General News
12 May, 2026
Western Samoa with Val Dwyer
The boys wore jeans and fancy shirts and the girls pretty skirts and tops. The whole affair could have been in our local town hall with anxious mothers up in the balcony keeping watch over their fledglings. It was hilarious the way the boys kept asking me to dance.
I thought, “The light is bad, they think I am some interesting new chick,” but no they kept coming back all evening, because I was a pelangi (pel-angi) white. They danced very formally with no conversation.
Maureen had made the acquaintance of a Scottish woman called Barbara, whom she wanted us to meet (me being Scottish.)
Barbara was married to a village chief and lived at the top end of Savaii, the other main island, so Dick tried to arrange to take his van, we four passengers and enough food and gear for two days, over the 14 miles by sea, on one of the ferries.
Bus and ferry timetables were completely unknown in Western Samoa, but Dick had heard on the jungle drums that the car/truck carrying ferry would leave at 1 pm on Sunday.
We left home at 9 am and drove the 20 miles at 35 miles per hour to the terminal to be told that the ferry had left and there would be no more that day.
By the evening Dick was again planning to transport us to Savaii and was furious to hear that the ferry had left that day at 1 pm.
He decided to give the ferry a miss and go by plane, a 20 minute flight, so at 3 pm the following day, Monday afternoon, we drove to a friend’s place, left the van and walked half a mile to the airport with our loaded back packs. We had a beautiful 20 minute flight.
On Savaii we hired a ramshackle taxi to take us to Barbara’s. The alternative was trying to catch a local bus, or staying overnight at a local convent, an hour and a half from Barbara’s village, Fagamalo.
Barbara entertained us beauti-fully. It was odd to hear her broad Glasgow accent interspersed with Samoan, in the back blocks of Savaii. She sent us with her sister-in-law Loli, by jeep to visit a remote Catholic Mission at Safotu, run by Samoan nuns and New Zealand Redemptrist priests.
At the mission where there wasn’t even a phone, there was an amazing church with dozens of beautiful leadlight windows.
The Samoans quite happily adopted Christianity as it was written in their prophecies that ‘White Gods would come.’
We stayed two nights with Barbara and her husband Tunafi.
We were flying home to Australia on Friday so had allowed two days to get back to the main island, Upolu. Barbara said we should be able to catch a bus about 6.30 am in front of her store.
Taxis were out of the question so far inland and Loli and the jeep were nowhere to be found, so we were out the front at 6 am without breakfast.
At 7 am a crowded bus drove past ignoring our shoutings and wavings and Barbara figured that it was the 8 am bus coming early. About an hour later another bus drove past again ignoring our frantic wavings. We would have sat anywhere, just to have wheels under our rumps.
Now we knew what it meant when they said the record for getting back from Savaii was 17 hours. Barbara was close to tears as she assured us another bus would come along. It finally did, stop, and take us on. Only one thing — it was travelling in the opposite direction to the ferry terminal, back towards the remote mission.
The bus eventually turned tail and headed back south with us hoping the morning ferry would be running late.
We passed Barbara’s house five hours after we’d left there that morning.
The bus was another memorable experience, the scenery pure paradise. Michael had his ukulele which was a passport anywhere in Samoa, and Dick his mouth organ, so we entertained the passengers and they us, for the three hour bus trip.
When we finally reached the sea, the slow moving barge ferry was the only one available, but we didn’t care, just to get on the water was enough, but to our horror, we had to watch the fast ferry approach from the main island, land at Savaii and return to Apia, the town on the main island where we’d left the car, all in the space of an hour, while we floundered the 14 miles on the slow three hour ferry, where we disembarked an hour bus trip from Apia.
It was 7.30 pm when we caught a taxi back to our friends and van, with our hilarious tale of woe and to receive a comforting beer — but our 14 hour journey hadn’t broken the record of 17 hours.
The previous weekend Michael had his wallet stolen in the market. He had picked up a ‘coconut ukulele’ to demonstrate his talent and got distracted. We called in to the police station to report it.
Most of the public buildings were run down and the police station was no exception, but the approach and manner of the handsome, blue lava-lava clad officials was exemplary.
The inspector said they would let Dick know if the wallet was found and as we were leaving the country that day, as a courtesy Michael needn’t pay the four tala required and added, ‘May God go with you all the way home’.