Immaculate Conception of
Mary Catholic Cathedral, Apia, Upolu, Samoa. Interior of
main cupola. Ava Maria
They might as well re-name Upolu as the Island of Churches.
Christianity is all pervasive and has taken a 99% hold on the joint, and has since the 1830's. Every village has at least one church, so that's every few miles. There's shitloads of them everywhere you go; large and small, grand and humble, ornate and plain, all with the cross of Jesus and with all the denominations you could possibly imagine.
Samoa reputedly has 265 villages, most of them on Upolu [the capital Apia is a conglomeration of more than 40 villages alone], Sava'ii - the "Big Island" - is more sparsely populated. So there must be close to three hundred churches in the country. The coast of Upolu is thick with people, and there's a village at almost every bend in the coastal ring road. You'd be hard pressed not to be within walking distance of a church almost anywhere on the approximately 150km of coastline.
There's a particularly panoramic view from Cape Fatuosophia of the sparkling coral lagoon and the brightly pastel painted houses dotted all along the far east coast, with two or three quite stately large three storey churches sticking out above the fale. Rolling down the hill from there we saw a curious billboard that read STIGMATA. We pulled the jalopy over onto the gravel and stopped for a look, and saw a photo of a woman, Toaipuapuaga Opapo Soana'i, apparently bleeding from the hands and forehead, with the notation in English "Stigmata. At this place. Good Friday 2016". The event took hold of the Samoan imagination - by all reports half the population believed way beyond reasonable doubt and without question that it was miracle, while the other half thought it a hoax. Respect.
The Congregational Church of Samoa has the biggest following, closely followed by the Roman Catholics, Anglicans, Lutherans, Methodists, Presbyterians, Seventh Day Adventists, Mormons, Assembly of God tongue-speaking folk, Jehovah's Witnesses, a couple of pretty weird sects and a mountain top Baha'i temple and graveyard...but, all other religions might as well not exist for them. No Muslims, no Hindus, no Buddhists, nor anyone else. Not for Samoa, not with the nation's motto "Founded on God". At the last census, less than 1% of Samoans identified as non-believers.
The Roman Catholic Immaculate Conception of Mary Cathedral is the most impressive building in central Apia by a long shot. Built relatively recently at tremendous cost, after the old cathedral was damaged beyond repair in the 2009 earthquake, it's a genuine cathedral, with spectacular internal beams of local hardwoods and some fantastically intricate parquetry work on the floors and walls, stained glass windows showing The Way of The Cross, and a rather curious main cupola depicting the Immaculate Conception as if it were taking place in a fono ['council of Chiefs']. It seats about 1500 people.
Sunday, oh blessed Sunday is the biggest day of the week in Samoa. Full stop. If only it was every day. Go get the fish from market or catch it yourself and kill the piglet and get the umu oven going well before dawn, then on to Church in your finest, morning tea, and then home to change, open up the umu to the huge Sunday feed [to'onai], before spending the rest of the day playing, yarning, or sleeping. Yes, yes please. So of course, like everyone else, we had to go to church [a first for me in decades, apart from weddings and funerals! I've been a confirmed atheist for as long as I can remember, but paradoxically have always had a fascination with the rituals of religion].
I'd been intrigued by the modest little Protestant Church of Apia we'd seen on the Beach Road - [of course, there's no such denomination as "protestant", so what is this? A catch all place for those who don't fit in elsewhere? Yup.] - and you had to love it. The singing was beautiful, the pianist had a charming flair with his hands and never dropped a single note, the reading was the Loaves & Fishes yarn according to John, and the walking on water scare from Matthew's gospel, and the guest preacher spoke of the need to "beware of shiny things" in the sermon, which ended with a rousing cry "Jesus! Jesus! Jesus! Just the name. Jesus! It makes you want to believe!" The whole service was in English, signed for some deaf mutes sitting in the front pews, and the bible stories were projected onto a screen in the simple English of the Samoan bible. We were told that up until a few years ago at this church, the pastor was always European, but not now.
I had miscalculated the start of Church at 10am, so after donning the best we could manage as our Sunday Best, us white strangers rolled up at 9:45am to find more than 50 people in the congregation and proceedings obviously well underway. Oh no! Late for church! We've never been much good at mornings. No sooner than we had found a pew, than the reverend announced on his microphone "it seems we have some guests among us today. Welcome! Now I don't want to put you on the spot..." and we could see the said microphone coming for us, so we agreed I would take it, and..put on the spot, thanks...said something entirely inoffensive like "hello, my name is Ian, and this is my wife Fran, and we are here on holiday in beautiful Samoa. Thank you very much for having us in your church". Beads of sweat rolled from my forehead. The heat was stifling in church, and everyone had their ili, the ubiquitous fan that is Samoa's personal air conditioning system.
