Richard Rieckenberg Biography

Going Native at the Hotel California

Sent on 14 October: There are two shelters here for the American Red Cross staff. I live in a sedate dorm room in a Catholic church. It is the smaller and nicer of the two facilities but all of the really cool people live in "Hotel California" ("you can check out any time you like but you can never leave..."). Hotel California is an open air basketball gym with a tin roof over the top and it was my home until recently. The Americorp Staff lives there. As far as I can tell there is nothing that they do in life in which they demonstrate anything less than boundless enthusiasm -- and that includes sleeping on a cot near the free-throw line. We are envious of their enthusiasm, their youth and their ability to actually thrive in this environment. It is not a mean sort of envy though, but rather a nostalgic one in which we see ourselves as we were thirty of more years ago.

Hotel California is also the home for some Western Samoan families who found themselves here when the tsunami hit. Each night they invite us to share their food and we exchange stories. Sometimes the lone congressman from American Samoa drops by to chat with the Red Cross staff. He is a very sincere and kindly gentleman who is somewhat distressed by our mixed gender close quarters living arrangement. I am much less concerned. The overriding human drives on this type of relief operation are sleeping, eating and trying to figure out how to cool off enough to sleep and eat. Any other normal man-woman issues are way too far in the weeds.

The rest of the occupants are "national" Red Cross workers, those of us from the mainland or Hawaii. I am considered a "spring chicken" among this bunch but they too are becoming increasingly rambunctious in this environment. I think they are "going native". Several have started to wear the lava lavas which are the skirt-like apparel worn by both men and women. Hotel California occupants ride, for the most part, in colorful busses that are built on the island from scraps of trucks and sheet metal. One that is popular has a dashboard covered almost entirely of feathers and feather boas. Another shows the same video each day played at a volume that would cause envy to a low-rider in Española.

The Hotel California occupants sing songs as they travel and have started to make their own leis and grass hats. They wear Samoan necklaces made from whale bone and they are always sipping liquid from a hole punched in a raw coconut. There are dark rumors of plans to body tatoo themselves in the Samoan style. It is becoming a disturbing cross between a M*A*S*H* episode and the Lord of the Flies.

Hotel California is open aired so insects are a problem at night. Not to be defeated, the occupants have become quite creative. When you go there it looks like the finals for a national contest on the creative use of mosquito netting and duct tape. Some of these sleeping contraptions are so elaborate that their cots are no longer recognizable as such.

It is cooler at night in Hotel California than where I stay. This is of course because of the trade winds that blow through the compound unhindered but also because of the slightly higher elevation. It is a little hard to sleep though. The sounds of the dogs barking and roosters crowing all night are generally drowned out by the "Red Cross snore" which those of us who have lived in close quarters with 70 or 80 of our friends can attest is an impressively low rumble at any given time of night.