No Praise For W. Samoa
pp. 54-55 · Read in the full issue
By MAJOR R. RAVEN-HART, a Recent Visitor.
Apia, as the capital of an im portant group, is a quite incredible dump. The water front is an unbelievable procession of churches, ranging from tin tabernacles and carpenters’ Gothic to one excellent modern building.
Eight of them, I think, to say noth ing of many others inland.
The multiplicity of sects is com mendable, and more would be wel come, including Hindu and Buddhist and Moslem, in that the more sects that exist, the less risk there is of any one of them gaining temporal power and inflicting its ideas on the community, as is the case in Tonga.
Samoa is fortunate in this respect, avoiding (for example) the ridicu lous missionary-imposed compulsory shirts for men, and the police controlled strict Sunday observance of Tonga.
Dozens of churches; but not a single bookshop (in startling con trast tq Suva, an unexpectedly cul tural city) and not even a chemist's shop—this, according to local resi dents, so that the income of the Government Hospital may not be lessened.
It is useless to write of tourist traffic in Western Samoa, since that is officially discouraged by all
... , means, starting with the deposit of £75 demanded from every visitor (whereas Fiji and Tonga are content with a steamer or plane ticket,
to make sure that the visitor shall not become a charge on the com munity) .
There are no hotels outside Apia; and the hotels there charge exorbi tant prices. According to local resi dents, again, the reason is that one of them is Government-run, and official “efficiency” found it impos
sible to maintain reasonable rates —and requested the other hotels to fall into line with their charges.
The explanation of the hotel keepers is that foodstuffs have to be imported, and tourists are few.
But Vava’u also has to import much of its food, and certainly tourists are rare there. Nevertheless, for accom modation at Vava’u, little inferior (if at all) to that at Apia, and food definitely superior to Apia, the charge was 12 - a day, as against Apia’s 28 -.