Samoa

The first impression of Samoa was of a developed country, like the main island of Vanuatu, with many Australian and New Zealand tourists around (though, unlike Vanuatu, there were only tourists and no expats).

Walking through a modern-looking city, it seemed that all the ancient magic of this land, which is thought to be the birthland of Polynesians, is lost. And the advertisement brochures, held in the hands of “adventurous” tourists all around the country, look like the map of Disneyland, highlighting insignificant attractions, like waterfalls and blowholes, and omit all the thousands-years-old important archaeologic sites that are scattered throughout the ancient, mythical lands of Savai’i and Upolu.

When we travel places rich in history and see mainstream tourists looking for superficial modern entertainment, it saddens us, look stupid and disrespectful. Depending on the area of the world, it can assume different looks or nuances. Here in Samoa, tourists are like kids, having just a bit of fun on the top of the ruins of a proud, ancient culture, arguably way more important than any other in Polynesia, that casts its roots as far as three millennia in the past.

Luckily, the archaeological ruins are still there, intact, some deeply buried in the jungle. And the proud culture is there as well, actually not deeply buried at all: it just waits below the surface of the smiling faces of the Samoans, who are super-eager to share it with anybody who approaches them with any other purpose than asking for direction to the closest blowhole.

If you visit Samoa the right way (according to us), you’ll have a unique cultural experience, you’ll find hidden historical and archaeological treasures, you’ll hear legends, songs, myths and, of course, some fantasy. Various legends of ancient gods and ghosts are still very much believed in by local families.

When Samoa left us mouth open

We were sitting at our Airbnb, a beautiful private house on the hill, and taking to the host couple. Something about the weather, food, their work and life in general.

Suddenly all this normality gets on pause, it gets foggy in my mind and we all get transferred to some parallel reality: without realising how we got into that topic, our host is telling us that the small river, which we passed when looking for their home, will get more water soon, and though his neighbours don’t know it, it means that some mythic Octopus God (Tane) is coming back to the land.

Before I pinch myself, another story comes out that when some ghost got into his wife, they had to cover all her body with some green creamy material made of local plants and leave her closed inside in the darkroom for three days to make the bad spirit get out.

I swear that in those moments I felt like losing the sense of gravity and surroundings, it even starts to feel a bit blurry. It is much stronger than the cinema and all the 5D effects. And I love it. I could calculate on one hand how many times I experienced such moments of being completely overwhelmed, almost like landing on another planet. Maybe like Alice in Wonderland where animals talk and miracles sparkle around. It is a different culture, a different history, and, most astonishing, people carry those traditions and rituals up to this day.

(Note by Adriano. In most of the Pacific, even colonised places like French Polynesia, locals will always tell you two kinds of stories: “real stories” and “legends”. A “legend” means that the story is mythical and it involves things like some kind of eel-god lifting gigantic shells from the bottom of the ocean to create land. A “real story”, instead, is a story involving humans, but it doesn’t correspond at all to what our western rational minds would consider “real”: a “real story” might start saying like, “years ago a cousin of my cousin was speaking with a sea turtle” – it’s very common to add a distant relationship with the protagonists of “real stories”, just to add that missing bit of likelihood. The only places where I didn’t get told such stories are the US colonies like Guam or Hawaii, but that’s because in those places all the locals have been exterminated)

There was another story about some rocks where smurfs live and bring richness to anyone who reaches that place. (Another note by Adriano – this was the very same story that had astonished him when he first heard it back in 2010, during his first visit to Samoa, which coincided with his first contact with a culture of the South Pacific. This time, when we heard it again from our Airbnb host, we asked as many details as possible, and concluded that the “dwarves cave” is a real archaeological site, probably super interesting to visit, which entrance is through an underwater cave exactly on the north-western edge of Savai’i: the entrance is more or less submerged depending on the tide, but it’s definitely possible to visit it. This is on our bucket list for our next visit of Samoa).

There are also lots of superstitions in Somoa, most of which was very new for me. Now, I remember just one, that a woman should never leave her hair loose, always tied when it is dark or when sleeping. It is because a malicious ghost would kidnap her by grabbing the loose hair. It is not only the superstitions that are different from any heard before but also the level of how much they are still believed. I got a feeling, that if you live with locals, it is like rules, not questionable, not negotiable at all.

For anyone interested in cultural experience and Polynesian legend, Samoa is the place.

Missioners against Polynesian Gods

Outside waterfalls with tourists and city centre with McDonald’s restaurant, going into suburbs, another new trend hit our mind. It is the nightmare of how many missioners, all kind of Christian church branches and sects from the US established themselves in Samoa. They intruded this peaceful land in unbelievable numbers.

Once we were riding a public bus, and in three minutes I counted six different types of churches and lost the number of how many churches there were in total seen though the window. One church for every five houses maybe. There were Evangelists, Methodists, Seventh Day Adventist and I don’t remember the rest, neither know what is the difference between them. All those churches organise choirs, people sing cheerful religious songs, clap, sound to have a lot of fun and have picnics afterwords. This is what we can say from the outside.

