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 5

One of the things I found most horrifying in Samoa was the freedom of the press. Normally I am very much in favour of this but when that freedom is abused, when papers think they can print speculation as truth, opinion as fact and can bully, defame and libel without regard for those they are condemning, I no longer feel that freedom should be permitted.

One of the first things we did when we arrived in Samoa was contact TV and newspapers; I say newspapers but there was really only one national one. A journalist came back to us and they ran a very good piece explaining exactly why we were there and what the project was about. This was before the intervention of Ms Sass. The TV interview you already know about, but what became interesting was to learn that after that first newspaper article, Ms Sass rang them up and asked why they had been taken in by us.

But worse was to come. Any of the following text in italics is taken, verbatim, from a piece in the national paper. My comments and observations appear in normal typeface. There can be no doubt that the media was used in a hate campaign and also that they were happy to manipulate facts and influence people. The fact that the paper made no attempt to show the truth wasn’t just bad for us. It was the only paper in that country and Samoans relied on it for information. What is the use of doing that when you find out that your paper is lying to suit someone else’s agenda?

Alan Ah Mu, pronounced like any cow would say it, was a journalist, and may still call himself that, but I have to make this clear because he wrote more in the style of, perhaps, a Nazi propaganda minister, inciting his followers, readers, to take the law into their own hands. I think most journalists would steer well clear of such language but not old Al. His writing that I witnessed back in 2007/2008 had not reached the heights that would show an IQ of any human being at all.

His first article began, under the heading “Being nice does not mean dumb” (perhaps the worst title choice ever on later reflection). I will only quote bits but it starts like this:

When Samoans extend hospitality and activate their good nature, the recipient will certainly know about it. I don’t think he meant that Samoan good nature is normally inactive but he’s not too good with grammar. He then goes on to say that this generosity is an element of the culture. Dubious characters are given the benefit of the doubt and treated kindly. But being hospitable and nice should not be seen as a weakness. A mistake is to believe that these qualities, presumably of kindness, equate to a non-possession of brains.

He refers to us as a foreign couple. He points out that Samoans are not dumb and that as they can travel they are knowledgeable about passports and what their contents mean. He refers to something that the car rental company also made a big thing about and that was that I was lying about ever having been to NZ, because there was no stamp in my passport showing entry to the said country. Literate Alan may be, numerate he was not. The date of issue on my passport was July 2007, issued when I was actually living in NZ and replacing my old ten-year UK passport, which had expired. Dumb? Alan thinks, so he says and we have no other evidence at this stage, that Samoans often have a good laugh at the expense of a liar, he was by then implying we were liars by the way, something of which he had no proof nor ever found any, but then he said there is a barrier beyond which continuous attempts at conning will not be tolerated. When that stage is reached, he wrote, foreigners will see a side of Samoans no one wants to see. That may include Samoans themselves. But it happens. People need to understand this says Alan. I would point out to Alan that Goebbels ascribed the events of Kristallnacht to the “healthy instincts” of the German people. I hope Alan wasn’t trying to say the same thing and degrade his own people.

He went on to say that by the time the Police are contacted, a person who has broken the lie barrier too often would probably be beginning to understand why the natives of Samoa win so many medals in boxing at international sporting events in the region.

Now, does anyone else see this as having been a direct threat to us. A suggestion, maybe, that Samoans will, or even should, beat us up. Is that what you would expect in a national paper? Is this a journalist writing? Fortunately the Samoan people, the ordinary ones, do have a healthy instinct and we were treated so beautifully by nearly everybody after this story was written. Being dumb does not mean nice, to paraphrase, and thank you Alan for proving that.

By the way, when we finally returned to New Zealand to try to put together a story, all the archives of the Samoan Observer for that period had gone missing. How strange, you may think? Not if you had experienced, as I had, how people with power and influence could behave in Samoa. Luckily I had copies, and still have.

Alan was not that popular among his own people, as a blogger in Savai’i had once written that “Some people should never ever be allowed to write, for any sort of media. Alan Ah Mu comes to mind. As to why Sano Malifa (editor of the Samoan Observer) allows this dude to write Editorials is baffling. I’d happily get my 13-year-old cousin to write an editorial, or better yet, correct Ah Mu’s articles. She goes on “Firstly, he makes such degrading and bitter generalisations about people. Without getting his facts right”. Could this have been true. Could old Al be guilty of such a thing? Degrading and bitter generalisations and incorrect facts; surely not good old Al.

However, Al spotted he might have actually, stupidly, quoted a few lies which could be disproved, such as the thing about my passport, so he sensibly shut up and never wrote another word about us. Although, as he was the associate editor he may had been involved in the next piece of journalism that appeared from a guy called Mika something or other, I seem to have not noted this down. Mika is a real expert on talking down to everyone and, of not letting facts get in the way of a good story or at least his telling of it. In that bastion of truth and good taste, the Samoan Observer, award-winning paper (last award, in 2013, being given in 2001, by the way and as the only national paper in Samoa, it is possibly more of an effort not to receive one) old Mika writes an article on the 13th of January headed “The abuse season is upon us”, and celebrates this fact by indulging in his own particular brand of abuse.

“Last week’s reported incident of a British travel writer couple abusing our people’s generosity is one that gets my blood boiling”. And does it boil? Boils, bubbles and steams so much it blocks his view of the truth completely. Firstly, of course, we are not a British couple nor are we travel writers nor do we abuse, unless sponsorship in kind is abuse. Also by January 13th, the police, the commissioner and everybody in authority had accepted that everything said about us was a lie and we were completely innocent. We were only still in the country because their police were ineffective in upholding the law and getting back my passport. By now everyone knew we ask for financial help from hotels etc in return for promotion on our website and that everyone who agreed was given exactly what they were promised. Doesn’t seem like abuse to me, but read on, Mika gets better.

