The Samoan Pyramid

by Maya Lynch

  At this latitude, 13.5 degrees south of the equator, the sunsets are blindingly bright. As the sun hung over the horizon, it became almost impossible to see any detail on the road. The fierce light from the sunset matched by the pitch black of the shadows. It was as if everywhere the contrast has been turned up, the jagged shapes of palm trees thrown into stark relief against the scarlet sky. After an hour in the van I’d just about grown accustomed to Tina’s driving. We hurtled along the road, past the plantations crowded with coconut palms. We crossed a series of huge lava fields, a featureless expanse that stretched endlessly into the distance. Tina told us about the day that the islands of Western Samoa changed the road rules from driving on the right to driving on the left. ‘They played that song all day: “to the left, to the left!”’ She laughed and kept singing. Before long we were all singing along.

  We entered a small village. On one side of the road was row upon row of traditional houses with their dome-shaped palm leaf roofs, and on the other side was the ocean, stretching out across an endless sea to the scarlet sunset on the horizon.

  We turned a bend and in front of us I saw something moving, shadows moving within shadows. ‘Oh shit!’ Tina shouted, slamming on the brakes. We came to an abrupt halt in front a crowd of local people shuffling out of the shadows, barely acknowledging our presence. The entire village seemed to be walking out of their homes, crossing the road and walking into the sea. From behind the windscreen it seemed as though I were witnessing some sort of mass trance. Within seconds, I was transfixed myself. I rolled the window down and was absorbed in the heavy silence, the only sound was that of gentle footfall from the hundred or so villagers as they crossed the street and headed down to the shore.

  ‘Tina, what is this? What’s going on?’ I asked.

  ‘Sa,’ said Tina. ‘Every night, when the sun is just above the horizon. People all gather on the beaches to perform a ritual. We call it Sa.’

  I watched as some of the people walked into the sea with their arms outstretched towards the sky. They stared into the setting sun.

  ‘Can we do it?’ I asked.

  ‘Sure, why not? Let’s do it!’ said Tina.

  We all piled out of the van, crossed the street and headed down to the beach to join the crowd staring at the sun set. I was amazed to find that I could look right into the sun without turning away. After a few seconds I saw a spinning ring of light form around the central disc of the sun. Beneath my feet, the sand took on the appearance of diamonds. Each tiny grain of sand seemed to refract beautiful rainbow-coloured beams of life-giving light. This was my initiation to the ancient Samoan ritual of ‘Sa’.

  Out of the corner of my eye I could see that one of the camera men was beginning to set up his camera, but Tina stopped him.

  ‘It’s probably best you don’t film this,’ she said. ‘It’s sacred.’

  ‘How do you mean sacred, Tina?’ I asked.

  ‘The word Sa in Samoan means sacred,’ she told me.

  As Tina explained the sacred ritual and the sacred setting of the sun, it struck me that at the exact same moment as the sun was setting here in Samoa, it would be rising on the other side of the world, in Egypt. And in ancient times the Egyptians celebrated this moment as 'Sa Ra' meaning ‘the birth of the Sun’, symbolised in their art by the scarab beetle pushing the sun across the sky.

  I noticed a young woman walking towards me, her bare feet leaving glistening footprints in the sand behind her. She wore a red t-shirt, a long green skirt, her dark hair was tied up in a side knot with a red flower perched above her ear. She smiled at me and unconsciously my hand popped up to wave at her.

  She said hello and we exchanged pleasantries for a few minutes, looking out to sea and watching the sunset.

  ‘So how do you like Samoa?’ she asked.

  ‘I can’t get over it… It’s beautiful,’ I said. ‘I’ve just been thinking about how while Sa happens here, the sun is rising in Egypt. Have you ever heard of the Sa Ra ceremony?’

  ‘Oh?’ she said. ‘In Samoa we call the sun Ra, so do the Egyptians.’

  I wondered, could these fragments of an ancient ritual possibly have traveled half way round the world from its earliest beginnings? Two distant cultures marking this moment of solar death and rebirth in unison for thousands of years, the guardians of a cosmic transition as the world turns and turns and turns.

