The Human Xerox

I was in the 6th grade and for my Social Studies class our assignment was to prepare a report on a country...any country. I know...not a very thoughtful assignment because I am sure my teacher thought it up in the last 5 minutes before he gave it to us LOL but, that was the assignment. Our school library wasn't equipped to handle the research I needed and my family couldn't afford to own encyclopedias so I was left with very little options for reference materials. 

Our one library on island, which was at the time the community college library, was my only resource but we didn't have the means to get me there and back without risking my Dad missing work. And if you had a father like mine, the aiga bus (family bus), which is a privately owned makeshift vehicle that is the main mode of public transportation in American Samoa, was completely out of the question. He drove us girls everywhere and picked us up everyday for all 12 years of our schooling. Mind you now, my Dad has 4 girls so that was A LOT of driving...but that's a different story. So I digress.


For my report, I used whatever I could get my hands on, which was not much. After 3 days of scraping very meager information from random books (a lot which had little to nothing about my country) and excerpts from my Social Studies text...I didn't have nearly enough for a decent, much less average report on Tanzania (that was the country I picked). 

I went home that day crying and upset that I would not make the deadline the following week. I kept trying to compile my report, using fillers that bordered closely on false information and fabricated estimations of the population and size of Tanzania by merely looking at a tattered map I had. I did the best I could and accepted the fact that my grade for the report will be well below average, maybe even failing. I was sick with worry for the next several days racking my brain as if I could magically know everything about Tanzania. But magic had nothing to do with it...not if you had a father like mine :-)).

The day before my report was due, my Dad hands me a thick stack of yellow papers...the kind from the yellow legal size pads. On it in his neat cursive handwriting was information on Tanzania straight from an encyclopedia...WORD FOR WORD. He had spent all of his lunch hours, or what was left of them after driving from town all the way across the island to the library, every day for 5 days to copy, by hand, everything the encyclopedia had on Tanzania. He even replicated the most recent map complete with legend. 

A xerox machine couldn't have done better...not that my Dad could've afforded to pay 5 cents per page anyway :-).

You see my dad didn't accept mediocrity. He didn't accept defeat. And above all, he could NEVER accept the limitations our financial state imposed on our lives, particularly our educational ones. He couldn't afford to put us up in private schools. He couldn't afford to buy us encyclopedias. Heck...sometimes he could barely afford notebooks and pencils for all 8 of us. 

I cried, really really cried. I was speechless because I was too busy crying of course, but more so because what my Dad did was too great for words. He was the MAGIC I needed that day and continues to be in my life today. I spent the entire night with my Dad by my side transcribing his cursive handwriting into my A+ report on Tanzania :-)).

I have abhorred the country Tanzania ever since haha.

Me and Dad, the last time I was home for Christmas - 2012 

Dad...I love you beyond measure. I pray that I can be half the parent to my own kids that you are to me :-)).