There is an active silent war against the original Samoan culture happening and even bigger war between all those branches. I have not seen anything like this anywhere in the world.

Probably there are kind and intelligent people among missioners, but not many. It is awful what major damage they do to the local culture. Based on various books and comments from other people, there is no any dialogue with the original culture there, it is only “Jesus this, Jesus that” and all the rest is “sins” which must be thrown into the ocean and all local customs to be forgotten for good.

We saw the same happening in Papua New Guinea and Tuvalu. Many other countries/islands in the Pacific had this period in the past, and it is well recognised and reported that lots of Pacific cultural heritage are lost and forgotten because of Christian missioners. I did not expect that it is still happening in 2018 and to such extent.

Beyond our horror and this new tsunami of new religions and their representatives, local people, even if a bit concerned to talk about it openly, still remember their own traditions, admired Gods, nature powers and rituals.

The visit to Pulemelei Pyramid

The Pulemelei Pyramid is the largest and most ancient structure in the Samoan Islands and probably in the whole Polynesia. It is made of volcanic rocks and has a base of half the football field. But let’s start from the beginning.

Upon our arrival to Savai’i island, we started to look around in the port for any indications about how to get there. It is in the middle of a lush forest, so we knew that we needed a guide, or find out ourselves where the path starts.

Silence. Nobody could point out the direction to Pulemelei. There were many signs and advertisements of some waterfalls, some other little things, but nobody talked about the most ancient gigantic monument.

We started asking local people around, everybody was just shaking hands and running away: some said that there is no any Pulemelei, others that it is not possible to visit it without explaining why. Any more detailed questions and people were turning away from us. It was late afternoon.

Next morning, we headed straight to the East side of the island, where according to some online reviews and other bloggers, this Piramide was located. We asked people from nearby villages if there is any road in the forest and how to get to the monument. Everybody said that we cannot go and there is no road.

In the end, we did find one guy who agreed to take us there. He took a spare machete knife to get us through the bushes and we departed. He was walking first, Adriano ran maybe 10-20 metres behind him, and I was much further behind struggling to keep with their speed. I could not see our guide any more, only Adriano’s back and he was constantly rushing me to speed up.

At some point, Adriano turns around and with horror in his voice whispers “please, don’t dare to say a word or question him anything about ghosts and traditions. There is something about this place, I will tell you later”. And later he told me, that our guide had a big cross hanging on his chest behind the T-shirt and that time by time he took it out, he pulled it to the sky and made horror faces, rushing in between to get out as quick as possible.

Adriano was constantly worried that, had we slowed down, or had any little thing happened to scare our guide, he could just freak out, run away, and disappear in the woods. There was no clear path to the Piramide, GPS on the phone did not work, and without a guide, it would have been impossible for us to find the place and even risky to get lost trying to get back alone.

In the end, we reached the Piramide and when I saw our guide, he looked normal and smiling. Maybe there was some curse about the road but not the Piramide itself. We have never found out what it was all about. That is the magic of Samoa: strange things are happening sometimes, but nothing is documented or openly talked about.

We found the Pulemei mound pyramid safely covered by vegetation for future generations who have more interest in archaeological monuments.

On our way back, we visited the stupid waterfall to which all signs were pointing. As the crow flies, the distance between the waterfall and Pulemelei is not more than 500-800 metres, but the “grown up sunburned kids” having fun in the water didn’t even nearly suspect that.

Cities and suburbs

It seems that all Polynesian islands historically used to live in the houses without walls. In most modernised countries, such structures became like second houses on each yard, where people spend the hottest part of the day. We saw people still sleeping at night in such houses in Kiribati, but Samoa is too modern.

The Samoan house, called “fale”, is the prototype and most famous of every other house structure in the South Pacific.

Visiting Robert Luis Stevenson house

If you know R.L.S., if you read his books and heard about his life, his great passion for the Pacific, then visiting his villa is a must.

Adriano, back in 2010, had visited Samoa mainly pushed by the desire to see R.L.S.’s house, and that turned out the beginning of his obsession for the South Pacific: so there is something magical in Adriano’s mind for this place, and he wanted to take me there.

I had Stevenson’s book about the South Seas during this trip (“In the south seas”). To be honest, I found it very difficult to read as it is written in very advanced English.

We went to see where he lived and was buried on the very top of the hill.

The epitaph on the grave has been written by R.L.S. himself. The Samoan people loved him so much that they turned it into a song with Polynesian music, and they perform it to every visitor of the house.

Last words

Samoa left some appetite for more. We have got some good references, marked some spots on the map, and we will be back someday.

This time, during our short three days stay (thanks to Funafuti airport in Tuvalu, that forced Fiji Airways to change our flight dates, shrinking the full week we had originally allocated for our visit to Samoa), we have hiked only a bit around Savai’i and Upolu islands, visited the archaeological Pulemelei pyramid, went to the writer’s Robert Luis Stevenson house and ate lots of delicious Polynesian raw tuna salad.

If Tane the Octopus will help us, we want to go back someday for more legends, local myths, and archaeological places.

Visited in October, 2018