A week in Samoa
I have spent the last week settling into Samoa, rebuilding friendships attending the TIDES Tourism & Investment Conference and establishing new contacts and friends, and believe it or not, revising my plans.
Samoa is an interesting place. It has strong cultural aspects that constantly create in the Palagi (not just me by the way) a love-hate relationship. For a tourist it can be a delight to experience the big Samoan smile and a taste of the South Pacific magic. Yet this is often mixed with revolt at what is often called "poor service" and a land where it seems the people really actually don't care! I'm sure to talk more about this in due course in the Samoa Philosophy section of some website, so I'll leave excessive negatives for the moment.
Without going into a lot of detail, the detailed arrangements I made with the people of Fusi Safata were changed in my absence - they now don't want to have Palagi visitors and their leaders now wish to emigrate to New Zealand.
Bother! This required a very big adjustment of which I needed every hour of the full three days I seem to need to process life's biggies!
A million people here have told me what I already knew, that Samoans do this all the time. It is definitely a land of "Yes that never happens". While disappointing in some regards, and a pretty big challenge to my life flexibility and self-esteem, it opens other doors and opportunities here that wouldn't have opened previously.
Not having a specific village to work with in the short-term means that I will be looking to develop projects on freehold land until other rural village opportunities open up. Hopefully the government will be happy to extend me a visa and opportunities will arise.
I'll keep you posted as things develop.
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