Sunshine And Sequins
Sydney Morning Herald
Saturday October 13, 2001
Samoa has exquisite beaches, magnificent green hills, friendly people - and a penchant for drag, discovers Louis Nowra.
Every book I read about Samoa warned me to be prepared for Samoan time - that is, a much more relaxed way of going about things. The great thing about flying Air New Zealand was how it prepared us for Samoan time by forcing us to wait in line for two hours at the Sydney check-in.
By the time I was on board the plane I was also prepared for something else. I had seen a documentary on the fa'afafine, Samoan men who like to dress as women, and found myself sitting near one of them who looked very fetching in a tight black skirt with a necklace of gold-wrapped chocolate eclairs. The fa'afafine may have been a fashion and confectionery victim, but certainly won the fashion stakes compared with the rotund Samoan women on the plane.
Traditional Samoan legends talk about the initial steps in the creation of the world. First there was nothing and then there was fragrance. This makes little sense until you step off the plane at Apia airport late at night and your nostrils are filled with some of the most beautiful scents you can imagine, a potent blend of the sea, vanilla, night flowers and unpolluted air. My first impressions, as I drove to the hotel, turned out to be confirmed in the following days.
Most people live on the coast and they are intoxicated not so much by the fragrance of their island as by God. Every village has a church, sometimes several. This is such a Christian nation that villages drive themselves into bankruptcy trying to outdo the next village in building the most exquisite church. Every evening between six and 7.30 Samoans attend church, mainly Protestant and Catholic, and special guards, looking as menacing as Kings Cross bouncers, patrol the grounds and woe betide you if you happen to pass by and make an inappropriate noise.
I had booked a week at "the world famous Aggie Grey's Hotel". I had vaguely heard of her as the alleged inspiration for Bloody Mary in the Michener book Tales of the South Pacific. I was expecting something old, even colonial, but the facade is a modern addition.
As you travel to the rear of the hotel it is like descending through chronological strata. There are small, round 1950s villas named after famous movie stars who have stayed in Apia, like William Holden and Gary Cooper. Then there are the 1960s rooms, which are vivid examples of that era's brutal indifference to the human desire for curves. And out the back, where we were to stay, small villas intended to look like village houses (fale). These fale have thatched roofs, louvre windows and, as we were to discover, ancient air-conditioners.
We arrived in the early hours of the morning and did not get to sleep until about three or four, but before eight I woke with a start. It sounded as if there was a semi-trailer in my room. The cause turned out to be a bottling plant next door that used a massive generator five days a week. It was impossible to stay in the room. Thus began a saga to try to change it.
The staff were exceptionally pleasant every time I explained the situation. They promised they would rectify it and give us a new room as soon as possible. Avoiding the racket, I spent most of the day sightseeing in Apia and sitting around the swimming pool, which is in the centre of the hotel complex. Large white Europeans lay in the sun like slowly baking witchetty grubs. A nine-year-old Australian girl gained great pleasure from her father's public discomfort. As they played together in the pool, she kept yelling out "Child abuse! Child abuse!"
By the second night we still hadn't received a reply to our request to change rooms and next morning were again woken by the noise of the bottling plant. By this time, demented with lack of sleep, I spoke to the manager and - like an abrupt miracle in a fairy story - we suddenly found ourselves transferred from the worst room at the back of the hotel to the best in the front. We slept for 14 hours.
That old misery guts, the travel writer Paul Theroux, called Apia, the capital, "a squalid harbour town" and a "sorry place". Ramshackle is probably a better word. It is on the island of Upolu, the second largest island in Western Samoa, or more correctly Independent Samoa (a term which distinguishes it from American Samoa). Located before a blank harbour, this city of about 35,000 people backs on to magnificent green hills that rise up and vanish into tropical rain mists.
What attracted me were several late 19th-century colonial wooden buildings that
appear close to collapse, several of them having a disturbing similarity to the
Addams family mansion. The rest of town features the usual bland architecture
common to many Pacific islands.
What becomes quickly apparent is the pace of this hybrid mixture of town and city. Everyone moves incredibly slowly, their thongs providing a continuing languid slap, slap arrhythmic drumming in the streets. Carefree kids stroll along the sun-blasted pavements laughing and giggling or sit outside shop fronts trying to sell tubes of superglue.
There are the usual general stores, but it was the clothing shops that fascinated me. Samoans wear vividly coloured clothing, mostly with tropical motifs. I have never seen such bright, alluring colours. In fact, one shop proudly displayed the sign, "If a colour isn't here, then we'll get it for you."
Nothing about size, however. Small sizes, like hats to keep off the sun, are difficult to find. Samoan people are big, many of them obese. They live on fatty diets and they are a world away from the lean, beautiful people they were 50 years ago. Heart disease and diabetes are rampant. If the Western world is racing towards an obesity epidemic, then Samoans have already breached the finishing tape.
