Word: samoan
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...botany professor and dean at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, a world specialist in medicinal plants and, far from least in this exotic setting, the paramount chief of the nearby village of Falealupo. To people here, he is known as Nafanua, in honor of a legendary Samoan warrior goddess who once saved the village from oppression and protected its forests...
...Samoan healers concoct poultices and infusions from the leaves, bark and roots of local plants, using them for conditions that range from high fever to appendicitis. Among them are root of 'Ago (Curcuma longa) for rashes, leaves of the kuava tree (Psidium guajava) for diarrhea, and the bark of vavae (Ceiba pentandra) for asthma. Virtually all the healers are women who learned their art from their mothers, who in turn learned it from their mothers. Now knowledge of the recipes and their administration, even the location of the plants in the forests, is endangered as more and more daughters forgo...
Indeed, Louganis has lived his entire life in a sort of quiet terror. He was adopted by a San Diego bookkeeper and his wife, Peter and Frances Louganis, when he was nine months old. Because his biological father was Samoan, Greg had dark skin that targeted him as a "nigger"; because he was dyslexic and a stutterer, he was often called a "retard." While his mother encouraged him to take dancing classes, his father virtually ignored his "sissy" son. Growing up with all those stigmas would have been pure hell had the nine-year-old boy not discovered diving...