Misadventures in Paradise - October 25

American Samoa is a Territory of the United States. Most residents of American Samoa are “U.S. Nationals.” They have U.S. passports, but they are not U.S. citizens and they don’t get to vote in U.S. national elections.

Samoa is an independent country, having gained independence from New Zealand in 1962. It was called Western Samoa until 1997, when it adopted the name Samoa.

Before 1899, the Samoan Islands existed as one political entity. Most of the residents of Samoa and American Samoa share their culture and their language.

In  2011 Samoa moved to the western side of the International Date Line to better align itself with New Zealand and Australia for purposes of communications, trade, and travel.

Map from Polynesian Cultural Center

Here is a close-up map of the Samoa Islands. (The International Date line bends in the opposite direction on this map. What’s that about?)

Map from Wikipedia

We docked in Pago Pago, on the island of Tutuila. It’s pronounced “pango pango.”

“Talofa” is similar to “Aloha” and means “welcome.” Singers and dancers welcomed us at the dock.

We were signed up for a tour with a local company called Best Tours. This tour was not arranged through Princess. Our tour involved a visit to a small island called Aunu’u.

Our guide met us and led us to a bus. The guide’s name was possibly Fa’a. I couldn’t hear him very well when he introduced himself and I forgot to ask him later.

Many of the buses in American Samoa are made out of wood. Our bus was no exception. We sat on uncomfortable wooden seats made out of plywood. 

Fa’a told us this was his first time leading this tour. I thought he was joking, but he wasn’t. He started reading out loud from a sheet of paper listing the important dates in the history of American Samoa. After no more than three minutes of driving we began to notice a fishy smell. We were approaching the Starkist Tuna cannery, one of the largest employers here. We also began to notice a loud noise - some type of siren. Our bus stopped behind a line of cars. We found out there was some kind of tsunami drill going on at the cannery and the road was blocked off for 35 minutes. By this time I was beginning to realize how uncomfortable it was to sit on a piece of wood.

We drove along a road that hugged the coast. The seaward side surprised  us with beautiful scenes of rocks and ocean, lush vegetation, and an occasional sandy beach. The inland side consisted of steep mountainsides and dense jungle. Every so often there would be a ravine tucked between two steep slopes, or a little point of land jutting out into the sea. if there was enough flat ground, there would be a cluster of houses there - maybe 10 or 20. The houses were usually modest, square one-story cinderblock structures. Sometimes the houses were tidy and well-kept, but many of the houses were dilapidated and looked abandoned. There was often some rusting junk in the yard. 

Many houses had graves of family members within a few steps of the entrance. Many of the headstones looked very expensive. I guess people here don’t ever sell their houses.

I noticed that most of the vehicles I saw were fairly new, large American pickup trucks. I saw shiny new trucks on the road, in front of prim little houses, and in front of falling-down houses. Pickup trucks seemed to outnumber cars about 4 to 1. Most of the cars were 4WD.

Every cluster of houses had a church and a fale. The church was always the nicest building in the neighborhood. It was hard to believe that such small settlements could each support a church. The fale was a sort of community hall. It was always open on the sides. Some were nice, some were run down. 

A typical fale in Pago Pago

Occasionally a settlement would have a school or a small store.

I did not notice any tourism infrastructure, such as hotels and restaurants. The famous Tisa’s Barefoot Bar, which we passed on the way to Aunu’u, appeared to be closed. We didn’t see any botanical gardens or gift shops or statues or scenic lookouts.

I did notice a LOT of trash on the ground, especially when we got to Aunu’u. More on that later. But for the trash and junk cars, Tutuila was a gorgeous, unspoiled island.

I also noticed that everyone was very warm and friendly, and many people waved at our bus. It could be they were waving at our driver. This seems like a place where everybody knows everybody else. But it did seem to me as though they were actually waving at us.

When we arrived at the place where we would board our ferry to Aunu’u, we were in for a shock. The “ferry” was a miserable little  piece of scrap metal and scrap wood. Actually, there were two ferries, as our group of 14 was too large for one ferry.

The water was very rough and it was challenging to board the ferry because there wasn’t a proper dock. The boat pitched up and down as we stood on a stone wall and tried to leap on board in synch with the boat. There were little wooden benches to sit on. Some of the benches were not actually attached to the boat. I clung to a pole to keep from falling off the boat every time we hit a wave.

We were inside a small breakwater and the operator of the boat had to wait for a certain point in the wave action to gun the motor and try to get out into the unprotected water before the next wave came along. Once out into the ocean we rode up and down the troughs between the waves, making slow and frightening progress to Aunu’u, where another breakwater was entered and the risky boarding process was repeated in reverse. At least we had life jackets, but I would have liked a whitewater rafting helmet, as well.

After jumping from the bobbing boat onto the shore, we fell to our knees and thanked God for getting us there safely. Well, that didn’t actually happen, but I’m sure somebody thought about it.