After a ripple of polite applause for us [us? yikes!] it was back to the list of rosters for this week's community work, choir practice, pre-school, play groups, and the deaf car wash. There was a long list of people who needed prayers for the help of The Lord, headed by a Samoan rugby league player currently in custody in San Francisco, after being arrested in a nightclub fracas. Several in the congregation were congratulated on their good work at training for the local edition of the Special Olympics.
At morning tea in the Church hall we were led to the high table and sat with the clergy and other dignitaries and treated like royalty at tea for plenty. And what a spread it was. Scones and cream, party pies and sausages rolls, tiny little toasted cheese and ham sandwiches, sets of plastic-film wrapped tuna white sandwiches made a minute ago with lashings of butter and the crusts cut off, cocktail franks on toothpicks with tomato sauce, cheesecake, and Lamingtons - thank the Good Lord Jesus for chocolate and strawberry Lamingtons rolled in fresh desiccated coconut! - hot tea, coffee and tepid orange cordial to the whir of ceiling fans.
Boy oh boy, what an old fashioned repast. It was put on by the Church's Women's Auxiliary. It reminded me of something served at family gatherings in Australia in the 60's. As the kids ran around under our feet the talk was wide ranging, and they spoke of life as "the noble struggle". They were frank and plain speaking, gossiped and had faith by the bucket load. There was a Japanese woman among them who had lived in Apia for a "very long time" after marrying a Samoan man whose grown daughters worked office jobs in the Sydney CBD. She said she was constantly worried about them even though she said she kicked herself "at my age it's time to let them go - life now should be about you, for a change!".They didn't mind at all having a well-lapsed Catholic and a long-time non-believer in their midst. The preaching was done.
It was only after our sojourn to Upolu that I worked out why Christianity had taken such a strong hold. One of the ancient female Gods, Nafanua, had predicted that a new "force" would sweep over the islands one day and supplant the Gods, so when the first missionaries turned up in 1830, the three Samoan 'kings' at the time realised instantly that the prophesy of the Gods had indeed come true. So they all immediately signed up for Christianity, followed shortly afterwards by the entire population. The missionaries couldn't possibly have dreamed of having better luck. They'd converted a whole nation at the drop of a hat. After Romanising the Samoan language, the London Missionary Society had both the Old and New Testaments of the Bible translated into Samoan by 1855, and it was plain sailing from there on in.
But instead of the ancient Gods being supplanted, they gained even more traction and respect as their prophecy had materialised out of the blue as predicted. The spirits of the ancestors got even stronger, while they also carried on with having blind faith in the Bible stories. For decades now, I have been hoping to have a Road to Damascus Experience, but I am still waiting! Lord, save me!
While Christianity is in the blood, it doesn't go without scrutiny. While we were there, there was a raging debate in the colourful letters-to-the-editor pages of the popular local tabloid newspaper the Samoan Observer on the Govt. plan to impose income tax on the clergy for the first time, with heated arguments on both sides of the ledger. There were also letters condemning the high cost of funerals, with family's expected by tradition to provide gifts for everyone attending, and the "extortionate" rates charged by the clergy, to the extent that it impoverished some families. What's Christian about that! they cried.
There's also a very nice touch in the villages in the evening, just as the sun begins to set like clockwork at 6:15pm.
The church bell will ring just once - a couple of times I also heard a conch shell being blown, for Christ' sake - and that's the signal for everybody to just stop what they are doing, drop everything, sit down where they are, and pray for about 15 minutes until the church bell rings again, then life resumes as normal, and communal dinner is served in due course...but it is just so quiet, all you can hear is fading birdsong, the gentle sou'easterly trade wind rustling the leaves on the trees and the sound of distant surf breaking on the reef, but everything appears to be in suspended animation. It's a very good time of day to stop, and contemplate one's navel for a while. You are not meant to do or say anything, just think, or pray, or not if you like. There's an old Samoan saying, that all you need to do to put everything right with yourself is find some time and "eat the breeze".
Twilight in the tropics is short, and then night falls.
LDS Mormon Temple
& Mission House, Pesega, Apia, Upolu, Samoa