Samoa

Well, after I finished my last entry of this blog, I really did not think I would ever be writing another entry, but here I am, on a different boat, at it again. I hope you enjoy...

We arrived in Apia, the capital of Samoa on Friday afternoon, 11/4. Since we (me and Regan, the other grad student from UH) didn't have much time the first day, we mostly walked around town. The town is pretty small, similar to Nuku'alofa, the capital of Tonga. There are a few grocery stores, a number of cafes and restaurants, as well as quite a few internet cafes, and of course, a McDonalds. No other american restaurants or stores though. The people are generally friendly, although in Tonga and Fiji there were a lot more people that said hi to us. There were some locals, including some rather persistent kids, that try to sell you various things, but that was much more common in Mexico. Unlike Tonga and Fiji, where there were many Chinese and Indians, respectively, nearly everyone here is Samoan, with the occasional Australian and Kiwi tourists. The town is pretty safe overall, and is relatively modern, but not exactly a bustling hub of activity. You can pretty much see what you need to see in town in a day. Outside of Apia, there are essentially no other cities, it's all villages mostly lining the coast of the island. 85% of the land is owned by individual families and only 15% is government owned. The main islands are Savai'i, the largest of the islands but sparsely populated, comparable to the Big Island. The island we were on is called Upolu, and Apia, which is the capital is on the north side of Upolu. The other large island is American Samoa to the east, which has a big port called Pago Pago (pronounced pongo pongo). Upolu and Savai'i were once owned by the Germans, and are heavily influenced by Australia and New Zealand, but are now independent. American Samoa is still an American territory, and from what I've heard it is different than the other two, and of course has all of the major American fast food chains.

A typical street scene in Apia

Culturally, Samoa seems to be more similar to conservative Christian Tonga than to more liberal Fiji. There were churches every half mile or so on the way from the airport, some with very bright coloring, and the entire town basically shuts down on Sundays. Apparently the early missionaries had a much easier time reaching the Samoans because they already believed in the "invisible creator in the sky". The missionaries main cultural effects were getting rid of cannibalism and convincing the Samoans to stop killing each other. They are a warrior culture, the more battles that a family won the more power and respect they got. Family is an essential part of the culture, each family owns land and the extended families all live near each other in their own villages. Each nuclear family has their own house and the extended family meets and shares meals in a fale (fah-lay), basically a large room with no walls. Each family has a high chief and one or more talking chiefs, which can be men or women, and are voted into "office" by the family, based on how well they have served the family. The talking chiefs are very involved in the discussions amongst the family, while the high chief is mostly a listener, but the high chief has the final word on any decisions or disagreements.

The Catholic church in which we were allowed to observe the service

One fascinating part of the culture is the tattoos. Apparently the missionaries tried to stop that too, but there was no way the Samoans would give it up. Our tour guide around the island (I'll elaborate on the tour later) told the story of getting his "full body" tattoo, which means from the knees up to the obliques, not actually the entire body. It is basically a male right of passage but not all men do it because it pretty much sounds like one of the worst experiences I could imagine. So, before they get the tattoos, the artist has to make sure the person is mentally and physically ready, most that think they are, are not. The artist basically tries to convince you not to do it by describing all of the consequences in great detail, so you are fully responsible for what you're about to do. The artist also must have gone through this themselves. If you die in the process, there is no suing or prosecuting the artist, it's your fault. I know you may be thinking, "it's just a tattoo, yeah they hurt, but it couldn't be that bad," and you would be wrong. First, if you start the process and don't finish, your entire family is permanently shamed, some that don't finish even commit suicide to avoid the shame. The process takes 12 grueling 5-6 hr sessions usually spread out over a few weeks. The tools are basically sharpened bone chisels attached to wooden rods, and sound far worse than needles or bamboo. When the process starts, they strip you down and hold you down with your stomach on a tree stump and don't let you get up until the session is over. The bleeding is pretty horrendous and some even die from blood loss. Not only is the chiseling extremely painful, but your muscles and ribs ache like crazy from being held down on the stump for hours. The guide said it felt like someone had ripped his skin off. After the session, the artist's sons take you in the ocean and force you to submerge the wounds, and of course the salt feels lovely too. To keep the wounds clean and prevent them from scabbing too much, you have to get in the ocean every few hours for the entire process. While in the ocean, kids from the village surround you to beat the water with sticks so you don't get attacked by the fish that are swarming to the blood in the water. They give you a thin mat to sleep on, which of course sticks to your bloody wounds, and no mosquito net, so your wounds get covered in flies too. The sessions are 2-3 times a week to give you a little recovery time in between. You are essentially tortured for 6 weeks, and the guide said he began to hate the artist and everyone involved because of it and he seriously contemplated suicide after the first session. If you manage to make it through this without killing yourself, bleeding out, or dying of infection, you gain respect from everyone. But more importantly, you gain more appreciation for life, knowing that you could have died in the process, and from then on, nothing is difficult anymore. There is literally nothing that can faze you after this experience, no matter what you do it will be easier than what you went through. As you can tell from the amount of detail I just gave, it was an amazing and captivating story, I can only begin to imagine what it's like to go through something like this.

