Originally, this site was designed only for my friends, but as it has grown and expanded it has arrived at the point where I never expected… unknown people contacting me about what they have read.
You see, this is my life. Well, obviously not all of it. But a good part of it. Right now I am a Christian missionary working in the south of Argentina with Youth with a Mission.
In 2003, While I was working in New Zealand God called me to Argentina. So I packed up and sold everything, returned to my home in Australia and did the same thing there, then headed off around the world with the money I had in my pocket with my final destination in Argentina.
There were obvious many questions that my friends and family started asking me: “Are you sure that it was God speaking?”, “Are you coming back to Australia?”, “What are you going to do in Argentina?” and many more. I found myself writing and sending the same email in twenty different ways. Soon I was sending the same email to more than twenty people.
Well that was the start. But as more people heard about it, some of the previous questions came up again. I found myelf diving into my email records trying to find the message that answered those questions. In the end the idea of setting up a website where everyone could see each of the emails that I had written, and where I could add some photos (of my travels around the world), seemed to make more sense.
And so was born GroovyGuppy.com. The name was suggested by a friend of mine who was helping me to try and find a snappy name such as my brother with jellycan.com or his friend with camelfish.com. It lasted only until I arrived in Latin America. The name “groovyguppy” was very hard to make understood over here, and I obviously needed something more universal in its pronunciation.
After some deep thought, the name Samafas came up. It sounds the same in both English and Spanish, and had the added advantage of also having a deeper meaning. I liked it and so it stuck.
Once I had arrived in Argentina, this blog became my outlet for the culture shock that I was experiencing. Every new or bizarre experience that I had was something that I desired to add to my blog. The act of writing it down helped me to make more sense of it.
Now that I have been here for much longer, and all of the unusual things are now very normal for me, the information here has changed once again. In all of the various forms that this place has taken, the one thing that samafas.com continues to be is a way that I can keep my family and friends updated on the things that I am up to.
The stories are written as a kind of personal on-line diary. The updates are irregular but continue. The information can be sparse at times and overflowing other times. All part of life, and in many ways this is my life.
This is Samafas.com.