Hello from Samoa!

PhD Candidate Tanya Volentras arrived into Samoa for fieldwork and sent us her reflections. Her supervisors are Professor Rosita Henry and Associate Professor Simon Foale.

Arriving in the early morning and driving through the slowly wakening villages towards Apia, the capital of Samoa, chicken and pigs roam freely, fishermen paddle canoes, old ladies and men tidy up leaves that have fallen overnight, and school kids await colourful buses in their formal lavalavas (sarongs) and school tunics. We pass countless churches, all shapes and designs, a clear indication of the Christianisation and early missionisation of Samoa, with Samoa’s motto being ‘In God We Trust’.

I am here to try to determine how everyday Samoans are responding to the challenges of climate change, and whether, like the I-Kiribati, as written about by Kempf (2011), they are using music and performance as a means of expression, negotiation and sharing of concerns about climatic events. Yet, climate change is just one aspect that is concerning about Samoa.

There is a lot of rubbish, not around the neatly tended houses in the villages, but everywhere else, and numerous throwaway shops selling cheap plastic knickknacks and toys. There are a lot of cars in Apia, more than when I lived here as a child, and a McDonalds with a queue of cars snaking onto the street.

I want to buy food, and the supermarket items are expensive, giant triffid-like chicken thighs and legs (twice the size of those found in Australia) are imported from the US, cereals and cans of mackerel from NZ and Australia. Only onions, garlic, ginger and carrots are affordable in the supermarkets, with lettuce and broccoli too overpriced to bear buying, though the local market has vendors selling cucumbers, eggplants, tomatoes, beans and bok choy, as well as sweet finger bananas, pawpaw and a crunchy tart fruit called vi.

On our trip to Manono, a small island halfway between the two larger islands of Upolu and Savai’i, we catch a rickety boat squashed in between about 10 chiefs of my extended family, and climb the incline where our family houses are located.

The old matriarch, Lesa, 90 years old, hugs and kisses me, remembering me as a child, her blue-cataract eyes gleaming, as she shows us in to her fale/house. It’s breezy here, a lovely respite from the humidity and heat and I adore the way she has decorated her ceiling with multiple colourful tropical print cloths. In her fale, there’s only a bed-frame with a mat on it, 3 wooden chests which likely contain some of her personal items - perhaps some fine mats, some precious photos - and a small table with a tumble of items on it, mosquito coils, a plastic bag, a newspaper. I notice a neat bundle of pandanus, wound and ready for drying in preparation for weaving, and I say to Lesa, ‘’I would really like to come back and stay for a while. I’ll help out, maybe with the weeding, or gardening, the harvesting and preparation of cocoa, taro or breadfruit, and also your weaving’’. Her delight and surprise is plain to see, ‘’You want to learn faa’Samoa (way of being Samoan)? ‘’Yes’’, I say, ‘’yes please’’.