TASHY TRAVELS

Every Sunday, I am going to upload a post about the different countries I have visited and/or lived in since 2002.

I can assure you of some interesting stories.

SAMOA 1

These next blogs, about Samoa, are not going to be the same as the preceding ones. We went to Samoa for three weeks and stayed nearly fourteen. In the later blogs I will explain why and also let you share a little of the nature of some of those who have power in that country, or did during my time there. It was also, I feel, the beginning of the end of my relationship with my girlfriend, with whom I had worked on our project for over 6 years.

This first blog will cover the time we spent doing the work we had set out to do and give the background to why things may have gone wrong. Future blogs will take you through the story that extended that three-week stay for another eleven. Enjoy, because I didn’t. I must add that this is my view, my opinion, as I saw things but, I have to say, I was more involved than anyone else.

I didn’t enjoy Samoa from the moment we arrived. I will admit, and you will discover, there were some lovely people there, ordinary people; there were some fascinating cultural things to see and some of the scenery was good but, even if our troubles had not happened, Samoa was way behind Tonga and Fiji in terms of beauty. We arrived at 1.00 am in the morning. Thirty minutes after we arrived, the airport closed. Information, tickets, customs, all gone. All that was left were about a dozen taxi drivers, ready to charge a ludicrous amount to take you anywhere. None of this is helped by the fact that the main city in Samoa, Apia, is about 25 miles away to the east of the airport.

We had arranged to stay at a place called Virgin Cove and this would require a journey into Apia and then out again and across the middle of the island to the south coast. Samoa consists of two main island, Upolu and Savai’i. Savai’i, if I remember, is about one and a half times bigger in area but only has 25% of the population. Apia, the capital, is on Upolu as is most of the government. Back at the airport about 50 people had refused the taxi drivers’ offers and decided to stay the night in the waiting area of the airport, which did remain available, till the cheaper buses ran. We stayed as well. We slept on an upstairs floor. Correction, one of us slept. There was no way I trusted anyone or anything in a place I had never been, so one of us kept watch.

The next morning we took the minibus to our resort. My first impressions of Samoa, as we drove through the villages, was that they had a building crisis. Many of the houses, or fales as they were called, only had walls which went halfway up. I later learned this was partly because of the hurricanes they had in this area. One, you only had half a wall to rebuild but, two, it meant you didn’t have a solid wall to take the full force of the wind. There were no hurricanes while we were there so I couldn’t see the theory put to the test. However, we did, much later, experience an earthquake. We were asleep in a hotel bedroom when I awoke and saw mirrors on the wall moving and actually felt the room shake. Not wishing to ask my girlfriend if she had felt the earth shake too, I left her sleeping. The next day I asked if anyone else had noticed this and I was told that a magnitude 6 earthquake had been experienced.

Our accommodation at Virgin Cove was amazing. That’s our one-room fale, the bed and the Pacific. You rolled down shutters at night, but could, obviously, still hear the ocean. There was also an open-air shower for general use, with only a shoulder-high, dry-stone wall assisting your modesty or protecting your exhibitionism, depending on your personality and assets. We were due to stay three nights and we had another weaving lesson and then spoke with some elders in a fale some way from the sight. We were told to bring them gifts if we were going to ask questions and this was a difference from the experiences in Fiji and Tonga. We talked for a while but I felt these people didn’t really want to let us in to their culture; they were cautious, holding back. The only thing we really found out was that the Palolo festival would take place that night.

I had read about this and was wondering if we would be there to experience it, and we were. This beach doesn’t look like this at night, not too surprising there. In fact, at night, normally, it would be pretty dark, even with moonlight. But the night of the Palolo spawn was different. From about 1.00 am, we had several hundred people, all carrying nets and buckets, walking past our fale. They were on their way to collect the palolo worm, or at least the reproductive part of it, a local delicacy which appears once a year, near the full moon in October or November. We had walked over to the beach, following these people, most of whom had, by then, walked well out into the water and by dawn, people were returning. We were able to look in the buckets and see what they had managed to collect. One guy even allowed us to taste one raw. My memory is telling me, interesting. Apparently it wasn’t a particularly good harvest but, regardless, the next day there were celebrations and feasts all around the area.