Alright, on to lighter subject matter, the food in Samoa. The second day here (sat 11/5), we got some food at a cafe in town, where I had pretty much the worst "burger" I've ever had. The "beef" patty looked like it was breaded and while it didn't taste horrible, it did not taste like beef. The only toppings were coleslaw, something similar to mustard and something that resembled thousand island, and it didn't even come with fries. The food here in general is pretty bland, no spices and the sauces don't have much flavor. There are cows on island, but the "steak" I had earlier tonight at the hotel restaurant, was pretty low quality and looked like it had been flattened with a tenderizer. However, I did have a large and quite fantastic ahi steak at a restaurant last night, so there is some good food available. You can't drink the tap water, similar to Fiji and Tonga, but there is a pretty decent local beer called vailima that is about $2-2.50, or you can pay over twice as much for corona, heineken, stella, or good ol' coors light. Alright, enough about food for now, it's clearly not a reason to come to Samoa.

On to the island itself... On Sat after lunch, we walked to a marine reserve that was a 10 min walk away, and stopped to watch an outrigger canoe paddling race along the way. We rented snorkel gear at the reserve and swam out a few hundred yards to palolo deep, which apparently gets up to 80 ft deep and is a scuba diving spot as well. The main difference from Hawaii was a lot more quantity and variety of coral, and much more of it was living. The most common kind was branchy and tan with bright blue polyps sticking out of the ends of the branches, but there were many other varieties as well. There was a good variety of fish, and one huge school of 500-1000 small bright green-blue fish. Otherwise no particularly exotic creatures, but it was pretty good snorkeling overall. On Sunday, we took a tour of the eastern half of the island, with the aforementioned tattooed tour guide, who was pretty awesome in general. There were ~15 aussie and kiwi tourists with us, including one samoan aussie who I chatted with for a while when we made a lunch stop at a beach. Turns out he is a pro rugby player and a pretty nice dude; he told me he was going to propose to his aussie girlfriend on the trip. Anyway, Apia is on the north coast and we first headed east along the coast. We passed by lots of small villages and many more churches, we even were allowed to stand in the back of a catholic church and watch part of the service, which was a little more lively than most services, but not that much different. One thing that struck me is that there were very few sandy beaches, they were mostly rocky. Considering that this island hasn't had an eruption in a long time, this was surprising. Could be due to subsidence causing the beaches to be drowned, the lack of parrotfish to eat and poop out coral bits, or maybe due to relatively steep cliffs along most of the coast that could be burying the sand with larger rocks and debris. Another thing that struck me was how green and lush the entire island is, very different than the wet east sides vs dry west sides in Hawaii. The entire island was as lush as the greenest parts of the Hawaiian islands. This is primarily because they don't have tradewinds consistently blowing in one direction, but this fact also makes the humidity much harder to deal with. We saw a couple waterfalls which were pretty but not amazingly impressive. We did stop at one beautiful sandy beach for lunch, that had these little beach huts that you could rent, which were basically a straw roof over a slightly raised wooden platform. I guess they give you a mattress, pillows, sheets, and a mosquito net, and they serve food in a little building across the street. After the beach stop, we cut in through the center of the island, our tour bus definitely had some trouble getting up the hills, which wasn't helped by the fact that it had a manual transmission. We saw a pretty waterfall called Papapapaitai near the middle of the island, which was maybe 200 ft tall. The last stop was at a Baha'i temple, which had a very unique shape and some beautifully maintained grounds around it. Apparently, it is #4 out of 14 of these temples in the world. We were allowed to walk inside and check it out. We ended up back in Apia after a ~6 hour tour, definitely worth the time and money. So, I think that is all I have on Samoa at the moment, I'll add more if I think of anything worthwhile, and I'll add some pics once I get them off my camera. Feel free to post comments or questions, I'll answer what I can...

Papapapaitai Falls, ~200 ft tall, the ferns make it appear smaller, but they're just really big ferns

Faofao beach, our lunch stop on the island tour

A beautiful and extremely secluded little resort on the SE side of the island.