, Lava Lava's, which are light pieces of cloth that wrap around their waists. It looks like what we might call a skirt. It is very much a lounging around type of clothing. Doug himself has a few that he wears on an occasion at the dorm. The women wear something similar to the Lava Lava's but they have two pieces, a top and a bottom. They are called Mumu"us, they are a piece of cloth that also wraps around the waist and a piece that wraps around the torso and ties behind the neck. Many people in Hawaii also wear this type of clothing for there are many Samoans that have moved to Hawaii.
I then questioned him about the type of food they have there on his island. Here in America we have some staples of food, one is eggs, another is milk, yet another is bread. They also eat eggs on Samoa, yet their staples include corn beef, rice, fish, and what they call taro. Taro is a potato that they eat with a lot of their meals. Rice is a very important part of their diet, just like bread is to us. There is hardly a meal that passes by with out bread somewhere in it. The same goes for them; they eat rice like we eat our bread.
Family life in Samoan culture is huge. They value family very much. They mostly live with their extended family all in one house. The Grandmother and Grandfather will live with one of the children and it is quite often so will a couple of the Aunts and Uncles.