After we left Virgin Cove, we spent a couple of days in Apia, where we arranged to a hire a car and then drove down to another beach resort at the other end of the south coast, at Lalamanu. Here we had another fishy experience because we were sitting around talking one afternoon, in the resort, again right on the beach, when a big black shadow appeared, seemingly drifting along about 4 yards off-shore. Suddenly, and most unusually for any Pacific Islands we had been to, there was a scurry of activity. Samoans came running out of their rooms with nets and buckets and waded into the water. Five minutes later it was all over, but that night we had a dinner of a whitebait type fish.

While there, we also met the local tribal chief. His was a fascinating story. He really did lead the village. He told us the men would come to him in the morning and he would decide who would go out fishing, who would work on the plantation, who would do repair work in the village. He would keep a check on everything that was going on. I seem to remember he gave us something to eat or drink that was really special but I cannot, for the life of me, remember what it was. I shall keep thinking.

We then made a brief return to Apia with the intention of heading off for a week to the other island and then finish our Pacific journey in Vanuatu. We had an appointment with the TV station to do an interview but, because this was the beginning of the most amazing set of circumstances, let’s just say we did the interview and caught the ferry to Savai’i. It was about an hour on the ferry but fortunately the pairs of animals were not on show. Seriously, I don’t think the ark pre-dated the ferry by too many years. What is more, it was packed and hot, very hot.

We disembarked, once the dove didn’t come back, and set off to look for accommodation. I forgot to tell you, Digicell, the local mobile phone provider, had agreed to sponsor us, so making calls, where there was reception, was no problem. I did have to make an hours walk and an hour back to visit the guy at Digicell, alone obviously, but it was worth it, and hot. Back on Savai’i, we found a delightful little set of about 6 fales and the owners were absolutely fantastic. The first night we saw a beautiful sunset and things were looking good.

The next morning we were given a beautiful fruit-filled breakfast with the most incredible backdrop. In fact, looking at the photo, it almost seems to have been painted. We stayed three nights, managed to visit the local disco/club one evening and arranged another car hire deal. We then moved off and headed for the north coast of Savai’i and stayed at a resort owned, I think, by one of Samoa’s MP’s. On the way we stopped off and swum with turtles. The worries that were now building means I forget where, how and even why. So, that is where I will stop my story because there are things that happened in Apia of which you need to know and from this point, in Savai’i, it went to an unbelievable level.

Right, I have stopped at the point where, had nothing else happened, we would have returned to Apia and then flown on to Vanuatu, our fourth and final Pacific Island destination. Unfortunately, well before this point, there had been some very disturbing events which we thought we could now forget but how wrong can you be?

The following will give you some background information about the situation. In order to offset the cost of the project we had, ever since we started in Australia, asked for, and, in most cases, happily been given, help from various organisations in return for a brief write-up on our website. Everyone who had given help by way of accommodation, food, the chance to visit an attraction etc., had received exactly what they had been promised. The companies helping us had a specific section on the learning website, wittily named by yours truly as ‘travomation’. The write-ups or reviews, 95% written by me, were put up within a week or so of us experiencing them. We had a few people who refused and I had no problem with that. We never, or at least I never, applied pressure. I asked, they chose yes or no.

We had completed our journey around New Zealand in late September 2006. By then, all reviews were in place. The educational material on the site took longer to do and it was during the months of November and December 2006 and January 2007 that I had worked on this, ready for the new NZ academic year which would begin in February 2007.

For each country we would visit we would have three main sections. Firstly, there would be factual pages which could, if we had the time, be written beforehand. They covered

the flag and the anthem
the climate
the terrain
the economy
general facts – population, area, GDP etc
the government
laws

I was responsible for writing all of these excluding the law section but, my partner was Polish, English not her first language and, as we were an educational site, I had to edit, and where necessary correct, her writings. The above sections would, where appropriate, for example climate and terrain, be illustrated by photos we had taken during our trip around the country

The second section was written and illustrated with material and photos obtained during our journey. It would contain information we had found out about the topics we had decided upon, which were:-

customs and traditions
language
looks and clothing
values and beliefs
food
homes and buildings
sport and games
people

As far as writing went, this was a more equal split with four each but again I edited and corrected where necessary.

Finally we had three blogs intended for lower secondary pupils (13-15), upper primary (9-11) and younger kids (5-8). I wrote 90% of these; in fact all of the blogs for the youngest and oldest and most of the blogs for the middle group.

