Civilisation

by Steve Braunias

  As well as skuas vs. penguins, Young has observed skuas vs. skuas. ‘Siblicide is the major cause of chick mortality. … Very few survive more than ten days. … In five seasons at Cape Bird, monitoring approx. 250 pairs each year, only three pairs of chicks survived.’

  I had stood for about 15 minutes watching the two skua eat the penguin chick. Feedings were going on all over the shop – in the centre of the colony and at the margins, skuas were attacking lone chicks, greasing their heads with young blood.

  I kept watching. I watched in the days and I watched last thing at night. I was happy. It was here at last, on a beach beside a glacier, among fifty thousand pairs of penguins shitting pasty pinkish krill, among skuas getting on with the ‘frantic business’ of eating penguins alive, among New Zealanders who carried on the work performed by other New Zealanders for nearly 50 years, that I knew peace.

  Apia

  Neighbours

  What happened on my first night in Samoa is that I got bitten by a wild dog, so next day I decided to call on the prime minister to ask what he was going to do about it.

  The dog had been lean and swift, and had made a bad first impression, especially on my leg. My appointment with the dog had been sudden and short. I waited three hours to see Prime Minister Tuilaepa Lupesoliai Sailele Malielegaoi. His office was on the top floor of the only tall structure in downtown Apia, but how to get inside the building? The glass doors at the front wouldn’t open. I angrily shook the handles and glared at a man sitting inside the lobby. He glared back and angrily shook his head. He shouted something I couldn’t hear through the glass. He walked slowly towards the doors and pointed at a handwritten piece of paper Sellotaped to the glass. It directed visitors to elevators in the ground-floor car park.

  The elevators in the ground-floor car park were beside a stall selling cream doughnuts and pineapple pies. The stairwell was blocked by an old metal safe with a sheet thrown over it. There were vacant spaces beneath parking signs reserved for the deputy prime minister, the minister of natural resources and other government officials, but the attorney general had come to work – there was his big shining Toyota Hi-Lux 3.0, with its licence plate AG01.

  A man sat with his legs wide apart on a hard wooden chair inside the elevator. This didn’t leave a lot of room, and it seemed rude to travel in silence in the intimate box. ‘How are you today?’ I asked. ‘Busy, uh,’ he said. He was very good at pushing the button. He made it look easy.

  That was at two o’clock on Friday afternoon. I didn’t have an appointment to see Prime Minister Tuilaepa Lupesoliai Sailele Malielegaoi. I had something more powerful: a grievance. My leg throbbed. I limped out of the elevator. A man sat behind a desk. There was a sign above his head on the wall with an arrow and the words PRIME MINISTER. I hobbled towards the sign but stopped in my tracks when I caught the view from the large bay windows, the wide blue yonder of Apia Bay. There was so much of it that it looked as though it could be the entire Pacific. There was more of it than sky.

  I eyed it with wild surmise. What was out there, beyond the sea, over the horizon? What promised land glittered, signalled, lured, over the rainbow? New Zealanders look to Australia for that answer; Samoans look to New Zealand.

  Where there’s a Pacific Islander in New Zealand, there’s a statistic. In 1921 there were 164 Samoans in New Zealand. In 2006 there were 131,103, more than half the total population of Pacific Islanders in New Zealand. The browning of New Zealand continues: it is officially estimated that by 2051 sixteen percent of children under fifteen will be European, 30 percent Māori, and 33 percent Pacific Island.

  One final statistic: more than half of New Zealand’s Samoan population live in South Auckland. All I needed to do to go to Samoa was catch a bus, but I had decided to go the long way round and fly to Apia.

  It was the end of the wet season. Muddy water collected in the potholes and slowed traffic to a bumpy crawl of about 35 kilometres an hour. Samoa was lush and squelchy, gorgeous to behold with its coral reef and blue lagoon, its plantations of taro and coconut. I stayed on the main island of Upolu. The other island, Savai‘i, was just beyond the reef.

  The Lady Samoa II passenger and car ferry left from a wharf near the airport. I wandered over on Sunday afternoon to have a look at the boat, with its two yellow chimneys. Motorists queued at the wharf, and now and then got out of their cars and strolled across the road to buy a cold drink. Earlier, for about two hours from midday, the heat had chased everyone on the island into shade. The roads had been even emptier than in the morning, when the churches opened for singing and business. God is a nosy, constant presence in Samoa. A sign at the ferry terminal shop read GOD BLESS THE HAND THAT GIVES TO THE POOR. I needed a cold drink. The most delicious and also the cheapest on offer – for two tala, just over one New Zealand dollar – was a coconut. It took up room in the fridge alongside Coke and Fanta.

