Samoa

Samoa. That's where we have been for the last week.

Arriving at Faleole airport at 2 am, we were greeted at the exit by a young Samoan policeman, clutching a picture of me given him by my friend Peter Rodger, an economic advisor to the Samoan government, who was at that point in the departure lounge waiting to catch the same plane home to New Zealand. The policeman handed me a Jason's Samoa guide, annotated by Pete. It was a nice way to enter a new country and imagine that you are important, and Pete's notes turned out to be a treasure trove of good advice.

Samoa was a German Colony from 1900 to 1914, occupied by New Zealand troops in 1914, and run, sometimes badly, by a New Zealand administration until independence in 1962. The population of Samoa is 186,000. Another 131,000 New Zealanders identify themselves as being of Samoan ethnicity.

We spent 6 days on Upolu, the most populated Island of Samoa, staying in Aggie Grey's resort at the western end facing the big Island of Savaii. Aggie founded her business during WWII, looking after US Marines stationed in Samoa.

The resort was certainly a great place to relax, but our greatest pleasure was in getting out and about around the island. The roads here are for walking on, and drivers amble along at 40 km/hr. And as you circumnavigate the 200 or so kilometers on the perimeter road that bounds the island shore, or cross over the volcanic mountains from north to south, what you see, you, the inhabitant of the "prosperous world", is simply breathtaking.

Everywhere there are people, moving at a relaxed pace, cheerful and gracious to a fault. Children range freely. Young and old sit cross-legged in the abundant fale, groups walk the road to church, every day, and on Sundays in brilliant white clothing, and churches line this road, one after the other, in competing grandeur. Wildly coloured buses with wooden, glassless window frames bump along the road. And in the evening, children organise their own games, teenagers carry toddlers, youngsters play netball, groups of young women bathe in the lagoon, young men compete in frenzied rugby matches on grass verges or fields of varying size.

This Island is totally electrified yet the kids don't seem to bother with television or computer games here. They make up outdoor games. They run wild and free.

I remember a world like that 60 years ago in New Zealand.

I never saw an angry person in Samoa, not in the quiet but populous, villages, not in the tsunami-ravaged south east, not in the bustling markets of Apia, and certainly not on the immaculately gardened roads, where ambling utes carry kids unrestrained in the back or standing on the railings, dogs and pigs run amok, and strolling pedestrians wave at vehicles, even those driven by astonished palagi.