We walked a short way to a place that seemed to be a small town square. It was deserted and the houses there looked like they had been hit by a bomb. There were piles of rubble everywhere. Upon closer inspection I could see that a lot of the “rubble” was broken coral, so maybe that was the natural surface material here. 

We found out that the island had endured a major tsunami in 2022. perhaps the damaged buildings resulted from the tsunami. Perhaps all of the trash on the ground was also a testament to the force of the tsunami. But I wondered why nothing at all appeared to have been done to clean up afterward.

We walked to another town square where a man was sitting on a plastic chair in front of a small building. It wasn’t a house; it may have been a storage shed or a chicken coop. The man was, presumably the village chief. I don’t know if he told us his name. A young man translated as the chief gave us a traditional welcome in Samoan. Chairs were brought out for us and the chief explained to us the process of cooking in a traditional underground oven.

We were shown how baskets and trays could be woven out of palm fronds and we saw a breadfruit tree and learned about how breadfruit was used.

The chief gets ready to weave something with a palm frond

A breadfruit

We were shown a well that served 4 or 5 houses in the square. It was an uncovered cistern that was apparently fed by an underground spring. Several hoses came out of the well and supplied the nearby houses by means of a sump pump. The water didn’t look that good and a young woman who was showing us around said there were small fish in the water.

Can you guess what happened next? Ken and I both decided we did not want to eat the lunch that the nice women in the village were making for us.

Before lunch Fa’a took us down a pleasant path to show us the island’s taro fields. Apparently this is the only place in American Samoa where taro can be grown.

Taro field

It seemed like Paradise. Papayas, bananas, breadfruit, and coconuts seemed to be plentiful. The taro seemed to grow without any effort. Chickens wandered around, happily laying eggs. Fish would swim right into the nets of the fishermen. One of the young Samoan women who showed us around was asked if Samoans had vegetable gardens. She said they were too lazy to grow vegetables. Checks from the U.S. Government flowed freely, too, we were told.

Papayas

Coconuts

We then walked a short distance farther and came to a beach where there were robust waves and rusty metal.

Then we walked back to the village, past the school. The children were thrilled to see us. They posed for photos and waved and told some of the ladies in our group “We love you.”

One of the nicest houses in the village

The elementary school

While on a path through the jungle, when we had fallen behind a bit, we heard a sudden great thrashing overhead and then a big crash. We realized that a coconut had fallen from a tree a few yards a away. It was large and hefty. It could have killed someone.

The ground was covered with trash almost everywhere on this island.

Trash

I never learned if this was a result of the tsunami, or if this is just how things are. Paul Theroux visited American Samoa decades earlier, and it was his impression that the trash was a part of the culture here. In the old days, all trash was compostable, and throwing it on the ground was not a problem.

This was not an issue on Aunu’u alone. I saw many junkyards and derelict buildings on Tutuila. The islanders clearly knew how to bring new cars to the island, but they hadn’t developed a system for disposing of them. This is not surprising, considering the cost of removing junk cars from Samoa. There is no space for a landfill here.

Back near the well, we gathered on the porch of a house for lunch, prepared by some of the village “aunties.” It smelled delicious, but Ken did not eat anything. I only ate an orange. We did, however, try the delicious coconuts. The liquid inside had a sweet, fresh taste.

The lunch consisted of grilled breadfruit, grilled plantains, taro, grilled chicken, a fish stew, some greens, fresh fruit.

Loving that fabric!

Everyone else in our group loaded up their plates and ate heartily. I never saw anyone else from that tour for the rest of that cruise. That is not unusual on a ship of 3,000 - but I couldn’t help wondering whether they were ok after that lunch.

While we ate (or didn’t eat), a couple of teenage boys fanned us to keep flies away. This is their job when the elders eat, we were told.

We never saw a bathroom this whole trip - though, to be fair, we never asked for one. I think there may have been one in the house where our lunch was cooked.

Of course we had to return on the same “ferries.” This time, Ken and I ended up on the other boat. We were the last to board - although we had not been the last in line - and I had to sit on a wooden box that was not attached to the boat because the fat Americans from the waka nui (cruise ship) had to man-spread all over the benches - benches which were attached to the boat and were near poles you could hold onto - and they each took up one and a half seats without apparently realizing it. Ken squeezed in uncomfortably between two fat, sweaty men, and we both thought the other two gentlemen were going to move over and make room for me, but it soon became clear that chivalry was dead, and I was damned if I was going to ask them to make room for me. I did a pretty good imitation of a martyr, telling Ken he should stay in his seat, and I would be just fine sitting on that box over there where I could watch the engine, and breathe some fumes, but the point was lost on most of our fellow tourists.

Such a lovely box

It was while I was watching the engine that I realized that it was not possible for the driver to see where we were going. The young Samoan man standing on the front of the boat must have been signaling to him somehow.

This has gone on far too long, so I am going to just stop here. We are alive. We survived both ferry trips, and didn’t even get wet. We dodged food poisoning and water-borne illnesses, and we were not bonked by coconuts. Hallelujah! 

Today’s fabric is Monstera Leaves - Earth, by Michael Miller Fabrics.