  As the last of the crimson faded in the sky and the diamond encrusted night began to emerge, we followed the rest of the village back up to the road. I asked Tina if she knew when or how the tradition of Sa had started.

  ‘I don’t think anyone knows,’ Tina laughed. ‘We just do it.’

  The exact origin of Sa remained a mystery, but I soon learned of at least one of the reasons that it continues today: ‘I love Sa,’ Tina said, starting up the van. ‘It’s the best place to catch up on all the gossip!’

  4

  California Love

  By the time we reached our resort in Manase the sky was pitch black. Tina turned the van off the coast road and onto a sandy beach. As we wobbled along, the headlamps fell onto some little traditional ‘fale’ huts arranged around a central eating area and fire pit, all nestled into the shoreline. It couldn’t have been more perfect. We parked and hopped out of the van, stretching and yawning, and made our way down to the fale huts. Dinner was ready and waiting for us. Taro root and wild pig that had been cooked in an ‘umu’ stone oven for hours. We sat on the beach and got stuck in. I was starving, and it was unbelievably delicious. I was happily eating myself towards bedtime, pleased with my introduction to the local cuisine, when Mani came bounding over with a bowl of strange-looking green gloopy stuff. ‘Maya,’ he said with a grin, ‘you really have to try this!’ He slopped a huge dollop of it onto my plate.

  ‘Ooh, cheers Mani!’ I enthusiastically took a spoonful. If the taro and pork was anything to go by, I was in for a treat. I shoved the spoon into my mouth and waited for the flavours to unfold on my tongue. ‘…Oh god!’ I said through a mouthful of goop. ‘What…What is that?’ The consistency reminded me of phlegm and the taste was incredibly bitter. I concentrated hard and managed to swallow. ‘Gagh! How can you eat that?’ I asked, the substance still gumming my mouth up.

  Mani gave a mischievous grin. ‘Not a fan?’

  I’ve since forgotten the name of this dish, but I’m sure I’ll know it if I ever see it again. It turned out to be possibly the only thing about Samoa for which I could maintain a lasting dislike. My initial curiosity about this place was rapidly developing into a full-blown infatuation. I scraped the green goo to the side of my plate and carried on devouring the taro and wild pig. God, it was fantastic. I overfed myself into a stupor and then headed to bed, staggering sleepily into my little shoreside palm-hut.

  Just as I was dropping off to sleep I heard a rustling sound at the side of my hut. I propped myself up on my elbows. ‘Who’s there?’ I called.

  ‘Hey, Maya. It’s Jess.’

  ‘Oh Jess,’ I said, relieved. ‘Hey, you scared the bejeezus out of me! Come in,’ I lifted one of the palm leaves, creating an entrance to my hut.

  ‘They’re all snoring, I can’t sleep,’ she said and proceeded to take a small bullet shaped lipstick out of her pocket. ‘Do you want some of this?’

  ‘Um… Lipstick?’

  ‘No…look!’ Jess took the lid off the lipstick and then slowly teased the whole inner mechanism out of the barrel. She turned the open lipstick in her fingers towards me. ‘Look!’

  The whole inside of the barrel was packed with fat green buds.

  She grinned and gave me a thumbs up. ‘California lo-ove!’ she sang in an exaggerated American accent.

  ‘Haha, Jess! Very nice!’

  Jess started skinning up, she had all the accoutrements in her bag - cigarette papers, tobacco.‘What’s your story, Jess?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh, nothing really,’ she said, in that typically bashful way of all twenty-somethings. She licked the edges of the cigare
tte papers and glued them together.

  ‘You guys are here making a film? Is that right?’

  ‘Yeah, it’s about this artist, she seems cool. I’m doing the makeup.’

  ‘Ah, that explains your lipstick trick.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Jess laughed, ‘I do make up and Mani does hair. But we’ve got the day off tomorrow! Woo-hoo!’ She seemed much more interested in the tangential experiences film-making afforded her than in film-making itself. I pulled the hurricane lamp closer, lighting the centre of the room so Jess could see what she was doing. I hadn’t noticed until now just how pretty she was. Everything about Jess was soft, beautifully curved, perfectly plumped.

  ‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘What about you Maya? What’s your story?’

  ‘Oh, nothing really,’ I said, airily, tucking my hair behind ears and winking.

  ‘Hahah, fuck off. Seriously, what are you doing in Savai’i?’

  ‘It’s a bit of a weird one, to be honest.’

  ‘Oooh, mystery! Go on!’

  I heard another noise outside. I was about to shout out when Mani popped his head under the palm leaf wall of the hut.

  ‘Busted!’ he shouted loudly.

  ‘SSHHHH,’ Jess and I hissed in unison.

  ‘Hey, chill! I brought the duty free!’ Mani lifted his arms triumphantly, a bottle of rum in one hand and 3 shot glasses in the other.

  ‘Get in here, Mani!’ I whispered, pulling down the palm as he clambered onto the wooden platform of the hut.

  ‘Maya was just about to tell me what’s she’s doing in Savai’i.’ Jess said softly, clearly hoping that Mani would take her voice-volume cue. ‘She’s being very secretive about it,’ Jess lit the joint and rolled it round between her fingers before placing the tip between her lips and inhaling deeply.

  ‘Let’s smoke this first, it’ll take a while to tell you everything,’ I said.

  We were three joints into the night before the conversation swung round once again to the subject of what had brought me to the island. ‘Are you sure you want to know?’ I asked. ‘It’ll take more than a minute to tell you.’

  Jess groaned. ‘Oh come on now Maya! Tell us!’

  ‘Hey, we do actually have all night,’ Mani said. ‘But let’s have a toast first!’

  Mani poured three shots from the litre bottle of rum and raised his glass. ‘To Savai’i’ he said. ‘To Savai’i,’ Jess and I echoed in agreement.

  I sank the rum in one gulp, slammed the shot glass on the floor and leaned back to reach the side pocket of my backpack. After some fumbling around, I found my blue notebook, bulging with post-it notes and press clippings, all bound together with two tight elastic bands. ‘Here,’ I said leaning forward and presenting the book to them. ‘This is my research. Basically, there’s a pyramid on Savai’i, and no one knows who built it.’ There was a pause.

  ‘Awesome!’ said Mani, reaching out to grab the lipstick and skin up another joint.

  ‘In Samoa? A pyramid?’ said Jess. ‘How come I’ve never heard about it?’

  ‘I know, that’s what’s so crazy! No-one ever talks about it.’

  ‘How do you know about it then?’ asked Mani.

  I removed the elastic bands from the notebook and flipped through its tattered pages, looking for the earliest mention I had found of the Samoan pyramid. ‘Here it is,’ I said. ‘So in the 1840s there was this missionary called John Stair that was living on Savai’i. He’s the first person ever to write anything down about the pyramid. Stair said that one day he’d gone into the jungle and found these ancient abandoned ruins, a pyramid.’ I traced the old missionary’s words across the page of the notebook. ‘He said it was “a massive construction, which seems to have been the work of an earlier but now extinct race of men.”1’

  ‘Aliens. I’m telling you. It has to be aliens,’ said Mani, blowing smoke from the side of his mouth and giggling.

  ‘Don’t be mean!’ Jess, leaning across to slap him on the arm.

  ‘No it’s okay, there’s more,’ I said.

  I flipped through the tattered pages of the notebook until I found an old black and white photograph I had been carrying around with me for months.

  ‘Look at this,’ I said. ‘I found it in the University of Auckland archives. It was taken on Savai’i in 1963.’ I turned the photograph towards the dancing glow of the hurricane lamp. Mani and Jess both leaned in to get a better view.

  ‘Look here, in the foreground’ I said pointing at the photograph. ‘That’s a makeshift research tent. But what’s that in the background? What were they researching?’

  ‘Whaaa?’ Jess sat upright. ‘Is that a pyramid?’

  ‘Let me see that!’ Mani snatched the photograph out of my hand. After a few moments studying the image Mani looked up from the photograph with a quizzical expression on his face. ‘The ff..? So that book is full of notes on this pyramid, which is supposed to be around here somewhere?’

