Do I love Samoa? Ouch! What a question. As a Palagi relocating to Samoa, I certainly love aspects of Samoa but when someone raised this subject recently, it was a challenge to answer.
Yes, I do love Samoa!
After a string of very serious posts, a Libran can't leave things unbalanced you know!
Sure there are aspects of this country that drive me nuts and that I've worked VERY hard to try to come to terms with.
Here though are a few things that I can rant and rave about.
Enjoy them!
- The tropical heat - I LOVE not having a winter. I love not needing blankets and how I can just crash on a bed with a lavalava. I've learned to manage the heat - to wear less, walk in the shade, get up early and work while it is cooler, avoid the outdoors midday through the afternoon, carry a spare set of clothes, grab a cold shower throughout the day and drink plenty. The body adjusts and gets used to it (sort of!)
- The kids - I LOVE the way they giggle and chuckle and point out "Palagi!" and when they get to know you a little and get really brave, the way they will hold your hand, touch your skin and enjoy someone different.
- I love the way our Palagi guests slip back into a lounger chair at the beach at Aggie Grey's Resort, just 10 minutes after vacating the airport, and heave a big sigh; saying "I can't believe that I'm in this tropical South Pacific paradise!" all the while sipping on a cold Vailima, looking over to Savaii, and the breakers on the coral reef! I love it. It makes all my work, risk and bravery to relocate here worthwhile.
- I love the way that after weeks of grumpiness and uncooperativeness and one might say simply Samoan rudeness, that when challenged, a Samoan clerk looks at me with a newfound understanding, and flashes a lovely big Samoan smile and becomes my friend. Even if just for a moment, at least until I turn my back and wander away.
- I love the way that people here don't think about tomorrow. Sure it's the opposite of my way of thinking - to continually invest, and to look ahead to the future and plan and scheme and suchlike - but it has a simplicity and a freedom that is mesmerising and I love it!
- I love the pomp and ostentatiousness - I mean where else in the world would you see a bus with an arial covered in tennis balls, and chains hanging down (just for show) from a buses font bumper? And blue lights, mirrors, and magwheels on a bicycle? And brand new cool plastic hub-caps on a beat-up 30 year old deisel Toyota pickup belching black smoke and running on three cylinders? And women who eat with their fingers and slurp like the animals around them walk to church in the rain in the most beautiful of Sunday white atire including pure white hats that would win awards at an Ellerslie Fashion Show? Who couldn't fall in love with that?
- The food - fry or boil or put anything in coconut cream and it tastes delicious. Give yourself a month or two or three and you too will learn to savour the delicacies of breadfruit, taro and a range of fruit that seems to grow like weeds here.
- The transport - like the taxi drivers who quickly change their price from $15.00 Tala to $5.00 Tala when they realise that they can't get away with their "Palagi price" on this local. Like the buses that have welded angle iron bolted onto wooden floors, and support a well-worn seat of, wait for it, plywood! And that have the most amazing artwork and pictures and signage and music systems and embellishments that only somebody who truly cared about their pride and joy of a contraption would bother to paint-up - loveable.
- Creation - a God that conceived a tall skinny trunk that only an agile boy could even dream of climbing, to twist off a round container of jungle juice hanging in the middle of the sky! And that just needs a stick and a machete to tap into to feed a whole nation for centuries - wow! Subsistence living at its best and an ideal that many Palagi whose fruit and vegetables grow on supermarket shelves would die for - loveable!
The lovely little village at Uafato that does bowl carving. I could easily live there. The rivers and waterfalls and rock pools for bathing and cooling off. Ahhh! Loveable.
Yup - it's not a bad little place this Samoa is when you've been asked about it, and you're in a positive frame of mind!
Tagwords: love samoa
