I was beginning to drift out of sleep as we were pulling into Pago Pago when my phone jolted me out of my haze.  A phone call when I am in that half asleep state immediately puts me on alert.  It was a volunteer from the radio station.  She had forgotten the door code and no one from the staff was in the office because of the Martin Luther King Day holiday.  I guess you can never retire.  Awake, I got up to watch us sail into Pago Pago in the rain.  Sommerset Maugham was right, it rains a lot in American Samoa, and we experienced everything from drizzle to howling downpour.

Maugham’s short story Rain has been made into a play and several movies.  The protagonist is Miss Sadie Thompson, a prostitute who encounters a missionary trying to convert her.  They are quarantined in Pago Pago on their way to Apia because of an outbreak of measles and they are staying in a guest house described as miserable and dealbated.  Maugham, in his story, described the guest house where he was actually staying.  He was not happy.  Because of the constant rain and damp, he acquired a rash.  Sadie Thompon has been played at various times by Gloria Swanson, Joan Crawford, and Rita Hayward.  I am a Maugham fan, and my top priority was to see this guest house.  It is now a steak house and bar named “Sadie Thompson’s.”  It was closed when we arrived, but I did note that Rotary meets there.

I had planned to walk to Sadie’s and the National Park Visitor’s Center, but the weather persuaded Suzi and me to take a tour on an Aiga (family) bus.  They are private buses built on the frame of a pickup truck, colorful, with wooden cabins and makeshift seating.  They run on irregular schedules.   One guy decided to offer tours so several of us went off with him.  Outbound from Pago Pago we passed bus stops where people tried to flag us down. The driver didn’t stop outbound. Inbound, he did stop to pick up a passenger and collected an extra $3.  The Aigas do not run on schedules, they leave when they are full and come when they come.  Our driver wore a Dodgers t shirt and he and his friend, who acted as a guide but was mostly the tout who got us on the bus, were engaging storytellers.

We visited Fatu and Futi (the flowerpot rocks) which were two lovers who were forbidden to marry and tried to escape the island.  They drowned and were turned into stone.  I don’t know about the legend, but a pair of sandals sat on a rock by the beach, and no one was in the water.

At Vaitogi village we learned the legend of the turtle and the shark.  On another island a blind woman could not contribute to the community, so she and her daughter were banned.  They went to the sea and turned into a turtle and a shark.  They swam to Vaitogi where they assumed their human forms.  The villagers took them in, but they liked being sea creatures so much that they went back to the sea.  But if a villager wants to visit with them s/he can go to a lava rock point and sing a specific song and the turtle would come to them.  Our driver is not from the village so he said the turtle may not come but would try.  He sang. The turtle didn’t come.  But he swore that if he were from that village… 

We saw a lot of churches including Zion Congregational Christian Church, Samoa’s first church, founded by John Williams, of the London Missionary Society.  Williams’ mission reached Samoa in 1830. He converted the King and the rest of the island followed.  Williams has no grave because he was killed and eaten in the New Hebrides, but he is the reason Christian Congregationalist is the largest denomination in American Samoa although there are many Catholics, Mormons, Seventh Day Adventists, and Assemblies of God.  We saw churches representing all of those denominations.

The most interesting part of the tour was talking with the duo.  Those conversations triggered more research.  Our driver and guide are of American Nationality but not American Citizens, unlike people born on Guam, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, and the Northern Marianas.  Those others have birthright citizenship granted by Congress.  American Samoans still live under a regime of case law called the Insular Cases.  These rulings say all the protections of the US Constitution do not apply to insular possessions unless granted by Congress.  American Samoa is the one holdout.

American Samoans have the right to live and work in the US but cannot vote and cannot hold jobs that require citizenship.  There are just under 50,000 people living on the Island but there are three times that many living in the US, mostly in Hawaii, California, Washington, Alaska, and Utah.  They do not have the protection of citizens when in the States and cannot register to vote.  To do so they must go through the naturalization process.

American Samoans living in the States sued to be granted birthright citizenship. They won in the lower court but lost on appeal.  American Samoa government did not support them. It likes the status as it is for three reasons, tradition, land, and religion.

Currently the local government can restrict property ownership to people with a 50% Samoan blood quantum.  If the Insular Cases were overturned the equal protection clause of the Constitution would forbid prohibitions keeping mainland citizens from buying property.  It’s American Samoa’s way of keeping ownership local.  Most of the land on the islands is held collectively by families or villages under a vastly different land system than what we have.  Many houses have family graves in the front yard.  Someone on the bus asked what happens if the owners sold the house?  The answer is in the islands’ land ownership rules.

And then there is religion.  Almost all American Samoans are Christian thanks to the work of John Williams.   According to the driver, many villages have a curfew bell that rings at 6 PM. Everyone is ordered off the streets and into their houses to attend prayer (saying grace).  At 6:15 the bell rings again, for dinner and finally at 6:30 it tolls to allow folks to leave their houses.  The First Amendment would not allow this practice.

And finally, there is tradition.  Chiefs are elected by their family groups and hold traditional powers which the American Samoan government does not want them to lose.  The cases in court were mainland Samoans against insular Samoans young vs. old.

American Samoans can vote for chiefs, local officials, and even in US Presidential Primaries to select delegates to the national convention.  They can vote for a non-voting delegate to Congress but have no vote for President or Congress itself.  The Delegate, a Republican, has introduced legislation that she says would be a compromise, keeping the system as it is but making naturalization for American Samoans an easier process for people living in the “Upper 50.”  Given today’s climate this is given little chance of passage.

After our bus tour we asked the driver to drop us off at the National Park Visitor’s Center rather than at the ship.  We walked back past Sadie’s, the market and museum. 

The weather had somewhat cleared for the sail out.