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 4

The passport. Once again you need to read previous blogs to know where we are but if you remember I had left my passport as security with a company who had loaned us a car when we were on Savai’i. In return for the car, we had agreed to give them a whole page on the Samoan part of our snapshotsfrom website and they had handed over to us a CD with their logo and a few other things they wanted mentioned. When we had our problems with the money theft, we had been forced to leave Savai’i before I got the passport back. As soon as we were on the mainland, we phoned the car hire company and were told that the owner’s wife was coming over to Upolu a day or so later, and she would contact us and give us the passport back. By the end of the week, nothing had happened but we then learned that they had now put in a complaint to the police on Savai’i, about us obtaining credit by fraud, as that is what the sponsorship deal had now become. They would not return the passport till this was cleared up.

We tried to get in touch with the Savai’i police, those nice people with memory sticks around their necks but no internet, but couldn’t get an answer. So we went to the police in Apia, explained this and also asked whether they had any luck in finding our thief. “What thief”, they said and it transpired that the Savai’i police had sent nothing across despite their promises, but more about the theft later. I had now decided that Vanuatu was a miss and, when my passport was returned, we would fly straight back to New Zealand. At no time did anyone ever come back to us from the Savai’i police.

Finally, in desperation, we went and saw the Police Commissioner in Apia. It took him less than half an hour to dismiss the complaint against us. He wrote to us and the company saying there were absolutely no criminal charges against us and no question of any fraudulent behaviour. But nothing happened. Then the company had a new idea. We could have the passport back if we paid them about £1,000, which they claimed was damage to the car. It would have been totally impossible to cause that much damage to that car anyway. Giving just one example, all the wiring was loose in the driver footwell and there was the chance that sudden braking could disconnect the whole electrical system, and that was just the bit I remember.

I asked the rental company for an invoice. They couldn’t send it straight away but a week later we got, not an invoice, but the copy of a letter that the company had sent Ms Sass, who would have guessed she was involved, which detailed to her, their claim for compensation against us. I have kept this document so let me repeat some of it here, my comments are in brackets and not in italics:

Dear Nynette (it begins) We extend our sincere appreciation to your extensive efforts in not only safeguarding the Hotel Association Members but also the support businesses for the Tourism Industry as a whole from people visiting our country pretending to be either representatives of Well known International Organisations such as UNESCO known for assisting our community in various projects or Representatives of International Organisations indirectly supporting well-known international organisations such as UNESCO. (You interpret it yourself OK) We provide below the information for your perusal as requested. (note the “as requested” bit).

Then there was some text, which covered the history of our relationship, by the way in case you hadn’t spotted it, we are the pretenders mentioned above, and the setting up of the agreement etc. Interestingly, in view of the above, the company clearly states that when I phoned I claimed to be a representative of an organisation whose goals and objectives support the goals and objectives of UNESCO and that UNESCO is aware of my organisation. Seems bordering on the truth there doesn’t it? The gist of the next bit is that, having decided I was dishonest, they continued to Ms Sass by saying

We are quite thankful for your assistance and as requested submit our proposal for compensation as follows: and it is all detailed. Make believe damages, make-believe expenses but, best of all, because they had now cancelled the sponsorship agreement without letting us know, a charge to us of an amount of £200 for the CD of their logo they had given us. Following this, the owner also went to the papers to tell them he was finding it hard to survive, which, to me, looked like justification for robbing someone.

The letter finished: Once again we sincerely appreciate your sincere (fingers down the throat here chaps) efforts in protecting the Tourism Industry as a whole through your capacity as CEO of the Hotel Association in Samoa. The involvement of Ms Sass was now blatant. How did she know we had the car from the PK Rentals? Samoa is a small place and she obviously likes to know things. She does not like to know, though, what we really do. She still seemed not know about the existence of the One World Foundation of New Zealand and still claimed there was only one genuine One World organisation and we didn’t work for them. She confused a tourist website with an educational website and pointed out we have no cultural information of any value on the tourist site. She was also amazingly happy to share her ignorance publicly through the local papers.

Then we went to see the deputy Prime Minister. He told us this had happened before to another couple who were charged a vast amount for their hire car when they brought it back and he had been able to intervene and get their passport returned. He told us to leave it to him. This was just before Christmas and we never heard from him again. The car rental company had now decided they would not talk to us and all communication should go through their lawyer, except, they didn’t have one. They said they would give us a contact to the lawyer after New Year but on the 5th January we were told that they would give the contact of their lawyer only to our lawyer, not directly to us. We didn’t have one, and certainly by then, couldn’t afford one.

By now I gave up with Samoan justice, it didn’t seem to exist to me, and phoned my son back in the UK. He spoke to the foreign office and they, I believe, politely informed the Samoans that it wasn’t my passport, the Queen had lent it to me as a British citizen and she wanted it back. Eventually we got it back but the owners of the car rental company made a big thing about handing it over, and somehow the other TV station, they had two and one liked us, just happened to be in the immigration offices when it was given back.

Next day we were summoned to immigration, given the passport and told to be on the next flight. Not quite that easy. There was the court case with the thief, who had now been traced. We had to arrange matters with Air Pacific. We told him it could take a week but, the other problem was that our visas were now overdue, something in all this excitement we had forgotten. Can you blame us?

