Facing fairly severe "reverse" racism at times in Samoa, I've had to adjust to a different way of doing things from my ingrained patterns of behaviour. Justifiable indignation and defensive aggression must be replaced with another approach - one that more closely resembles grace. I call it here "Showering 'em with love". It's a tricky subject that'll have you thinking!
I've got to speak simply with the locals here. English is a second language, and to be frank, intellectual concepts just don't wash around these joints. I mix with people who sleep on the concrete floor amongst mosquitoes, dogs, pigs chickens and suchlike. Some will shoo the chickens off the food preparation areas and this is just the norm in rural Samoa Pic: The Airport Lounge (inside shot showing some of the 9th Heaven Wood Crafts on display) opening August 27 2010.Talking about biblical concepts of grace and love is like trying to explain to someone in New Zealand that there's actually nothing wrong with throwing rubbish out a car window on the central streets of Auckland or that it's normal to shoot the neighbours dog because it came on your property or that it's fine to deck someone in a pub because they annoyed you. It doesn't wash. It's a big cultural "Ummm, what are you ON about?"
So discussing concepts of the law vs grace is just a mite tricky here. I've found other ways to communicate.
A young guy who worked for me for a few months started off pretty well, but eventually lies and theft got a little too much. He was actually a 'crim' we found out later. We nailed him, brought in the cops and he ended up facing the judiciary over what he did. It's a long story but he was guilty guilty guilty and he knew it. I raced down to the courthouse where the judge was almost certain to send him and his girlfriend away for quite a long time and four minutes before he was called before the judge I slipped a note before the prosecuting officers and asked for an adjournment. Granted.
Outside, my translator and new security guard (Force) and I had a little chat something along the lines of "Well we've spared you from prison this time. All we need is a little honesty and a confession and apology and things can be very different for you". We organized a couple of confession sessions for the both of them for later that same day and they went like this:
"This is your chance to clear the air once and for all. Fess up and play straight and we'll all stay out of jail but even just one lie and we'll leave you to the cops and you'll be in jail within a week."
The girl came in all apologetic and sorry. First question an apparent straight answer. Second question again an apparent honest innocent answer. "Oh yes she was there but it was the others who did it". After half a dozen questions I looked at the boys and said "We've got a lot of evidence to the contrary, she's lying through her teeth! Everything is just BS and we warned them. Let the cops and the court deal with her". We all were shocked that someone could be so dumb as to choose to lie in a situation like that and then end up years in jail as a result, but sure enough, it happened!
So the guy arrived and watched the tail-end of the interview where his girl was sent off back to be dealt with in the courts and go to jail.
The same thing happened with the guy. Exactly the same thing! He started off all meek and humble and apologetic and then spat out lie after lie after lie! We were speechless. After we sent him off to be dealt with by the authorities we just sat back and said to ourselves, these guys are just dumb - they don't get it - both of them! And sad to say it's common over here.
Your first thought here might be, "Well what do you expect dealing with the rif-raff of society. There are losers in every culture!" I used to try to balance that one out too, but how do you explain nine requests for meetings by phone and email over three months with other officials and they are too busy to talk or meet or even ask what it's all about. Then they ignore your invites, and requests and then are sometimes just downright rude to you? The list could go on and on with people who have played games with me, make it hard for me, all many times just because you are a Palagi!
Force had a few problems working it all out. He would see things that he hadn't seen before - crookedness, bad attitudes and so on towards me, a Palagi who was actually one of those good guys and didn't deserve what he was getting dished up (so he told me he was thinking). But I knew. I'd spent half a year working it all out . . . It's racism. Reverse racism from the Palagi perspective.
I've mentioned it before in more detail in other posts, but there is a deep seated contempt, perhaps even going as far as to say a hatred of the Palagi here. Oh sure, they smile and love you to bits when you've got some money on the table, but turn your back and it'll be gone in a jiffy without a thought. They'll intermarry and play the game and emigrate and banter with the Palagi in New Zealand, Australia and the States but something inside doesn't trust us (I'm mean trusting the Palagi!).
There are of course lovely people here who would die for you - you know the traditional Samoan hospitality that we all love, "It's an honour to serve you sir!" type of thing but when you dig deeper it can get a little bit more hairy!
So we had a situation just recently where Force had an epiphany. We came out of a meeting. Four of us. Force, Tasi, myself and another relatively high ranking official. We did our business in only a few minutes; the guy was gracious enough to see us and dealt with the issue professionally and politely and then we chatted for quite a while. We talked about what we were up to, how we were helping here and there and had ideas, doing a bit of training and so on. On the surface everything was cool.
On the way out, according to my mate, this educated young man who apparently had traveled through rugby events chatted to Force in Samoan along the lines of [nudge nudge wink wink] "Once you've got the inside knowledge of this guy's (my) business then you can kick him out eh?"
The epiphany Force had at that moment? Samoans really don't like his boss. (Well his mate and his boss I guess you could more accurately say.) Here was a young guy Force, who has yet to really live, who has never been out of his country, tagging along behind a Palagi who has taken him for a meeting with the top man in Samoa (the Prime Minister himself no less!) who within half an hour is challenged by another educated well traveled Samoan in a high position of power who has an attitude along the lines of "Rip off the Palagi and get as much as you can before you dump him eh?"
