samoa: the funny bits

I took the weekend to get over my writer's block. I figured I would leave the holiday promotion stuff to Lavinia Nixon and her Getaway program. Instead I have decided to provide snapshots of the funnier bits of Samoa

My flight into Apia also carried weighlifters from New Zealand, China and Italy. At first I thought they were rugby players, I was going to Samoa after all, but no these guys were on their way to the Pacific Rim, Commonwealth, Oceania and South Pacific Weightlifting Championships. The very strong Chinese contingent probably should have been a give away that they weren't rugby players.

As I mentioned last week, Apia isn't full of tourist attractions so it was that I found myself attending an afternoon and evening of the weightlifting. I haven't been to a weightlifting event before and the highlight of weightlifting on TV is Darrel Eastlake's commentary so I wasn't expecting too much. A good thing as well, the weightlifting wasn't overly entertaining. At least the organisers had paired locals villages up to different countries and their vocal support, especially the village supporting the lone Italian, was entertaining as was the tension as the "local" hero, Nauruian Peter Yukio, narrowly missed out on gold.

The highlight of the Championships were the medal ceremonies. The two categories I watched had 8 and 10 competitors respectively. It seems all 18 received at least one medal. Some received five or six medals, and the number of medals was in no way a reflection of performance. Invariably the Chinese guy won, but before he received his gold medal for the Pacific Rim section of the tournament the medals for the Junior and Senior Commonwealth, Oceania and South Pacific Championships had to be awarded. So the kid from Tuvalu who finished last in the afternoon stepped up to the podium for silver in the Junior South Pacific, bronze in the Senior South Pacific, bronze in the Junior Oceania and bronze in the Junior Commonwealth sections. He was a very happy boy. Even the Italian guy got a medal just for showing up. Obviously, it was all about participation.

To fill another day, Jess volunteered me to wait at the house for the plumber to come and fix a running tap. I am not sure whether I should say plumber or plumbers, for 15 minutes after the arranged time (very prompt for Samoa/Tonga) a ute pulled up bearing about six people.
The first to the door was obviously the boss. He drove the ute, introduced his team, found out what the problem was and gave instructions. Didn’t touch the tap.

The second, third and fourth guys were young and obviously the lackeys. On the boss’ instructions they scurried around outside turning off taps, unblocking drains, etc. Didn’t touch the tap.

Next came an old guy with a sack of tools, the plumber. He proceeded to take apart the tap and put it back together with the random assortment of tools he had in his sack and using bits from the spare tap Jess’s step dad had brought over.

It was more like a military operation, but still the tap was broken again before I left two weeks later.

It was nice to be able to settle down each morning with a cup of coffee and the newspaper whilst I was in Samoa. I could do that in Tonga, but reading the headlines alone would take me all day, there are no English language papers here. The Samoan papers use English as their main language, but that isn't to say they are in English. There were some highlights though. Most notable during my weeks in Samoa was the debate about the legality of homosexual relationships. Sex with somebody of the same sex is probably already illegal in Samoa, but that didn't prevent a substantial amount of debate and name calling in the letters to the editor section with some people particularly concerned that homosexuality was spreading like wildfire" and in a manner that was in direct contravention of the Constitution. Samoa is founded on God after all. After a few reads it also became obvious that the people featured in the vox pops where also those in other stories. A great piece of lazy journalism.

Driving on the wrong side of the road, as they do in Samoa, took some practice. Amazingly our one crash in Samoa didn't involve either Jess or I driving. The bus did it all on its own, but that didn't mean there weren't any dramas whilst we were at wheel. A number of times I smashed my hand into the door looking for reverse, which of course was on my right and not my left. Similarly corners and rain caused similar antics as I never quite got the hang of which side was my indicator and which my windscreen wiper. This normally wasn't particularly unfortunate, but one night while we were driving home Jess was admiring a small gecko on the windscreen when it came time for us to turn a corner. To screams of "Sam!" I realised too late what I had done, the poor gecko was whisked from the windscreen by the wiper I had mistakenly cued to indicate that we were turning left.