  Nutty, palmy Samoa. In downtown Apia, dragonflies touched pink and gracious water lilies on the surface of an open drain. There were stores specialising in providing supplies for the popular drug of bingo. There were a lot of buses – old, brightly painted jalopies that bounced up and down like toys on a trampoline. There were a lot of taxis, churches, barefoot children, and empty coconut shells scattered on the side of the road. There was a lot of diabolical food cooking in large vats at roadside stalls – chop suey, mutton curry, soup bones. There was one McDonald’s, packed at lunchtime; its nod to local cuisine was the Samoan Burger. At 17.80 tālā it had ‘everything’, which possibly included mutton curry.

  There was a lot of gold and black – the colours of Western Union’s money transfer bank. Just about every village had a branch to handle the $128.2 million of remittance money sent to Samoa by families who had emigrated to New Zealand. ‘Remittance money’ – it was a difficult piece of English but every Samoan had mastered it. It accounts for 24 percent of Samoa’s GDP and is the country’s biggest source of income.

  There were a lot of dogs. I didn’t see the one that went for me until it was too late. I didn’t see the one that went for me because it was dark, about ten o’clock at night, and the dog barked once, from beneath a tree, then ran out fast, its jaws open like scissors.

  Sending Samoans to New Zealand is a trade. I knocked on the door of a travel agency in a dimly lit shopping arcade in Apia and talked with a consultant, Lotu Auapaau. Slender, welcoming, 22 years old, he said he dealt on average with three people moving to New Zealand every week. Right now, though, he was waiting to see a family who just wanted to fly over to attend a wedding. They’d already paid for the fare from Apia to Auckland. ‘Most people pay one way and get their family in New Zealand to buy their return ticket.’

  I asked when the family was due to see him. ‘I don’t know.’ How long would he wait? Lotu wore a red T-shirt and smiled happily. ‘If they don’t turn up,’ he said, ‘I’ll just sit here and watch people walk past.’ How long had he already waited? He said, ‘I expected them to come in yesterday.’

  The linoleum floor had peeled away like an orange skin, and his pamphlets included a stained and tattered copy of Life in Australia, published in 2007. Yes, Lotu smiled, he’d been to New Zealand. ‘I went there on 3 April, 2008.’ The date lit up his face. His first thought on seeing Auckland: ‘Wow.’ He was there for two years as a volunteer for the Mormon Church, knocking on doors from ten a.m. to nine p.m. in Henderson, Ōtara, Manurewa and Waterview. It was strange listening to him recite the names of unglamorous Auckland suburbs with real enthusiasm in his office in tropical Apia. He was so fervent. ‘I love New Zealand,’ he said. Why? He thought about it, smiled with even more enthusiasm, and said, ‘It’s the best for food, uh. I miss the Chinese takeaways. KFC! Oh, man.’

  I left Lotu’s offices and headed for water. ‘I rest,’ Lealafia Tolai said. He was sitting by himself in a lovely green reserve by Apia’s sea wall. ‘On 13 September this year I am fifty-two. Is too old, uh.’ He had a heavily bandaged foot and was blind in one eye. He wore an All B
lacks cap. ‘A souvenir from one of my uncles. He go New Zealand.’ He took it off and stroked it, loving his only possession. It was early in the morning. What was he going to do all day? He said, ‘I rest.’

  Further along the sea wall I was apprehended by 20-year-old Asofa Suti. ‘Don’t miss this one chance,’ she nagged, over and over, as she harped on about the wonders of the Samoa Worship Centre Church. Her manner was sharper and more anxious than anyone I met in Samoa; in fact, she was an American Samoan.

  She was with two 18-year-old girls from Apia, Hattesah Saseve Sellsin and Leala Kaisara, both born-again, both lovely and happy and round-figured. Asofa was thin-lipped, unsmiling, unhappy. ‘This is a bad place,’ she said. She meant Apia, with its beautiful harbour, its two or three sets of traffic lights, its boisterous nightclubs. ‘Drinking. Smoking.’ What else? Hattesah and Leala giggled but Asofa, pious and simmering beneath the coconut trees, ignored the question and opened her bible.