We also had 12 projects for schools to do, all set out with instructions on how to do them, teachers notes and learning objectives that would be covered by doing these projects. All 12 had been written and designed by me.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I am not boasting here. I am simply stating facts because those facts do have a significant bearing on what happened to us later. Having said that, I am absolutely amazed at the amount of work I had carried out in the year in Australia and the two years in New Zealand; remember we also spent five months travelling. Furthermore this work was not often done in anything approaching ideal conditions.

So, in those months covering the end of 2006 and the beginning of 2007 I had been writing all these sections, coding them into, and designing, our website and making sure the 100 or so reviews for our sponsors were still OK. At the time we had been given a room, kinda underneath, in a house on Waiheke. Sadly our room, where I worked, had no internet connection but the owner had her own computer upstairs, which did have internet. This was where my partner worked, writing her four sections and dealing with a load of personal emails she was receiving at the time. I would code something for the website, copy it to a memory stick, take it upstairs and my partner would upload it and tell me if my coding had worked. Usually, it seemed as though it did.

While she worked up there, she had also decided that we should now separate the sponsors from the educational website. She came up with a new name, snapshotsfrom, registered a new site, and graphically designed how she would like the site to look. It then became my job to convert her designs into an actual website, which I duly did, again coding blind so to speak. I am now very aware as to why she wanted to do this. She had always hated the fact that she was not my equal in this venture. When we started working together she insisted I told no-one that I had done the coastline project. She wanted people to think all ideas were ours not mine.

By the end of January 2007, we had two totally separate sites and that was where we made a massive mistake. I had gone along with it because I had always been unhappy about sponsors appearing on an educational site. But, I had not really given it any thought, being far too busy with the educational part of the main site, which is why I detailed above all I was doing. This new site, as well as the reviews, also contained her views and writings about clubs, raves and night life in general that we had experienced. She had asked for tickets to these in return for putting a write-up on this site.

My partner also decided that we could build this tourism site by inviting people to submit their own reviews as they travelled. She suggested, and I told her while I would upload the info onto the site, I wasn’t interested in how it would be run, that people would summit us an example of a review of something they had experienced while travelling, a meal, accommodation, an attraction and, if she approved it, they would get a snapshotsfrom pass which said that they were registered with us and her idea was that they could then ask for sponsored deals as we did.

Seeing it written above, it is dumb for so many reasons. Firstly, and most importantly, it split the educational site, my baby, from the one detailing those who had helped us. They no longer were so closely connected to the project. I should have realised this. Secondly, by offering the opportunity to others, it began to look like a ‘get-a-freebie for a bit of writing’ idea instead, as I intended, for companies to help us, and only us, run our project. Again, I should have been stronger in stopping this but I was far too busy with the educational site and also trying to get sponsors for the next stage and liaise with schools.

Therefore, we arrived in the Pacific with a massive educational website about New Zealand, with all the topics above, innumerable pictures and illustrations, and projects from schools in New Zealand, Australia and Poland. Then there was this other site, totally separate as far as names went, with hundreds of reviews of restaurants, accommodation, attractions and things to do, which also just covered New Zealand, and a piece that invited others to contribute to it in the same way.

As we travelled through Fiji and Tonga, we added more material to the snapshotsfrom site, including our deal with Air Pacific to fly us everywhere, while we collected information to add to our educational site at the end of our journey and ready for the next academic year, starting, in New Zealand, in February 2008. By now I was writing all the reviews, my own potty guides too, while my partner was adding her bits about the night-life.

So, when we got to Samoa, these were the sites that we could refer potential sponsors to and we also carried a letter from UNESCO in New Zealand stating that they supported the aims of our project. Before we had left, I had also arranged a meeting with a UNESCO representative in the Pacific Islands and he was, unfortunately as it turned out, based in Samoa. Tomorrow I will go back to our first visit to Apia, after being at Virgin Cove, and the start of a sequence of events, built on what I would like to think was a genuine misunderstanding, but growing into a series of horrifying and unbelievable turns, which escalated because of the ignorance and incredible stubbornness of certain fairly high-ranking people, or at least some with delusions of such positions, in Samoa. And it culminated in some of the most disgusting, vindictive behaviour I have ever witnessed. It was my first experience, personally, of journalism that is solely done for sensationalism and so full of lies to be ridiculous. Something I recently experienced again with a so-called trainee journalist, allegedly; but one who had no morals and little writing ability either. I also came to realise that my partner was no longer an asset to the work but an incredible, self-inflicted liability.

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