  ‘Yep.’ I turned the pages until I found one of my favourite clippings. ‘I found this in the Government records. Don’t know if you are aware of this, but in the late 1800’s the New Zealand Government were planning a military takeover of Samoa, a coup. They didn’t call it that, they called it confederation and annexation but it was basically coup. Their reasoning was that because Savai’i is smack bang in the middle of the Pacific and an incredible strategic foothold, New Zealand should steal it from the Samoans before the French or the Americans or the Germans or the English had a chance to do the same. So to get ready for this planned coup, the government set about collecting reams of information about the island. They ended up turning to this guy called Howard Sterndale, he was a plantation manager who had worked all over the Pacific. He knew Savai’i well, and so they asked him to deliver a memoranda to parliament. Basically, Sterndale had to tell the government everything he knew about Savai’i. This was in 1884.’

  Jess and Mani were listening now, sat upright and staring at me as I spoke. I paused for a moment and imagined Howard Sterndale, wondering how he must have felt as he readied himself that day, possibly taking a moment to calm his nerves before entering the seat of government, a huge room filled with cigar smoke and raucous chatter.

  ‘Sterndale was a rogue by all accounts.’ I continued. Appearing before parliament must have been quite the adventure for him.’ Mani passed me the joint and I took a deep puff. ‘Thanks. So, Sterndale starts off by telling the parliament a whole bunch of information about Savai’i, where the ports are, all of that kind of stuff, then he starts talking about the jungle and what he found in the interior of the island, this is when it gets interesting.’ I read aloud from the notebook: ‘“On the flanks of the great mountain are tracts of forrest in which a man might wander for weeks without finding his way out. Savai’i is only inhabited upon the sea-coast. This was not the case formerly, as the whole interior exhibits evidence of ancient prosperous settlement. Covered with luxuriant forests, in whose silent depths are to be seen the ruins of ancient villages and buildings of strange form, composed of massive stonework.”2’

  ‘What? That’s mental!’ said Mani.

  ‘I know! Buildings of strange form, composed of massive stonework? Come on! Sterndale had been to the pyramid, he must’ve.’

  ‘Have you been there?’ asked Jess.

  ‘Nope, not yet. But that’s the plan. I want to find it.’

  ‘Are you sure it’s real?’ she asked.

  ‘Oh, it’s real. I’ve seen a couple of archaeologists’ reports, drawings, that kind of thing, but I won’t know for sure what to expect until I see it for myself. To be honest, I had no idea it would be so hard to find!’

  Who built it?’ asked Mani. ‘Is it like an Egyptian pyramid?’

  ‘Well, from everything I’ve been able to find out, Pulemelei is more like a South American pyramid than an Egyptian one, you know it’s got a flat top, but I think it would be more correct to call it a Pacific pyramid. I think it might be a whole new class of pyramid.’ I realised I was still
holding the extinguished joint in between my fingers. I fumbled for a lighter ‘But as for who built it? Well, that’s the mystery. You see no one knows. Everyone from Thor Heyerdahl to the Samoan Head of state himself have gone looking for the pyramid builders, and you know what they found? Nothing. Not a thing. Theres no trace of them at all.’

  ‘This is crazy,’ Jess said. ‘I love it!’

  ‘I’ll tell you what’s the weirdest thing of all,’ I said, passing her the lit joint. ‘There’s no mention of the pyramid builders in any of the Samoan myths. You see how traditional it is here? Even today every old tree, every tall rock and every bend in the river has a legend that goes along with it. But the pyramid builders don’t even get a mention. It’s almost unthinkable that a monument as big as this would have no surviving story, right? But the local histories are totally silent on the subject of the pyramid. All trace of whoever build this pyramid has been lost. Literally, lost! Lost from history, lost even from myth! A whole advanced civilisation!’ I’d raised my voice. I was getting excited, as I often did when talking about the pyramid. I could see that Mani and Jess were interested but an increasingly tired Mani had leaned back and snuggled his head against my leg.