  I had cause to remember her a few days later when I stopped and talked to Isaac Warren, 29, who was sweeping leaves from the mango tree in his front yard. His kids played at his feet. Their names – Benedict and Nelda Andronicus – were clues to his mania. ‘Right now I’m clean because I gave my life to Christ,’ he said. ‘I tell you, sir, it was either die or go to jail for me. I’m telling you this from my heart, uh. When I drink, I destroy everything. Very bad. Violent. I was working as bartender. I was in fight. An accident happen to me. I use sepalu.’ He put down his broom, picked up his bush knife, and swished it through the air. ‘Oh, man. I nearly am sent to jail. But my wife was telling me the good news, uh. And then I listen and have been saved for two years now. Do you know the Worship Centre Church?’

  The biggest news story of the week was the appearance of anonymous pamphlets, billboards and newspaper ads stating that the Second Coming was just around the corner. The end, yet again, was nigh. Or, as the front page of The Sunday Samoan put it: HOW WORLD WILL END?

  The exact date being put about was May 21, 2011. The alarmist was apparently Christian fanatic Harold Camping, 89, of Colorado. Camping’s prophecy was the subject of sermons throughout Samoa. Ministers sought to soothe their anxious congregations. I went to hear Reverend Nu’uausala Siaosi Si’utaia at the downtown Apia Protestant Church. He called his sermon ‘Resurrection of the Dead’. He advised against panic. He called for reason. He said there was work to do. Last Sunday the church had collected $2,026; today’s target was $3,300.

  How did parishioners afford to give as much as a tālā? When I ambled into the waiting room in the prime minister’s department I met Sina Setefano, 49, and Grete Purcell, 21. The two women had been at a job interview. The position was for a cashier. It paid an annual salary of 7,000 tālā. ‘I wish, I wish I get the job,’ said the voluptuous Grete. ‘I live in village in the east. We lose eight people in the tsunami. My nephew. Only three. So sad.’ A panel of three government officials had conducted the interview. How did she think she had got on? She said, ‘Ahhhh! I was panic.’

  Sina, the older woman, who lived on Savai’i, was calm, mature, sad. I asked about her New Zealand accent. She said her parents had sent her to Lower Hutt when she was ten, and she had been adopted by a Presbyterian minister and his wife. ‘I miss New Zealand. I call it my home.’ She talked with real feeling about Panmure.

  What was she doing back in Samoa? ‘I left my husband. He had an affair with a girl in Wellington. I couldn’t have children. But I came back because my mum was sick. I look after her. Poor Mum! But it’s hard for me to live the village life,’ she said. ‘It’s difficult. Very difficult.’ What did she do all day? ‘Good question. Well, I get up at six a.m. and cook breakfast for Mum. We have an electric oven, but the power bills are too high so I chop firewood and burn leaves to cook. Then I do the washing and…’ She patted her hair. ‘There are a lot of unpaid hours in a day.’

  The prime minister’s department was an assortment of cracked wooden desks and antique computers, and the paintwork was chipped and smudged. I followed the women downstairs. It was lunchtime and they were partial to the pineapple pies on sale in the underground car park. Through the stairwell I saw a sign for the attorney general. Remembering his Hi-Lux in the car park, I walked to his floor and asked a woman whether I could meet him. Ming Leung Wai, 37, appeared and led me to his office, past a handwritten sign that read: TODAY’S CANTEEN SPECIAL – BOWL NOODLE $3.

  He was an elegant man, charming, smiling, half Chinese and half Samoan, sleekly built, with immaculate hair. We chatted about more or less absolutely nothing for ten minutes. He said he had studied at Waikato University. He reckoned he had the best job in the world. He walked to the window and pointed out his house in the hills. He said he worshipped at the Assemblies of God. Then he looked at his watch and I looked at my watch. He stood up and I stood up. Simultaneously, though, we shook hands, and as we walked back past TODAY’S CANTEEN SPECIAL I asked about the possibility of meeting Prime Minister Tuilaepa Lupesoliai Sailele Malielegaoi. He said the PM was due back in his office at two o’clock and I should come back at that time and wait. ‘He sees everyone,’ smiled the attorney general of Samoa.

