“But that yachtsman in Hilo, who’d just come back from here, said—”
“Let’s not take hearsay evidence. Let’s just keep on expecting people to be honest and decent until we’re proved wrong. Okay?”
Jessica remained dubious. After all, it was her viewer and although we promised to replace it if anything happened to hers, it might be many months before we could. She didn’t have long to wait, though. Only a few days later the pulenu’u came again, returning the viewer and all the reels. He told us that his people had spent several evenings looking at the pictures and discussing them and now, he continued, they wanted to meet us! In fact, they wanted our entire group to come to Lauli’i and make it our home for as long as we could stay. His own fale, he added, would be put at our disposal. We accepted with alacrity although Barbara, who had been there before, felt there might be some problems connected with living for any length of time in a completely open pavilion with only thin lauhala mats to sleep on.
We arranged for a government jeep to drive us out to the village and piled it high with presents for our hosts: cases of corned beef, canned vegetables and pineapple, and a five-pound can of hard candies for the kids.
It was my first trip outside the port town and I soon began to see what Barbara meant. The Samoan fale is nothing if not open. A thatched roof, a floor of coral, and between the two, posts at regular intervals marking off a circle or an oval. When it rains, shutters of woven pandanus matting can be dropped on the windward side, but at all other times the houses are as a cage at the zoo.
We had worried, however, without realizing the extent of Samoan hospitality. The large oval pavilion in which the chief had gathered for the school board meeting on Barbara’s first visit had been transformed for our benefit. Every family in the village must have contributed for our comfort: a long wooden table, straight-backed chairs, a massive wardrobe with a cloudy mirror on the door—all had been installed to make us feel at home. Army cots had been set up for the men and, for Barbara and Jessica, one end of the open pavilion had been curtained off with beautiful tapa cloth to form an inner room. Within were two thick mattresses, made up with clean sheets and elaborately embroidered pillow cases, and draped about with folds of mosquito netting suspended from the roof.
Our meals, too, deferred to Western taste. While the families of the village gathered in the compound behind the fales to share their food in Samoan style, we sat on the hard chairs that had been provided for our comfort and ate from a conglomeration of Navy issue crockery with monogrammed utensils (USN). Only the pulenu’u ate with us, while his wife and a couple of the younger men waited on table. Our first meal, indeed, was served up to us from our very own cans: corned beef, canned peas, and pineapple. In spite of our insistence that these were for the people of the village, the pulenu’u was sure we would not care for Samoan food.
One evening a group of children from the pulenu’u’s family put on a performance of native songs and dances for our benefit, and then we played our portable victrola for them while Jessica demonstrated dances of other islands. After the entertainment, the older people vanished silently into the night, but the children lingered. Then the pulenu’u unlocked the door of the large wardrobe, where he kept our gifts, and brought out the big tin of hard candies.
Placing it on a table, he drew up a chair, and as the children passed by in a single file, he carefully counted three pieces into each outstretched hand. This was a nightly ritual, and we decided that the candy, at that rate, would last quite a while.
On our last afternoon in Lauli’i all the village chiefs gathered once more in the guest fale and an ava ceremony was held. It was a bit unusual for a woman to be included in what is normally an all-male affair, but we were told that “a brave woman is the equal of a man” and Barbara, by sailing across the Pacific, evidently qualified.