Churches, dogs and roosters

Somoan Sunrise

This is the third south pacific island we have visited and I doubt there is any place in the world that has as high of ratio of churches to population as the South Pacific. However, by the amount we have seen in our first two days here, Samoa has more than either the Cooks or Fiji.

I had also forgotten about the dogs and roosters. Most families have a dog or six and flocks of chickens free range in the yard. Dogs, being dogs, sleep all day and prowl and bark all night. Our first night here we knew we were going to be serenaded by the neighbors roosters as it was practicing in the evening for the morning wake call, so we were kind of prepared for that.

But the dogs, they started trying out for a choir about midnight and finally got into entertainment mode with a full choir about 3:30 in the morning. What a clamor, it got so loud it woke up the rooster and he joined in for about 10 minutes, then I guess he figured out it was still pitch black out and went back to sleep. The performance ended in about an hour, except for one lonely dog that kept trying to get it revived, finally even it quit. Thankfully, after his night song, the rooster slept in until about 6:15, when he was woken up by his brother down the street. So the next night we dug out our handy dandy construction type ear plugs and slept the night away!

We stayed for three nights in Apia (population of 37,000 and the only city on the islands) in a bed and breakfast. It is a converted family home with twelve pretty basic bedrooms, some with ensuite some without. We spent our days wandering the city seeing the sites and figuring out where to go for the beach portion of our time in Samoa. Apia, as a town, encompasses about 40 local villages, these are still identified as villages. Each family within the villages elects it's own matai or chief, and these in turn elect the village matai. All village decisions have to made by a gathering of all the family chiefs, and the head chief makes the final decision based upon the highest support of the family matais. This extends to the decisions for the city of Apia.

We went to Aggie Grey's, the fanciest hotel in town, on the last night for a Samoan buffet and cultural dancing and singing. The meal was huge, salads, chicken, ham, pork, turkey, beef curry, desserts and some raw Samoan fish dishes. We both pigged out and even managed to find a bottle of New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc to accompany the meal.

The Samoan singing and dancing is more Hawaiian style than Maori style. The ladies are very graceful and do a lot of the dance with their hands to add expression to their dances. Maori men have an "in your face" warrior type of dancing, whereas the Samoan warrior dances are more refined and instead of severe facial expressions they do a lot of body slapping and foot stomping. The singers and dancers were backed up by a couple of drummers and half a dozen guitar players. The drums, usually just a hollowed out log of various sizes, can produce a number of notes on the musical scale through the varying lengths and thickness.

The hotel is named after the original owner, Aggie Grey, a Samoan lady married to an Englishman, who started the business in 1942 selling hamburgers and coffee to US servicemen who were in Samoa on leave. Then she started a boarding house that has now become two high-end resorts. Her great granddaughter, also named Aggie Grey, always performs the last dance of the evening.

Aggie Grey

Somoa has a population of 136,000 on the island of Upolu and another 40,000 on the island of Savai'i with more Samoans now living offshore than on the islands. Mostly in the US, Australia and New Zealand. At one time fish and tropical produce such as bananas, coconut, and coffee were expected to become big export earners but this did not happen. Also, at one time exports covered 60% of their imports from New Zealand and other south pacific destinations. Today that has declined to under 2%. There is no industry and little opportunity for economic development.

The minimum wage in Samoa is about $0.84 CDN per hour and lots of Samoan families live on remittances sent home from family over seas and/or subsistence farming. The biggest employer is the tourist industry, but even that is small and in its infancy compared to Fiji, Tahiti and the Cook Islands. The country is beautiful and the people friendly so I am sure that with time and investment Samoa will become a tourist destination, should the people here want it to.