A colleague in Paradise recently suggested that I should learn that in Samoa, "You have to do a little bit of evil to do good!" I bit my tongue for all of 24 hours hours and then we had a 'little discussion'. That discussion has now been going on for three weeks! It's Sunday again today and that's my trigger to speak religious about this pickly little subject.
It's the Samoan way to do churchy things on Sunday, and we are constantly told that Samoa was "founded upon God". So here's how it goes. . ."In Samoa things are crooked, and corrupt and you don't get anywhere without cheating, bribing or manipulating things. It's not fair that only the honest ones should pay for [for example] their power because all the cheaters and briberers get cheap power or stolen power".
Another version is that "Nothing ever gets done here [1], people don't care [2] and are lazy [3], and worse so the only way to get things done is to slip a note under the table to the person you know [4] and it'll get done!"
- That's not true actually, without a bribe it generally just takes forever. The only exception to this that I've found was the Companies Office - exemplary service the same standard as the New Zealand Companies Office without the online service - and my mate Freedom at Ace Hardware who understands business - he trusts you, helps you and looks after you like you're a
rich Palagireal person. - I've met a few who do, but most of them don't do anything about it.
- Oh boy . . . I'll invoke the 5th Ammendment here because this is a real biggie of a subject and a talking-point over here!
- Most of the time it is OVER the table!
Of course it didn't take long for the fireworks to happen - I quit! No, you're fired! (or was it the other way around, I can't remember now).
In retrospect I've always considered that it was a good lesson on how "group think" and the environment that we find ourselves in can influence our thinking and behaviour sometimes against our better judgement. It takes a strong man to stand against the tide of "public" opinion. I'm now a much stronger person and find myself in Samoa challenged by a culture and people who claim Christianity, practice the religion of Churchianity but underneath are actually no different to any other people group in the world.
Apologies here to the Samoan orators who speak kindly of the Samoan Culture and how we are founded upon God.
So the idea that in Samoa just a little bit of evil is required to achieve good is pervasive. "Good" Christian, churchgoing people believe this little lie. I know, because they practice it all the time around me. It is so insidious it gets into your veins and attempts to pollute your soul, day in day out. Someone steals from you (again). The Samoan way is to deck the guy. Should I? I want to but when do I stop after I've decked him? I actually want to kill him but where do I start and stop the violence. If a crim gets caught before he's got a blood nose, broken jaw or lost a front tooth, he is very grateful. One guy I knew and helped catch even got decked my another of my "mates" in front of the police. They intervened and arrested the first guy from worse than a saw jaw to save him, but only after he'd had "enough" of a hiding!
So then it comes to bribery. A common practice here. Do you sit back and wait and wait and wait while they deliberately hang you out to dry or do you succumb to the ways of the people - a little bit of evil, and "Nobody minds. It's just the way things are done here!"
I used to stew over such ethical dilemmas before, but I haven't for many years. I'm still constantly tempted but I choose to do it the ahrd way, and the right way. It means that life can be tough at times, but I sleep at night. Some people, especially in positions of power are embarrassed and secretly despise me, but, as one of my staff had a habit of saying "Too bad!" When supposedly doing God's business here (I think I would have scarpered a long time ago if I didn't believe that I was called over here) the bottom line is that if I do business with a liar or a cheat, they are lying to God and cheating Him. Some call it Karma but I think that this is exercising real faith and it is true Christianity at work. I'd like to hope so anyway.
I popped in to the markets last night (Saturday) and did a deal with a lady for 20 keke pua (That's pork buns for you Palagi, except they're not Pork. They're lamb but that's another BS story and I haven't got time to go into it as well!)
The conversation went like this:
Me: Can I have a discount please? [Always ask for a discount over here. You'll get 5-20% depending on the product and the vendor and the margins]
She: No, sorry no discount
Me: What about for quantity [I love them and would freeze them]
She: How many?
Me: Twenty Tala ($20.00 WST) for 20 buns [money on the counter - the sight of money always does little miracles here]
She: OK [hands me two bags that look very suspiciously like a lot less than 20 buns]
Me: Ummm, excuse me for asking but how many are in here?
She: Twenty
Whereupon I took the bags and walked 12 feet, sat down in full view of her and started to eat one. I checked briefly that my intuition was right. Sure enough one bag only had about seven buns. So that means that there would have been maybe 14 or 15 buns. Not good. So now I knew that I had a thief, and a liar. Well of course all thieves are liars unless they 'fess up at first confrontation of course.
So then followed one of those magical moments in life when a confrontation occurred and a reconciliation and a lifetime friendship developed. OK so maybe that's an exaggeration or an unlikely extrapolation, but it could easily be the case.
So I explained how I knew that she had cheated me and how I knew that she had lied, and how bad this was especially as I bring lots of Palagi to the markets, and how I had confronted all the other people who had lied to me (and I pointed them out, literally) had all been caught and how they had all apologised and would never do it again (at least to me!) and that every time I come here I expect her to be kind and friendly and generous to me and my guests and so on and so on.
