Samoa is a remarkably neat country. Carefully manicured lawns and flower-beds line the main roads, kilometre after kilometre – just one signal of the Fa’a Samoa, the traditional ‘Samoan way’. Each village has a council, the fono, made up of the heads of extended families, the matai, who, among their other local government functions, ensure regular garden inspections. Look beyond the gardens and you will see the fale, the open-sided houses used for family and village meetings. Then look up and be impressed by the biggest buildings by far: two or three substantial churches per village, encompassing most Christian denominations. On Sundays, when the capital, Apia, becomes a ghost town, Samoa’s rural roads are thronged with families resplendent in brilliant white headed for their service.
The Samoan islands in the Pacific were settled around 7,000 years ago. Then from the 1800s they were colonized, mostly by missionaries. The eastern group of islands became – and remain – the US territory of American Samoa. The western islands passed first through the hands of Germany and then New Zealand, before gaining independence as Western Samoa in 1962. In 1997, the country changed its name simply to Samoa – over the objections of American Samoa.
