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 2

Sit tight, fasten your seatbelt, you’re in for a little bit of turbulence here. I have deliberately waited a long time before recalling, or more precisely, recording , these events. I wanted to stand back, think, talk to a few more people, once my anger, and the emotions I had experienced, had died down. These are the events, as they happened, I will not attempt here to explain them; I will do that later. But do remember last week's blog and the changes we had made to my original project idea.

The story starts when we returned to Apia after our few days at Virgin Cove. We stayed at a very nice hotel on the outskirts of Apia, met the manager on our arrival, explained everything and listened to what he wanted us to highlight with his hotel. Whilst I would never promote anything I didn’t see or believe in, I was happy to emphasise certain points, swimming pool, gym, whatever, that a hotel wished to do on the understanding that we had seen or tried it.

I also took another of my long walks to get some more sponsorship, this time for local calls and internet, and that was all agreed. We were given a sim card and credit was to be put on it by a company called SamoaTel. Then, and I remember this so well, the next day, while we were walking through a local supermarket in Apia, my phone rang and it was the guy from SamoaTel telling me he had changed his mind, he knew who we were and what we were up to and was withdrawing the offer. He said no more except that Samoa was a small place and news travelled fast. A few minutes later I took another call from a lady who announced her name was Nynette Sass and she was head of the Hotel Association in Samoa and she knew what we were doing. Word for word I can’t repeat what was said but the gist of it was she “knew” we were frauds, that we were just looking for a free way to fund our trips to different countries and she was not stupid and we should not contact her members any more. She didn’t give me a chance to reply and that was it. Oh, no, that was the beginning.

We quickly replaced the communications company with another who had been interested in helping, hired a car in Apia and drove off to our next destination at Lalamanu. On the way, while driving, I got another call from Ms Sass which kept breaking up but she persisted until she had got her message across that she would never let us get away with this and, I remember this bit perfectly, “I’ll get you”. Interestingly, much later, we found out her son worked for SamoaTel.

By now I was really angry, not an emotion I often feel. I have no objections to people not wishing to help us, I have no problem with people not liking what we were doing and I can even cope with someone misunderstanding our intentions. As I said last week, I allowed us to make a massive mistake with this new site and I could see, in parts, where Ms Sass might be coming from, especially if, as seemed possible, she only looked at the commercial site. She did mention that there were photos on there which were totally unsuitable for children to see, which again proved she hadn’t listened when I had tried to make my point. My girlfriend, ready for Pacific Island weather, had been sponsored by a New Zealand swimwear company who had provided her with clothes, bikinis etc, in return for us promoting them on the site. I had taken a set of extremely tasteful pictures on Waiheke Island, back in New Zealand, displaying the clothes being modelled by my girlfriend, pictures of which I was extremely proud, and the company had really liked them too. They had nothing to do with education at all, this was the up-side of splitting the sites. To Ms Sass, who is, or was, a member of something called Apai Hash House Harriers, don’t ask, where her nickname was sassygirlbj, with bj fully explained on their website, my pictures bordered on porn; in my humble opinion, having read her site, a bigger hypocrite you could not find.

Anyhow, we stayed in Lalamanu for a few days and then returned to Apia, having been offered a couple of nights in Aggie Grey’s Hotel, perhaps the best known hotel in the Pacific. We arrived back late one night, checked in, and arranged to see the owner, who was the son of the Aggie Grey, who opened the hotel in 1933, or his daughter, another Aggie, who now ran the hotel, the next morning.

Sure enough, the next morning, a Saturday, I got a call from reception to come down and speak to the owner. However, when I got down there, I was confronted by two policemen and an extremely rude and abusive guy from the Australian embassy. I never discovered who he really was or remembered his name but did find out he knew Ms Sass very well. He told me that I was a fraud, we should pack our bags and we would be taken to the police station. I asked if we were under arrest and was told no. I went back upstairs, accompanied by the policemen, told my girlfriend, explained we had no choice about what we did and packed and left. We were allowed to leave our belongings behind in the hotel, but were forced to pay for the two nights we had been offered in the original deal.

