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SAMOA
Terre Sancte Cruci
By Jheri St.James
“Pago Pago is where the soil came from. Starkist
Tuna Company has the biggest
plant in the world in Pago Pago. I would say it’s a poor country. Like
Hawaii but a little bit warmer, Samoa is a little tiny isolated dot in the middle
of ocean, close to Tonga. You make the trip around the island in two hours, unless
you go into the mountains,” says Kevin Wren, our Common Ground 191 soil
collector in Samoa. Kevin is an airline employee, working in various transitory
locations around the world.
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Oceania
is the name of a constellation of tropical islands in the
South Pacific Ocean, halfway between Hawaii and New
Zealand. Divided into three broad cultural
areas—Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia—the area has about 25,000
small islands, ranging from large masses of ancient rock to minute coral atolls,
many of volcanic origin. Vegetation varies from lush jungles to scanty palm
trees. The Independent State of Samoa is a chain of 10 islands and several
islets midway
between Honolulu, Hawaii and Sydney, Australia. Volcanic and mountainous, Samoa’s
total area is about 1,200 sq. mi. In this placement, the country is vulnerable
to devastating storms.
Fishing and farming are Samoa’s main industries, fertile soil producing
cacao, coconuts/copra, taro and bananas. Two-thirds of the labor force furnishes
90% of the coconut cream, coconut oil and copra exports. Copra is the dried kernel
of the coconut fruit, from which oil is extracted, prepared by drying the meat
and pressing the coconut oil out. Copra yields 50-60% of its weight in oil. Declining
fish stocks in the area are becoming a concern. But tourism is important and
expanding.
Polynesian
and Euronesian, the majority of the people live in villages
in Upolu, where Apia, the capital and chief port, stands.
Samoans speak probably the oldest
Polynesian language in use, as well as English. Christianity is the main
religion. There is, after all, a cross in the sky above.
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Discovered
by the Dutch in 1722, Samoa was claimed by Germany, Great
Britain, and the United States in the 19th
century.
New Zealand occupied and administered
the German protectorate of Western Samoa from 1914 until 1962, when
the islands became the first Polynesian nation to re-establish
independence in the
20th
century. Samoa joined the UN in 1976. Slightly smaller than Rhode Island,
this country
occupies an almost central position within Polynesia. The Independent
State of Samoa – Malo Sa’oloto Tuto’atasi o Samoa – is
a constitutional monarchy under native Chief Tanumafili II Malietoa—also
under Terre Sancte Crucis.
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“I collected the soil right outside the Trade Winds Best Western
Hotel, at a construction site—here it would be a four-star hotel—a suburban
area, houses with ministry buildings next door. There are really no urban areas.
Their soil looks like our dirt here, just regular dirt. Now that I’m doing
this for Common Ground 191 (China, Iraq, Kuwait), I’m realizing that all
dirt looks alike. I’m not seeing anything unusual, maybe a slightly different
color.
“ They like drinking kava and getting anesthetized. Twenty years later you
need an operation to take the rock out of your stomach because it solidifies.
We get there at 1:00 in the afternoon and leave 2:00-3:00 in the morning. Guys
sitting in the same place, looking at you like they’re zombies. ‘Are
you guys high?’ ‘Oh no, we just had kava.’ That’s what
they’re known for there.”
The
constellation known as Crux, the Southern Cross, is the
smallest of the 88 modern constellations, but also one of
the most famous, with the highest
percentage
of very brilliant stars. Surrounded on three sides by the constellation
Centaurus,
to the south lies the Fly (Musca). With the lack of a significant pole
star in the southern sky, two of the stars of Crux are commonly
used to mark the
direction
south. Following the line defined by the two stars for approximately 4.5
times the distance between them leads to a point close to the Southern Celestial
Pole. The five brightest stars of Crux (Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta and Epsilon
Crusis)
also appear on the flags of Australia, Brazil, Papua, New Guinea and Samoa;
New Zealand omits Epsilon. The image of the Southern Cross is dominant
in the
national
iconography of this area from two standpoints—astronomical and mythic.
In the language of astronomy: “The Coalsack
Nebula is the most prominent dark nebula in the skies, well visible to the naked
eye as big dark patch in
the southern Milky Way. Another deep sky object within Crux is the open
cluster NGC 4755. Better known as Jewel Box or Kappa Crucis Cluster, it was discovered
by Nicolas Louis de Lacaille in 1751-1752. It lies at a distance of about
7,500
light years and consists of approximately 100 stars spread across an area
of about 20 ly.”
Then there are the aboriginal myths about the Southern Cross: The Booyong people
in northern Victoria saw the stars as representing a tree that protects Bunya,
an opossum. The main character, however, is not the stars, but the patch of
darkness at the foot of the constellation known in the north as the “coal sack.” To
the Booyong, this is Tchingal, the ferocious emu that threatens Bunya.
The Pointers are two hunters who kill Tchingal and stick their spears in
the tree.
This constellation also had special meaning for northerners. The classical
Greeks included the stars of the Southern Cross in the constellation Centaurus.
For
European colonists, it represented a quest for spiritual renewal. The cross
was once theirs, but now is lost to them because of the process of precession
(the
26,000 year cycle of Earth rotation). It was calculated that the last time
the Southern Cross was visible on the horizon of Jerusalem was when Christ
was crucified.
In his Purgatory, Dante describes the “four stars/Ne’er seen
before save by the primal people.”
The flag of Samoa has undergone many changes: a
red field with a white crescent and a white 5-pointed star pointing upwards;
various Union Jack British flags
with three palm trees in a circle, either in the center of the Jack or
beside the Jack on the hoist corner. After a period of only four stars, today
the flag
of Samoa (adopted 24 Feb. 1949) includes all five stars of the Southern
Cross.
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* *
The
light of the Southern Cross constellation has lighted mankind
and the soils of the earth for eons. Crux will always shine
somewhere on earth. Samoa may change.
The crux of the matter is that we at Common Ground 191 feel fortunate
to have Samoan soil in our collection at this point in the history of an evolving
Samoa
and its constellations, spots in Oceania reflecting lightpoints in
the
sky.
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