Day 8: Where’s the Wal-Mart?

American Samoa, May 31, 2009

What makes Samoa unique? Perhaps one thing is that it has not yet been ‘franchised’. Okay, to be fair, Pago Pago has the most successful KFC in the world; and McDonalds is terribly popular with young and old alike. In fact, perhaps these two companies should be sued for ruining the health of the last two generations of American Samoans; half of the adult population now has type 2 diabetes.

Due to the fact that none of the three commuter companies that run between American Samoa and Samoa will fly on Sunday mornings, I needed to go over to Apia on Saturday for my Sunday flight to Auckland. This seemed merely inconvenient and an added expense at first, but it turned out to be another gift. I found overnight accommodations at a place called the Airport Lodge about five miles from the airport and a thousand miles from civilization as we know it. The lodge was a series of six or so little cabins, just big enough for a bed, a tiny table and a bathroom. I splurged and got one with air conditioning for a whopping 163 Tala or about $60 American. Above, I have posted pictures of a) The Airport Lodge from the road; b) The dining fale (fah-lay, which means meeting place) where I dined and chatted with fellow travelers from Germany and Australia; and c) A picture of my little cabin and its beautiful surroundings. It’s not every day that one gets to stay overnight in a rainforest.

This experience got me wondering: What makes this part of the world so different? On neither American Samoa nor Samoa proper, is there a mall, a Gap, a Starbucks, a Costco, or a Wal-Mart! A complete and utter absence of Wal-Mart! In Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, a dessert paradise on the sea at the Southern tip of the Baja Peninsula, the natural beauty is swiftly being paved over to create a place that is convenient and familiar to American visitors, complete with a huge Wal-Mart rising like a behemoth from sand and brush. Even on The Big Island of Hawai’i, a relatively unspoiled place by American standards, you can find the Wal-Mart—a hulking, ugly, bloated building surrounded by a sea of asphalt. They paved Paradise, put up a parking lot.

The Samoan version of shopping for clothes is the antithesis of the Wal-Mart experience. Here is how it is done. First you go to the fabric shop where bolts of material are stacked on shelves according to price: $1.99, $2.99, all the way up to $5.99 for the real good stuff. You wait the requisite amount of time to be waited on, probably according to how powerful your ‘aiga is. Then you make a selection and explain how you want to use the fabric. “How much will I need?” you ask. The sales person squints at you with an expert eye, “Oh, three and a half yards to be on the safe side.” Then she deftly cuts you a length of your new fabric. So far, so good.

Second, you go down the street to the little dressmaker shop, where three or four women (perhaps including a fa’fafini) are working and chatting at a few of sewing machines. Everyone looks up and smiles and greets you, and the expert dressmaker comes out from behind the counter. It’s decision time. The dressmaker hands you a floppy, worn, Xerox copy of a booklet, filled with a dazzling array of hand drawn puletase designs. You will recall that a puletase is the modest, two piece tunic and long skirt first introduced by the missionaries that is now traditional Samoan dress for women. After marveling at the ingenious variety of ways missionary-wear can be made beautiful, you select one; a simple and safe design, in my case.

Now for the moment of truth: Out comes the tape measure, and you are sized up on every possible dimension. If you are in American Samoa, you cannot hide from the truth of those numbers as they use the English rather than the metric system.

Third, a day or two later you drop by the dressmaker shop again where you are greeted by smiles and a little stir of excitement. The boss gets your new outfit and takes you to changing room in the back which you immediately sense if not air conditioned (which explains why everyone is working in the front). You prepare to don the garments with both anticipation and trepidation: “What if this doesn’t fit?” “How will I negotiate the social discomfort in a culturally appropriate way?” Ruminating all the while, you struggle into the outfit—you struggle because it has been two minutes and you are sticky with sweat. Then the puletase is on, and it fits perfectly! You quickly retreat to the front and the cool, to approving murmurs and more smiles.

My puletase is beautiful. It is the most comfortable real garment that I have ever had on. Nothing pulls or gaps no matter how I move, and it does look good. The fourth photograph above is me modeling my new outfit. The cost? Twelve dollars for the fabric, and $28 to have the garment made. The experience? Priceless.