Once at the police station, we were sat down and nothing much happened. They checked our passports. The first policemen we saw was unhappy that we had no press pass or something hanging round our necks to say who we were. The fact that in our passports was a work permit from New Zealand Immigration saying we could work for two years in that country for the One World Foundation of New Zealand seemed to pass him by. We pointed out the emails we had sent to Fijian, Tongan and, indeed the Samoan government some months ago, telling them we were coming to their country and explaining the work we did. This seemed a bit stupid if we were trying to ‘scam’ free accommodation. I think this one registered with him, especially as we had a reply from a Samoan government minister telling us we would be welcome.

He studied everything and went off to make phone calls. We managed to sneak a quick glimpse of Ms Sass’s email to her members. One thing she told them, in the quick look we had, was that she had phoned the One World Foundation and they had never heard of us. As we had set the bloody thing up, were its founders, were registered in New Zealand, it could be that she phoned a different One World Foundation; other brands were available, or was a little bit of a liar. Our problem, now, was how do you prove you are who you are to people who want to believe, and have someone who has convinced them they know best and is telling them, something else.

As we sat around, another problem was looming. We were due to go to the local TV station for an interview very soon. It was finally agreed we could leave, they did ask if we would be talking in the interview about what had just happened but we became politicians and said it was arranged some time ago, which was an answer to their question, though actually failed to answer what they wanted to know. They must have been impressed as they gave us a lift to the TV studio.

Of course, as soon as the journalist heard what had happened, she forgot about the project and wanted to get to the bottom of all this. She told us she wasn’t in the least surprised about the behaviour of Ms Sass; she had apparently had some success exposing scams in the past and her stock had risen. Unfortunately, as she later discovered, this time her stock would be added to the stew she created. Our now friendly journalist also gave the impression that she might have a bit of a feud on with Ms Sass. With hindsight, we should have been wary of this. After hearing of our adventure that morning, we then told her about the project, she checked some things out and could see we were very genuine and told us that she would run the story very soon but give Ms Sass a chance to air her side too.

The camera crew then took us back to the police station as we were still not officially free, though not, of course, under arrest. Good news, though, there was a new shift now on and we had to start all over again. Our new investigating officer was far more efficient, told us he could find no evidence we were breaking any laws or were running a fraud. He told us we could go and explained that the hotel had now changed their mind too, after he spoke with them, and we were welcome to go back and they would give us a free-of-charge room for another two days, refund the money we had been forced to pay when they threw us out in the morning and we would be most welcome at their seafood buffet that night, for free again.

On our arrival, Miss Aggie was again most apologetic and said she should have actually checked the facts first herself. She showed us the whole email she received and it was ridiculously filled with lies and innuendos. It stated that a “high ranking officer at the New Zealand High Commission” had verbally told Ms Sass they were looking out for us too. With Miss Aggie’s help, on the Monday, we phoned the High Commission and they said they had never even heard of us and, to be honest, why should they have done?

After two nights at Aggie’s, we took a taxi to the ferry and set out for Savai’i. It was early November 2007 and we planned to spend a few days there and then fly on to Vanuatu and be back in New Zealand well before Christmas. We had arranged a hire car on Savai’i before we left, duly picked this up and I was asked to leave my passport as a deposit. Not my best decision, as my passport and I didn’t meet again until the end of January 2008.