Whew!
Force of course (being the good guy that he is) informed the
I must hasten to add here that while I've had problems around the PM, he himself was very helpful this time - gracious to see us and to hear us and support us. People tell me that he comes across pretty cold with perhaps an overly efficient approach to business He was certainly happy to open our business next month - as well as to support the SWAP Foundation as our Patron. In some ways you couldn't ask more from the man. So no brickbats to his quarter this time!
The question then is how does a Palagi deal with this racism/contempt/hatred thing, especially when a large part of your motivation is to help?
The first and most logical thing is to just get out. "Why bother?" one would probably think. "If they want to be stupid and bite the hand that feeds them, let them be and just go away!" And I can tell you the thought has more than crossed my mind . . . it's knocked the blinkin' doors down trying to take over my mind, every time I get frustrated, get stolen from or treated like an animal.
And there is good business logic to that line of thought as well. The dollar difference means that a buck in the hand elsewhere is worth two or three here, and it's a lot harder to earn a buck over here - lacking skilled staff, a culture that makes it difficult for the Palagi to get established is always going to be a hard one to make a buck in. Internet costs are coming down but in one day I can still kill the equivalent of a weeks wages on bandwidth, and that's even avoiding YouTube videos and big graphics.
But there's a real big stumbling block to jumping ship and it's that I'm actually meant to be here. I know it and others around me know it too. Apart from the faith aspect to coming here I can clearly make 100 times more of a difference to the world here in Samoa than I can outside of it. Time will tell how much and who knows exactly what is around the corner but it's starting to make sense being here, almost like all your experiences in life lead up to a major life change and I'm having a lot of fun all of a sudden!
The concept I have been teaching here is essentially the biblical one of grace. Extending grace to those who on the surface don't really deserve it. It's a biblical message, one that Christ came and gave of Himself for us even though we deserved it not, but it doesn't have to be a faith issue it can be simple logic. I give two examples here . . .
First looking at the young man who has probably made a very big mistake yesterday. All I have to do is name him, shame him and his career could be seriously damaged. Deliberately undermining and attempting to corrupt a relationship between a Palagi boss and his staff, in a government building, with a witness present is not the sort of thing that a Samoan politician or government employee would want bandied around the Internet. Mud sticks and Palagi talk about who is who, who can be trusted, how to do business here and so on. Knowing who he was and his true attitude toward Palagi could easily undo his reputation, certainly amongst the Palagi businessmen here. I'd love to return evil with evil. I could have a lovely war with someone like that and make a point sticking it to him.
But this idea of showering someone with love goes much further than just sticking it to him with evil. I can get revenge . What say if I know that we can help a close family relative of his in the marketing of their new resort and that I do so graciously knowing that their family has tried to "do" me but that I've tried to help his family no matter, then I can get into his conscience much more. Say if he walks in on a meeting and his family introduces me to him as a lovely guy who is helping them get their business on the Internet, then his face could go white with guilt.br />
Given some very possible scenarios, it's perfectly possible to achieve evil with good! Showering a situation with love does have the potential to sort things out, much quicker and better than fighting hate with hate. And there need be nothing religious about that tactic - it's just logic.
The second approach however is the religious one - God told us to forgive, so OK then I will. And He told me to love my enemies so I will love them. I hate religion with a passion because amongst other things it can make things sound so dull and boring. But the fact is that by loving our enemies we open them up to both the blessing and the curse of God, according to how I read the Good Book anyway. So this is how the "God thing" worked with the young guy and his girl caught stealing from us . . .
The police had mucked up the investigation. (Believe me, this happens a bit over here!) We found this out through our own investigation. We found out later that the prosecutors themselves had questioned the case in that there was quite a lot listed as stolen but only a few little charges were laid. Somebody hadn't done their job properly. (Surprise!) So inadvertently by walking in and interrupting the court case like we did where they may have got a year or two behind bars, we opened them up to the possibility of a revised court case in which they would possibly get the maximum seven year sentence.
I wasn't to know the details of this at the time, but a big part of the sessions of forgiveness with them was the fact that they had lied to the Lord. Everyone is a Christian of sorts over here so these sorts of conversations are fine in this culture. They had stolen from us, but in effect they had stolen from the Lord. By giving them an opportunity to say sorry to Him (verified by full confession and true repentance) then the Lord would bless them and things would go well. I was just the messenger setting down my rules - fess up and go free or lie and go to jail sot of thing.
This is the biblical message then - respect or fear the Lord and receive blessing. Fight against Him and do it wrong and you'll end up being cursed. The Bible paraphrased!
So if they just happened to get a bigger sentence after having been spared, given another chance and then both screwing it up, this was probably the hand of the Lord on the situation - not my idea.
This then are the two secrets from which it is possible to justify "showering 'em with love". A simple pragmatic secular justification of the principle and a more biblically based "do it for God" approach.
I like the fact that doing good can be justified by logic as well as through faith. It kind of makes sense really. Showering 'em with love also sounds quite New Agey too. This idea might become quite popular one day.
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