He then gives a quick guide to becoming a travel writer. All you need to do is think and act like one, have good listening and conversational/listening skills. If you have those things then you are made. The next step is to create your own international press pass that include sponsors like UNESCO or World Vision”. No doubt, as Mika was earlier stating that “not many travel writers are as bad as this couple” he was insinuating that this is what we did. His travel writing knowledge seems a little slack, shall we say? You do not “create” international press passes – they are issued once you prove your writing experience. Additionally no one includes on a press pass any sponsors like UNESCO, World Vision or any one else.

If he had wanted to tell the truth, and confirm his hunches, he could have asked us and discovered we don’t have international press passes anyway. We did, a few years back, but we simply stopped paying the membership as we found it a bit useless. As we wrote for websites and had the material we wrote in the past as proof, we didn’t really need to wave any press pass to convince people that, if we promised material would be written, it would. Furthermore, as we also put contact numbers on for our sponsors, any of them could have been contacted to confirm things. Much later, we discovered that police in Tonga had made enquiries, following Ms Sass alerting Interpol, of one of our sponsors there who had happily confirmed that we had provided exactly as promised and even done more by producing a video for him about his resort, something not part of the deal. We would show people evidence of our past and they would make their decision based on this. There is no proof, even if you have the press pass, that your writing will be published.

Then he says “what better way to travel the world at basically no cost while earning good money by syndicating any article you write splashed–dashed with some captivating photos of the natives taken with the cellular phone camera”. We never syndicated anything nor made money out of them. We wrote reviews for a free access website in order to support the One World Project and thank people who provided us with their help. We also didn’t use cellular phone cameras, I think, in those days, he may have been overestimating those devices if he thought that anyone could take captivating photos with them. Personally, I still don’t but that is my personal view.

Then, in the most patronising of words he proceeded to say, “and if the natives understand a bit of English, are friendly to palagis and smile a lot when you tell them what a great people they are, then half of your job is done”. I don’t know how Samoans felt about this description, or indeed any other natives but Mika seemed to imply that they are pretty stupid and all they can do is sit and smile for the camera. Maybe that was why he felt he should write like this and, with his penchant for a lie in every sentence, the stupid natives he wrote for wouldn’t notice. But they did.

Next, he went on to say that we used someone else’s writing, downloaded from well-known travel websites, in order to convince people to get freebies. There is no way I would ever do that. Funnily enough, after my girlfriend and I split and she went on her way and added a piece to what was now her snapshotsfrom site, since discontinued, it was exactly as Mika described; taken from travel sites elsewhere with almost every other word linked to another site. But I would never, ever do that. I write what I see. My son-in-law, lovable rogue that he is, recently read one of my blogs. “Had to stop after a while”, he said, “it was too much like you talking to me”. He did add “suppose I have to admit it is was well written if it actually sounded like you”. There, I promised him a short mention.

Seriously though, that was the point of all of this. It was me, writing in my style, with my crap jokes, or clever use of English if you have my brain. But it was not lifted from anything except possibly ‘I’m sorry I’ll read that again’, Victor Borge or Eddie Braben. So, if Mika wasn’t a liar he must have found some website which contained the same content as we had on our site. Let’s assume he really did. Of course, as he seemed to belong to Ms Sass’ Fan Club, he would never take into account that someone else could actually be using my writing. If these were well-known websites, I have to say I would also be quite flattered. I would have loved to ask Mika for proof of all he wrote but by now I didn’t believe anything anyone in the media or authority said.

It is true that many Samoans don’t have access to the internet but using this fact to convince them or influence them in their views by making up stories, claiming these are facts that you have checked on the internet, was very unfair to his readers. I wonder if Mika studied at the University of East London in the UK, as one of their students did this a couple of years ago too? My own ex-girlfriend also may have got the idea for this when she produced a website so full of lies and made up stories and insinuations that I had no choice but to alert the police.

Mika eventually reaches his natural level, just below the gutter and deep in sewage, and done with such consummate ease that you almost think he had been doing it all his journalistic life. He states that “staying with local families and focusing on young children, should have rung alarm bells with the authority”. In recent years, there has been a rise in the number of people LIKE THEM (my capitals) discovered working in Asia as part of an international paedophilia ring operating in a very similar fashion. And what better cover to have than to pass oneself off as a UNESCO friendly person interested in education and culture. Nynette Sass of the Samoa Hotel Association is exactly right. This was about as sick as you can get although he doesn’t actually state how Nynette Sass is right. His implications were disgusting and the fact that no member of the Samoan government condemned it spoke volumes. Furthermore, apart from being against any code of ethics (the Samoan Observer often prints these to remind their readers of them or possibly because when reading the stories their journalists have written, they may not be aware of any ethics at all), it is guilt by implication when a pathetic writer has no proof but wants to try to manipulate his audience.

Finally, Mika advises people to check information about us on the Interpol website. Was it Ms Sass perhaps who suggested that this is where you could go to get some stuff on us? She or her colleagues certainly went that way. But I can assure Mika, as Interpol assured me, that there isn’t, and never has been, anything about me on any Interpol site.

It was quite an incredible experience in Samoa and you may, if you have only read this one, like to go back a few blogs and see the whole thing. It had a lasting effect, and far longer than I realised, on me, my work and indeed, my relationship. And in all honesty I could never, ever recommend that anyone travel anywhere near Samoa with the people who I had the misfortune to meet and who either run the country or in positions of power or imagined power. It was pretty shocking, but not all that surprising, when after we split, my girlfriend behaved in a very similar way. We had, I guess, both learned lessons but in different ways. She copied the disgusting behaviour we had seen while I became far more cautious in trusting anyone.

Back to the top

Break