This is an oral culture, so don't expect an abundance of newspapers and books. The two bookshops are desultory affairs with a scattering of overpriced books on Samoa, and many religious tomes. There is a museum in one of the Gothic colonial buildings, but it is either permanently closed or keeps secret opening hours.
The streets, especially the main one, Beach Road, which runs parallel to the harbour, feature surly, emaciated, homeless dogs which at night take possession of Apia, roaming the streets, their glaring eyes filled with menace. The dogs occasionally attack people and several foreign joggers have been bitten.
They also have a disturbing tendency to keel over and die in the tropical sun. While we were there offices had to close because of the stink from a dead dog.
Some bright spark in the government decided to buy a tranquilliser gun. After several near misses, because no-one could correctly aim the thing, it was decided to shelve the project on the grounds that humans could have been unforeseen victims of the novice marksmen.
The Samoan language, although containing only 14 letters, has a beautiful, soft,
rippling sound and suits the unforced friendliness of the people. Among the Samoans we met were two men who work in the building industry in Sydney. They knew several "Sydney identities" and, boy, would they be handy in a stoush.
They had come for a holiday. One had last seen Apia when he left as a four-year-old. The day before he had arrived unannounced, and in the first shop he entered the assistant recognised him as a relative. From then on it was a moving catalogue of reunions with his enormous extended family. This tough man was overwhelmed by the friendliness and warmth of his people and you could see how difficult it would be for him to leave the island at the end of his brief stay.
My companion was now very ill with what seemed like a virulent form of the flu. A local woman immediately recognised the symptoms. She had dengue fever, a mosquito-spread disease, and there was nothing she could do but ride it out with the help of paracetamol. Dengue fever can be particularly dangerous, as we were to
discover when five recently arrived young Australian women caught it and two were hospitalised for more than a week.
The Samoan beaches and hills are exquisite, and a trip up to Robert Louis Stevenson's house is recommended. Surrounded by lush, tropical gardens, Stevenson lived in the Apia hills for five years, slowly dying of tuberculosis. "Where did he die exactly?" I asked the guide as I prepared to take a photograph. "Where you're standing," she said, providing a chilly moment on a warm day.
If there was one person I wanted to see before I left it was Cindy. For a town Apia's size, it has an extraordinary number of nightclubs, although they close promptly at midnight. I had seen a documentary on Cindy, a fa'afafine, who runs and stars in a drag act. On my last night in Samoa she was performing in a barn-like venue at another hotel. The audience would have looked right at home at Dubbo RSL.
Cindy arrived late with a large entourage. Wearing make-up, a dressing gown and
vertiginous high heels, she then proceeded to commit the unpardonable theatrical sin. She checked her props in front of the audience. By the time she was on stage she seemed ropable and at the end of the first song we knew why. "Somebody was
supposed to be performing tonight and she didn't show up!" she said vehemently.
The missing performer must have been vital, because the blackouts between acts were interminable and in the darkness all that could be heard over the sound of panicked high heels was Cindy's loud sighs of exasperation, hissed curses and threats of dire punishment. The show went on too long, but she was good, as was her
trumpet-playing tubby sidekick. Her male dancers were stunningly energetic in the tropical humidity.
At the end of the night Samoa's most famous fa'afafine came down into the audience while miming to Whitney Houston. There is a photograph of Cindy sitting on my lap. I look a very happy boy. What I do not suspect is that a couple of hours later, on the plane to Auckland, the dengue fever will strike me. The journey home was a delirious blur.
DESTINATION INDEPENDENT SAMOA
GETTING THERE
Polynesian Airlines (phone 1300 653 737) is Samoa's national carrier and has twice-weekly flights from Sydney. Air NZ flies to Samoa from Auckland three times a week, with connections to Sydney.
WHEN TO GO
Between November and April high humidity sets in, building to rain between December and January. The best time to go is the dry season between May and October. October is also the month when the rising of the palolo takes place - palolo are blue-green worms that surface from the reefs to mate about a week after this month's full moon.
WHERE TO STAY
There is a range of accommodation, from fale to high-class hotels. The Samoan
Visitors' Bureau (phone 9824 5050) has an extensive list at www1.visitsamoa.ws /places.htm. South Sea Holidays (phone 9687 8244) has a variety of flight and accommodation packages. For example, seven nights in a garden room at Aggie Grey's Hotel, including flights from Sydney, cost from $1,059 a head. Coral Seas Travel (phone 1800 641 803) also has a range of packages.
VISAS
Australian passport holders don't need a visa for trips of fewer than 30 days.
© 2001 Sydney Morning Herald
