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Samoa Under the Sailing Gods

I

I

After seeing the Administrator's party at its starting-point in Savaii, I proceeded immediately on leave to Apia. It was now that I stayed at the Government hotel; where, as I have already mentioned, lived the man with the brewery in his wardrobe. During this visit to Apia the Inspector of Police, with whom I used to practise revolver-shooting when living at Vaiala, invited me to accompany him on a ride along the coast in the direction of Mulifanua, in pursuit of two prisoners—a half-caste and a Chinaman—who had escaped from the jail. Instructions were to bring them back alive or dead. It was believed they would make for Savaii. The half-caste was one of a gang who had recently stolen a large auxiliary ketch and got as far as Tonga, from whence they had been brought back. There had been another escapade of this sort shortly before, entailing the loss of the boat and the probable loss of two lives. (Two of the half-castes concerned landed at Funafuti in a dinghy, where they were arrested by Captain Allen, but the fate of their companions and the motor-boat remained a mystery.) Both incidents, I believe, were without precedent. We overran our quarry, but the native police who were following us got them. I mention the ride only because I was now to see that the lovely coral beaches before the native villages along the coast of Upolu were defaced above high-water mark with scores of crude, and for the most part useless, privies, constructed of all sorts of junk, such as pieces of old soap-boxes. Many of them obviously had not been built for use, since their height from the ground and extraordinary shape would entirely have precluded human entry. None the less, they bristled beneath or before the palms in front of every village by the dozen, and constituted a hideous blot upon the island scenery.

page 185

The Samoan is regular in his personal habits, and it is his custom, where he lives by the coast, to go to the beach at day-break each morning and deposit his faeces below high-water mark. When the tide is full he will wade out into the sea. With those villages inland or atop of cliffs, he scales the pig-fence at the back of the village and goes off into the bush. This state of affairs is possibly not ideal—and where there is excessive feasting there will even be irregularities—but it is difficult, apart from the building of communal latrines by the Government, to see how to effect any satisfactory improvement. The Administrator's decree that each family must provide itself with a privy was certainly no solution of the problem. Had these preposterous places, or pretended drop-privies, been used, it would simply have led to the depositing and exposure of the excrement above high-water mark. This was the wonderful "sanitary control" that was advertised to the world and the League of Nations.

In the Samoa Report of 1927–28—after the native unrest arose—it is stated:

"… worse still, owing to their action nearly all the sanitary control in the various villages has been lost. This means that a very large proportion of the villages in Upolu and Savaii have gone back to the conditions existing before sanitation was introduced and enforced by Government officials…. It is remarkable that the health of the natives should have suffered so little."

There never was any sanitary control, other than the fiasco I have mentioned, save for a few latrines presented one to each Faipule by the Administration; but in some cases these were not erected but were allowed to lie and rot, as I could quote documentary evidence to prove. A photograph of a proper latrine, I must admit, was included in The Samoa Annual Report, 1926–27.