  I had a bit of time to kill before returning to have more time to kill so I mooched downtown, where I starved rather than tackle the Samoan burger, or eat at a food hall where the menu advertised something called PUMKIN MUTTON. In the waterfront reserve I made out the figure of Lealafia Tolai, still at rest; Asofa Suti and her gang of Worship Centre missionaries were nowhere to be seen. The midday heat chased me out of the sun, and soon I was in the air-conditioned offices of law firm Kruse, Enari and Barlow, talking with the office manager. Aigaga McNeely was coy about her age. I told her she couldn’t have been more than forty. She immediately rang her husband to pass on this minor flattery and then she passed me the receiver. ‘I’m a Kiwi,’ the voice said. ‘I went to Rongotai College.’

  Aigaga said New Zealand was a nice place to visit but she’d never want to live there. She had lived in Australia for twelve years and been most homesick for the Samoan sense of humour. ‘Typically, what happens is that someone will start with a little detail and build on it, and then someone else will add to it, and it will grow and grow, and before you know it you’ve totally lost the plot and the whole thing just becomes completely absurd.

  ‘It’s all in Samoan. I’ll translate it for my husband, who sits there looking gloomy while we’re rolling around with laughter, but it doesn’t work in English.’ I thought about the ex-pupil of Rongotai College puzzling over Samoan humour. ‘Anyway,’ she said, ‘that’s what I missed most in Australia. The food, no, I didn’t miss the food at all. It was the chat and the laughter. That’s the way we live.’

  I imagined these great farces being played out as a feature of village life. She said she wasn’t all that interested in village life. She gave a speech. It began, ‘Okay. Here’s a story. I’ve made my commitment to a certain kind of life; I’ve made my choice about it. I shouldn’t be telling you. My father was an ex-prime minister.

  ‘Okay. We grew up on Savai’i. My father had a cocoa plantation. That was his wealth. We were very advantaged as children. We had a generator – electricity, you see. We had lights! We ate with knife and fork! What I’m saying is, we were brought up palagi. We had the big Her Majesty’s Voice gramophone. We had a flush toilet!

  ‘Okay. And my father read books to us every night. We had shelves and shelves of books. We had Treasure Island! I don’t know where he found them all. He was a gentleman, my father. We never saw or heard him beat our mother. It was a privileged life, a civilised life. So what I’m telling you is that he believed an education is more important than,’ she concluded, ‘this village thing.’

  I spent all afternoon with her father. A photograph of Va’ai Kolone, twice voted in as prime minister of Samoa in the 1980s, stared down from the wall in an anteroom set aside for visitors waiting to see Prime Minister Tuilaepa Lupesoliai Sailele Malielegaoi. There were photos of all Samoa’s prime m
inisters from the time the country achieved independence in 1962. The gallery ended with a portrait of Tuilaepa Lupesoliai Sailele Malielegaoi. He looked to be in his forties, dark-haired, healthy, mirthless.

  The walls were done in wood panelling. There was a wilting pot plant in the corner, big, comfortable, cracked leather chairs, and a quartz clock from Japan. Two o’clock … three o’clock … four o’clock … His secretary on the tenth floor said, ‘He sees everyone.’

  I waited with nine businessmen who had made prior appointments. We sat in silence. The secretary opened the door and said, ‘Mr Benjamin, please.’ A small Indian who wore a gold watch jumped to his feet. The door closed. I wore a watch from the $2 Shop and dozed. When I woke up I was alone. I killed the next hour by rifling through a metal filing cabinet behind the pot plant. There was a request from a primary school for two additional classrooms. ‘The village has access to electricity and piped water.’ It asked for $58,760 from the Samoan Government Small Grant Scheme funded by the Australian Government. There was a proposal for operating a 60-cabin, double-hull, twelve-million-dollar cruise ship that had come to nothing, and a letter from a thirteen-year-old girl in Esko, Minnesota, asking for souvenirs from Samoa to present to her social studies class.

  Next, I read an internal memo headlined A WORD FROM THE PUBLIC SERVICE COMMISSION. ‘Following the melancholy reflection of Good Friday, many of us may still be pondering the hideous evils of the world…’ It went on to recommend that public servants uplift their spirits by reading Desiderata. I started reading the dozy platitudes and dozed off again.

  I was woken by the prime minister’s secretary. She led me into a gigantic office stuffed with toys. A large white-haired character wobbled like a jelly behind a desk. Some fat men defeat age and maintain the bright smooth faces of their childhood, but this character’s immense size created another illusion: he looked like a woman. I thought I might have been shown into the wrong office. Was this a set-up, an elaborate Samoan joke? Who was this overweight drag queen who signed papers and didn’t look up?