W. Samoa Bids

Fond Farewell

To The Privy

Western Samoa’s seaside privies are to go. In early February the Western Samoan Cabinet asked the territory’s Minister of Health to get rid of these unsightly outhouses which have marred the territory’s foreshores for generations.

The privies have lost out to in expensive (SWSI.4O a go), water sealed lavatories which have been installed with great enthusiasm over the past 14 months by US Peace Corps workers ( PIM, Sept., 1968, p. 28). The water-sealed jobs, it is claimed, will put an end to the lagoon pollution, caused by the privies, which were introduced by missionaries in the 1880’s.

Of course, not everyone in West ern Samoa views the privies with the same clean-cut indignation as the Peace Corps (though it would be hard to find anyone in his right mind who is against the new latrines). In a recent article in The Samoa Times, a writer signing himself “Thunder box” waxed nostalgic. He wrote of a first encounter:

Nonchalant?

“The European, exposed for the first time to the gauntlet of staring eyes, is distinctly uneasy as he strolls with determinedly nonchalant gaze, clutching his tightly-rolled scrap of newspaper, along the ramparts lead ing to the “observatory”.

“Even more devastating is his first experience of the communal model, a cheerful conversational a two family, three-holer.

“But the sea is bracing, the ripple of the tide inspiring, and the swirl of the hungry fish below fills the heart with the feeling of having provided for some of God’s smaller creatures.

“This is really getting close to nature, a blessing which one is all too often denied in these days of rush and bustle.”

The “fale samis” (as the privies are known) were first condemned in a local public ordinance in 1931, but the lack of a suitable and sani tary alternative, and perhaps rever ence for tradition, prevented their dis appearance.

The end of the privies is a vic tory for the Peace Corps, and West ern Samoans are looking forward to a bit of 20th century hygiene at the seaside.