The nice lady on the street corner with the fa’afini agreed to talk to immigration about it and she went along to speak to the head guy who had given us back the passport. He agreed to a 14 day extension and also, so she told us, chatted her up, invited her out and booked a hotel for the night, presumably with a Hotel Association member. Our friend didn’t take him up on his offer, otherwise we might be Samoan citizens by now.

The next day, his date wasn’t till the weekend and 3 days away, we went to pick up the extensions for which we were lovingly charged £50. He also offered to book our flights but discovered that he couldn’t because Air Pacific wouldn’t talk to him. In fact, because of all the press, they weren’t very happy to talk to me but the lady in their Apia offices was one of the nice Samoans, at least 99% of the population were in this category, and she argued strongly on our behalf. Air Pacific agreed to continue our deal if we got a simple statement from the Ministry of Tourism saying they never supported nor saw any proofs of the allegations made by Ms Sass.

We asked for that letter, naively believing this would not be much of a problem. The Minister had left the country and passed it on to the CEO of Tourism, one Sonya Hunter, who eventually met us. You may recall in a blog a few days ago she was quoted as saying about Nynette Sass that “she’s not from the tourism industry and I don’t know if we can refer to her as a Samoa tourism expert”. You can check it again here. Oh, what fun. Anyhow we had met this woman before when this all started in November and she promised to investigate and write a report. Nothing seemed to have been done and she actually told us, this time, she couldn’t remember who she asked to write it. With regard to the letter, she couldn’t do this until she had investigated things but as nearly ten weeks had passed since she was supposed to have begun her investigation, one wondered what she had been up to in that time.

It seemed that she wouldn’t finish her investigation until the immigration officer had got rid of us. We explained that we needed to wait for the letter as, having had the money stolen and having spent the rest of our funding on our prolonged stay in Samoa, we were unable to pay for the tickets. She was also in a very difficult position. I had found an email, sent to her offices in August 2007, telling her about us, when we would be there and asking what help they could give. Now she may have thought she could blame the internet and emails and claim she hadn’t received this except, and this was quite a big except, I had a reply from her office saying how welcome we would be and we should get in touch on arrival or as soon as possible. Whoops, wish I had found that earlier.

Back to the immigration officer now and he said he would “pull some strings” and book us a flight on Tuesday. This was the date of the court case, just a coincidence I’m sure, about the stolen money so we asked if we could stay an additional two days but this was out of question. Air Pacific was threatened with a £5,000 fine, on what grounds I’m not sure, if they wouldn’t fly us out of the country.

But, before we go, lets see how the court case went. How do we know? Well, sadly, for Samoa, there was a cyclone in Fiji and all flights were grounded, so we got to stay for the hearing. There had been several stories about our thief’s arrest; he was, he wasn’t, but finally, nearly a month after the theft, they caught him, charged him, he confessed and they let him go until his court case. So here we were imprisoned in Samoa and he was free to go where he liked, phone us and even tell us Ms Sass had paid him to follow us but maybe you shouldn’t believe that.

He even agreed to meet me, he refused to talk if my girlfriend was there, and so I met him, in the main street, I’m not that stupid, wearing my safety belt (see yesterday) but he said he had done it because he was asked, this time he wouldn’t tell me who by, and he was sorry for me but my girlfriend deserved it. He would say no more. He said that she had annoyed him when they went on their walk. Knowing how vindictive she could be, I never told her this; she might have wanted to stay and try to find out more. He also said most Samoan men thought she was a whore (his words) and not very nice to hear about your girlfriend.

It turned out that the court case was only a plea hearing, the guy didn’t turn up and, in any case, he was being charged under his mother’s name not his actual name. It seems he may have offended before with his name, so using his mother’s he became a first time offender. Having read all this, you wouldn’t be expecting anyone to issue an arrest warrant when he failed to turn up, would you? Correct, they just said we’ve called it an adjournment and he can turn up another time.

On that same Tuesday, the Immigration CEO went on television and said we had been issued with a removal order, something they just forgot to tell us. So we left. Off to Fiji, with no onward ticket, the pulled strings not reaching beyond there, and wondering what would happen. As we walked through immigration we were handed a letter and I thought it might be the report we had been waiting for, but no, it was a document banning us from Samoa forever.

The problems even extended further, because when we got to Fiji, ready to change flights, we were taken into custody again because Ms Sass had apparently contacted Interpol, months ago, and we were on a black list. But here things were smoothed out a lot quicker, remember I had met the Tourism Minster on our visit to Fiji, though we still had to run to make the connection. When we got off the plane in New Zealand, I waited again as we went through customs but nothing. I couldn’t believe it. For the first time in three very long months, I was being treated as a normal human being.

Next week will be my last blog on this matter. I am going to reprint and explain some of the things that happened in the media during this whole stupid business. There are some truly great journalists around the world but there are also, as we know only too well in the UK, some very immoral ones. Samoa has quite a lot of these, as you will see. You can write anything you want and publish it because your boss is a friend of someone in a high place. Speculation and opinion take the front seat, with truth hidden in the back; decency isn’t even in the car.

A few years after this, I discovered that almost anyone can put on the internet any material, lies, accusations they like and it is so hard to have them removed and take action against the liars. Some time later I will write about these too, hopefully before any would-be journalist gets too far into her career.

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