Pretty soon we realised that our problems were far from over. The first resort we approached on Savai’i said they couldn’t help us, they’d like to, but admitted that if they did they might lose their membership of the Hotel Association, which they couldn’t afford to do. It would appear that there was a certain amount of fear being spread by the Head of the Hotel Association, and the last two letters of her surname took on a sinister new meaning. We were now being treated as crooks, despite having been proved to be totally innocent. We felt watched and hounded, and it was horrible. My girlfriend didn’t handle it at all well, switching from deep depression to intense, and somewhat irrational, anger. It was for me to try to keep this project alive and give her support and deal with the very emotionally draining situation we were in. Ironically, a similar feeling came to me a few years later and, funnily enough, this time it was my girlfriend, by then ex-girlfriend, who did the hounding and spying. She had “learned her lesson” totally differently to the way I had.

Eventually, we found a little resort that wasn’t a Hotel Association member. We had, while in Apia, decided to ask a young Samoan who spoke pretty good English to come over and act as our interpreter as we were told Savai’i was more tribal, less touristy and, if we wanted to find things out, there might be a language problem. He arrived the following day. With all the problems we did consider just leaving Samoa and going straight to Vanuatu but I am not a quitter. I’d done nothing wrong and I had a job to do, although it was becoming very difficult to be a nobody just trying to find out about ordinary lives when most of Samoa seemed to have been told something different. All that was missing was the wanted poster on every tree. I forgot to mention, by the way, that on our first visit to Apia I had gone to see a representative of UNESCO and he was most helpful. However, while we were here, someone else from UNESCO phoned us and said they would no longer be able to help. We didn’t need their help, we just felt it would be nice, so I didn’t really care. As the guy was called Abel Cain, I felt he had a personality crisis anyway, and left him to try to kill himself (joke).

While staying at this resort we met the local pastor and he suggested we visit the local primary school. We gave a talk, played our song and the principal thanked us profusely and said what a great opportunity it would be for them to work with us. She hoped we could because they had no computers and we agreed they could send their work hand written (thereby pleasing someone I’d admire – 2013) and we would arrange to upload it to our site. She blessed our visit to Savai’i and said if we came back in 3 days time, on our way back to the ferry, they would have some work for us.

We moved on, heading to the north of Savai’i. On the way we saw a sign saying swim with the turtles, so we did. We found a place to stay where the owner agreed to put us up. He was, or had been I can’t remember, an MP. He knew of our troubles, who didn’t, but said he was happy to help. The following day he spent an hour or so with us discussing Samoan life and culture. More worryingly though, when my girlfriend was at reception for something, one of the staff said although she couldn’t challenge the decision of her boss, she simply did not understand why he decided to let us stay. She added she was going to write to the Hotel Association as in her latest diktat, Ms Sass had asked that if anyone saw us they should tell her so she could keep track of our whereabouts. Our friendly interpreter, telling some fanciful story about having to meet his boss had left us that afternoon, promising to return the next day with his boss who wanted to meet us.

Our last full day started with another visit to a school but when we returned we discovered that some money my girlfriend had in her bag, about NZ$500, had disappeared. We didn’t know exactly when but it seemed to coincide with the departure of our friendly interpreter. We couldn’t do much about it. as we had very little petrol left in our car and the only garage within miles had run out, although delivery was expected soon. We did go for a short drive and who should we find a few miles down the road but the guy who had been translating for us. To cut a very long interrogation short, he admitted taking the money, said he had caught a bus to the main town on Savai’i, bought new clothes and got drunk that night and given the money away. He had none left.

I actually can’t remember what happened to him next except he promised to repay it, getting it from his rich uncle, but somehow disappeared again. We decided that the next morning, when we left, we would also go to the main town, we had to so that we could return the car, pick up my passport and catch the ferry, and contact the police.

We would, happily, then fly out of Samoa. Eleven weeks later, we did and next week and beyond I will take you through some of those eleven weeks and if you needed your seat belt for this week's turbulence, I suggest a roll cage and HANS device for the future. The full body armour can wait till the final part.

By the way, it would appear from some stories I read last year, that old saasybj is still sticking it in where it’s not wanted. Read this. Certainly, in my dealings with her, she never worried about including the truth in her utterances. A guess and blind stupidity seemed her idea of making a factual statement, in my humble opinion.

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