It's anybody's guess how sincere the apology was and she could easily do the same to many others but to me and my guests, she will greet all my guests with a big smile and greet me by name. That's just a little bit of love shared out by saying "No!" A little bit of evil is STILL a little bit of evil. Anywhere. Any culture.
Some say that I should have just gone away and let bygones be bygones. I could have just said to myself - "Bloody Samoans, they're always ripping the Palagi off!" and left it at that. But if I let it go, then another Palagi could get done again in the future, and the crook wouldn't have got caught and found out for who she really was - a thief and a liar.
As I said, it may work out as a great story in the future because I'll be taking all my guests now to her stall. "[Real name] is my friend and she'll look after you!" will be my introduction. And I'll monitor the deals VERY closely to make sure she never does it again to any of our guests. Who knows. Actually God knows. I can say this because it's a Sunday and this is Samoa - a country founded upon God, they say.
Here's another iteration of the ethical challenge. I'm involved in business in a country that makes an art-form over fleecing the Palagi. A country that's middle name is greed and trust doesn't exist, except in rare pockets of purity, seemingly locked away from the mainstream here.
I've received constant advice that all my business ideas - some of them quite revolutionary for this country - are locked down legally "because the locals will copy you and rip you off!" And it happens all the time here. When caught - either stealing or cheating or lying - they say Oh I'm so soooooorrrrrrry. Will you forgive me? And are all supposedly repentant. But they carry on doing it all the same when your back is turned.
Debbie and I have chosen to do the opposite. We set up the SWAP Foundation here to help build business post-Tsunami. We're opening up new business ideas and giving them away. We're running a Seminar shortly at Savaii to train local businesses on value-adding. How to do better business rather than trying to get more business and making a bigger bad business, sort of thing. I know that we can double, triple or sometimes quadruple bottom lines with only a small amount of work and minimal investment. Of course there are business opportunities resulting from this for us, but if we try to keep all our secrets, they'll copy them, do them badly and hurt us all as a country. Instead we want to train, teach and engage with local business. The idea is that people are better off working with us in the long-term than stealing our ideas and trying to be selfish about it - the default setting in Samoa unfortunately. We demonstrate this principle by doing what we preach - giving and trusting, being open and generous. Then we're honest, smart, work hard and have faith. We expect to see gradual change and then when the word gets out, we expect to be seeing major influence. We don't skite about it or talk it up, but it will surely happen some day.
How do you eat an Elephant? One bite at a time. We've got a massive mission ahead of us. We can't change the world by tomorrow, nor Samoa and its ingrained culture and ways of doing things, but how do we end up changing a culture for the good (even one that has strong social and customary systems in place to protect the inherent "little" evil)? Blessing just one person at a time. One business at a time. Day after day after week after week. And there came a time when the Lord Himself laid back and said ". . . it is done!'
We can't force change. We can't negotiate change. It has to come from the heart, but a very VERY big motivator in this country is money. They don't have any. That's why they beg and steal and covet so much. When the businesses we work with increase their profitability and others around see what blessing results from doing things right, we know what will happen. Word spreads like wildfire here especially if a Palagi is involved, and especially if there is money at stake.
They say you can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink. Granted, but you can sure as
But our conditions are clear. Get your house in order first. The Bible makes it abundantly clear that if you're not living a righteous life, God can't bless you. It's not up to us to be judge and jury in these matters but common sense must prevail. A very high profile tourist attraction here has two families fighting over their popular tourist business. They think they are winning and have their patches all marked out. The reality for thousands and thousands of Palagi visitors however is that these two families are secretly laughed about and mocked and viewed as fools! When they attend our seminar we will make it quite clear - settle your differences before we will help you with marketing because we don't want to be a party to petty squabbling that has gone back to your grandparent's days. "Get your house in order and we'll work with you and help you", will be our message. That's how change for the better can occur without big budgets; without government support and by just one man who shares a vision to his wife, who supports him, who then shares to friends, staff, businesses, eventually to a country and to the world.
It sort of sounds quite biblical in a way - one Man gets the message and goes out to the world one at a time eh?
Look I'm not the Messiah, but He does encourage us to follow His teaching and example. I'm not too thrilled about the Cross bit, but hopefully that will be a few years down the track!
So I choose to do it right day by day regardless of my feelings. The day that I succumb to "just a little bit of evil", is the day that I lose the clear conscience I have (no matter how deluded some of my detractors think I am!).
It will also be the day that my testimony as to the power of the Lord to work miracles in peoples' lives, if we only but listen to Him and do the right thing, will vanish and lose its integrity. It will also be the day that I step on the slippery slide, just as Adam and Eve did all those years ago and listened to a little lie and lost it all.
Whoever said that God and business don't mix
I'm aware that there are now people reading my blogs who do not share the Christian faith. I trust that you're finding some gems hidden in amongst the God-talk. As I share in my book Lipstick on a Pig, biblical principles are healthy and still apply without the Christian faith. It's just that the relationship with the Father is missing without the faith.
Thanks for tuning in here. More excitement from Paradise will surely follow!
Tagwords: evil
