Tropic of Football by Rob Ruck

Author:Rob Ruck [Ruck, Rob]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781620973387
Published: 2018-05-30T00:00:00+00:00

8

Kalifonia Dreaming

“The further they move away from here or Western Samoa,” Mel Purcell told me on my first morning in American Samoa in 2011, “the further they move from what is the true culture. They learn distorted values.” Purcell has gone as far away as a man born in Samoa could go, to Hawai‘i, across the United States, back to the South Pacific, and finally, of all places, to Iraq. He’s since come full circle. Returning to American Samoa in 1979, Purcell has nurtured football there, advancing its international profile while trying to anchor it and the boys who play it in fa‘a Samoa.1

But he’s concerned about island youth, especially those who leave to play at junior colleges. Liberated from the restraints of family and village, many cannot handle their new freedom. By some estimates, half don’t make it through their first year off island.

For Purcell, that’s a reflection of larger cultural tensions. He frowns when the full pe‘a becomes a tattooed band on the shoulder. “The language of tattoo remains the same over the centuries,” he declared. “To remain true to your culture is to hold on to your communal land, the purity of chiefly titles, and the tattoo. They’re the triangular pillar of Samoan culture.” Yet each has been buffeted by change. As a high talking chief with a cosmopolitan résumé, Purcell is all too familiar with globalization’s corrosive effects on fa‘a Samoa.

He became a high talking chief after a stint in Iraq in 2004. Two sons were among the first to go directly from island football to Division I schools, and a daughter studied on a volleyball scholarship. Each graduated: one son played professionally and coached; the other served in Iraq. “I wanted my kids to get a degree,” Purcell explained. Sport was how they could do that. Many on the island share his mind-set, in which education matters more than the lure of the NFL. “The greater success comes when they are walking across the stage with degree in hand,” Purcell insisted, “not on the field.”

He offered a proverb. Noah, wanting to see if his ark was near land, let loose a bird. When it did not return, he released another that came back with a leaf. Translated from Samoan, the proverb says that the pigeon that was let go has returned. “The boy or girl who gets that degree,” he continued, “is a pigeon who comes back with a leaf.”2

But Purcell is worried and wipes sweat off his brow with a Terrible Towel, an artifact of Troy Polamalu’s visit the month before, draping it over a knee. He is anxious about boys growing up in American Samoa holding on to a culture that roots them in their ‘aiga and knows the challenge is even more daunting off island. American Samoa, of course, is not an idyllic paradise. Ice—methamphetamine—has become a problem and street culture’s coarser aspects are evident, though life there still moves at a slower pace. But fa‘a Samoa is more stressed in Samoan enclaves in California, Seattle, Utah, and Texas.

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