Islands Business - Apia Diary: PLAYING SAFE IN SAFE, SAFE SAMOA

I find myself in a police patrol boat with New Zealand opposition leader Don Brash and Samoa’s police chief cruising the bays around Apia’s port at the crack of dawn...

Dev Nadkarni

Apia's town square from atop the Government Building. (Pic: Dev Nadkarni)

Playing safe

Samoa loves to pride itself as being a safe, crime-free destination for overseas tourists—which it certainly is—when compared to some other Pacific spots. And some Samoans are very sensitive when they’re asked about rumours of worsening law and order. So, as I try to take a picture of a notice posted at the hotel warning guests to take extra care while walking around town, a local scribe warns, “Don’t you print that!” Why? I ask. “It’s a load of bull. Take a walk around town at 3am and see if anyone even bothers you,” he challenges. I ask a government minister what he thinks of the sign. He is surprised and promises to speak to the hotel manager to have it removed. I ask the hotel manager the need for the sign of a kind never seen before in safe, safe Samoa. “Not to worry, Sir,” comes the reply. “We’re just playing safe: if something happens, we don’t want guests to say we didn’t warn them.”

With Don at Dawn—and after

I find myself in a police patrol boat with New Zealand opposition leader Don Brash and Samoa’s police chief cruising the bays around Apia’s port at the crack of dawn. The top cop is to fire his gun to flag off Samoa’s biggest annual water sport event: the Fautasi Boat race as part of the Teuila Festival. Bang! And the dozen-or-so competing teams in their long boats begin to paddle furiously into the five-mile race.

JAWS: Brash was bombarded by the Samoan media with questions about Field (Pic: Dev Nadkarni)

Our little boat bobs along the gentle swells as the winning boat powers ahead along Upolu’s northern coastline, dull-grayed by a heavily overcast sky. Speaking above the roar of the sputtering motor Brash says this is his first trip to Samoa and that he is absolutely fascinated. Later that day, he has a meeting with Samoa’s leader of the opposition cancelled—simply because no one knows who the leader of the tattered opposition is! And at his evening media conference, the Samoan media hurls questions about suspended Labour MP Taito Phillip Field at him.

The younger set of media men and women are refreshingly aggressive, living up to the acronym of their association: JAWS (Journalists Association of Western Samoa). On his tough stand against the leader of Samoan origin, he is asked if he is racist. Did the Samoan PM speak to him about Taito? Did he go and see or visit Taito’s home? Does he understand that Taito might have acted in accordance with Samoan cultural practices? Does he understand Samoan culture at all?

When it comes to fielding questions, especially from the media, he is nowhere in the league of his rival Clark. He chooses not to comment on many of the questions about Field, sensing the groundswell of support for the beleaguered leader in his home nation. No, he says, he did not go looking for New Zealand media’s most photographed Samoan house.

The short, stand-up conference has several hotel guests, staff and sundry onlookers. Among them, unbeknown to him, are Field’s in-laws looking on silently.