Word: islander
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...many of the 115,000 Samoans who live on the main island of Upolu, Robert Louis Stevenson is still very much alive. From his office on the sixth floor of the Central Bank of Samoa building, Deputy Prime Minister Misa Telefoni points out the window to Tusitala's mountain tomb: "See, it's up under those trees - right on top. That's an indication of how much the Samoans cared for him, because they had to hack the road up there and carry his heavy coffin." Telefoni's memory of Tusitala, or "Writer of Tales," as he was known locally...
...myth of Tusitala has also undergone a workout. But you'd expect nothing less from the story of how one of the world's tallest tale-tellers came to an island of natural yarn-spinners (fagogo is the Samoan word for their rich and digressive oral tradition). Setting out from San Francisco in 1888 with wife Fanny, 11 years his senior, Stevenson sought both material for his writing and warm weather for his ailing lungs. After stops along the way, Stevenson began to pine for "an island with a profile," and found it in the natural peaks and waterfalls...
...Until recently, the reputation of Stevenson's Pacific writings was in similar tatters. Growing up in Apia as a boy, and later on scholarship in New Zealand, Albert Wendt recalls reading Treasure Island and Jekyll and Hyde "like every other young person, but I never considered him an important writer." Seeking to reposition his work as rich and revelatory, Wellington University's Roger Robinson last year published Robert Louis Stevenson: His Best Pacific Writings. "Together they form a contribution to the literature in English of the Pacific, in five genres, that still stands unmatched," he concludes. So in this postcolonial...
...child growing up on the island of Savaii, an hour's ferry ride and a world away from Apia, the capital, Sima recalls "chasing after cars, because it was such an unusual sight. And kids are still chasing after cars." These days, Urale does her chasing with the camera. In 1992, after realizing the world wasn't going to come to her as an actor, Urale enrolled at Melbourne's renowned Swinburne film school (now the Victorian College of the Arts). To help raise funds for her studies, friends and family pulled together to organize a "Cyclone Sima" appeal...
...lasted from 1998 to 2003) were mostly confined to Guadalcanal, 400 km away, the Western province experienced food and supply shortages, and the trickle of funding for basic services such as education and medical care ceased. People who could afford it imported men from the neighboring Papua New Guinea island province of Bougainville as security guards. But the practice got out of control, and the hired hands quickly became henchmen and bullies; some are now wanted for murder. Once ramsi arrived, the Bougainvilleans returned home...