Photo credits: Jeroen Swolfs - Tsunami Samoa 2009

To me Samoa was just another tropical island in the Pacific I was about to visit. I heard about the tsunami when I was in Australia. Another one? The damage to the small island turned out to be large. Many people died. I had actually planned otherwise, but I want to go there as soon as possible. It might sound a bit weird but I guess it’s my journalistic curiosity that draws me to such places. Places other people avoid. At Fiji, where I made a stopover, I meet many people who have adjusted their schedule to steer clear of Samoa. That immediately signifies the damage to tourism. I reschedule and arrive at Samoa on October 22nd. I expect it to be bad.

When I ask the driver how things are at Samoa, he answers: “It’s fine!”
“But what about the tsunami?” “Yes, that’s very bad, but only on one side of island, rest OK.”
On a moment like this I can hardly keep myself from going to that area instantly. But first I have to take the street photo, because that’s why I’m there in the first place.

I’m wondering whether the street view of the capital Apia will reveal some of the drama that took place on the south coast. I imagine NGOs, international organizations, religious groups and government swarming around to help. All of them operating from Apia.

There is not one.

That is of course striking. Conversations with taxi drivers, hotel managers and passers by tell me that life in Apia has suffered a blow, however a month later people have already picked up the pieces. I have to be careful because my Dutch bluntness isn’t appreciated everywhere. Not everyone wears his heart on his sleeve. After asking around for a while, many people do turn out to be worried about what has happened, what is going on right now and, most of all, why the government is acting so inadequately.

I’m very curious about what is going on here. My street photo shows a quiet street scene in Apia.
At night in the restaurant there’s a girl sitting next to me. Martina is her name and she’s writing. We start talking and she turns out to be English and traveling around, she has been doing volunteer work for the Samoan Red Cross for some days. We talk long about how everything is going and what she has seen. She invites me to come along the next day.

We gather at 6 in the morning at the office of the Red Cross. Martina and I meet again and there are also some other volunteers, mostly Samoan but also some white people. Around half past 6 it starts to get light and we get in the back of a truck. Jackets are handed out and I’m a Red Cross volunteer. As the sun colors the air in all possible shades of red, we set up along the coast to the mountains. Samoa is a beautiful island. Furious dark blue waves break against the rocks, examined by wet palm trees in turquoise lagoons.

The flowers on the trees and the morning skies are fighting over the best shades of pink while we get to know each other with a salty sea breeze through our hair. In the back of the truck we raise our voices to tell each other who we are and where we’re from. We cross the mountain ridge that divides the island in two. It is getting a bit colder. The view gets wider and wider. Samoa is beautiful.

It only dawns upon you when you’re already in it. All of a sudden the green disappears and everything turns brown. Grey. Broken. The cheerful, open houses are scattered around like pieces of a puzzle in a nursery. That’s what we are to the sea.

After the initial good atmosphere everybody is serious now.

We are impressed by the collapsed houses, the parched earth where once stood green grass and the withered trees that could not bear the sea water. No one talks while the truck carries us further. To flooded plains where battered cars hang in dead trees, vast fields of domestic waste with a past.

Stench. Heat. The gentle sea laps in the background and beckons us. She promises us cool refreshment, but it is a bitter one. Many people have not been found in the waves. Here and there people are rummaging through the mess. Looking for something that stood on a cabinet, a book that lay beside a pillow, a letter, a faded picture of long gone relatives. Memories of a life. A gathering. An existence. Only the foundations of what once was a tight community are still recognizable in a wasteland of chubby mud with a hard cracked layer. Unrecognizable mess, rotting animals. Fish. As far as one can see.

We are lucky because we’re late. The arms and legs of 150 persons have already been removed from the wreckage and have been bewailed in our absence. We are part of the stage of new beginnings. Rebuilding. From the ground, from the rubble. Where to start? I have absolutely no clue how to force a new beginning in such wreckage. The people of the Red Cross do, thank God.

What’s this volunteer work about? It starts with the establishment of a base camp, which is the starting point of all operations. The teams communicate through radios. The base camp also serves as storage for relief goods that are brought in. A trained manager was supposed to be here but as far as I can see, he isn’t. There is a Canadian carpenter working for the International Red Cross however and apparently he is taking care of business. But most of the time he’s out doing his own work.

The volunteers, both Samoan and foreign, are arranged into several groups. We are twenty in total. Which, oddly enough, is very little compared to the far-stretched area. We are supposed to set up water tanks, which is quite a professional task considering they need concrete foundations first. I hang around and wait until there are some wooden shelves that need to be dragged to and fro. Then it is already time for lunch so we head back to the base camp. In the meanwhile some people who have been there for a while have told me that they are somewhat frustrated about the slow progression. A thousand things need to be done but the people, resources and time are used very inefficiently. After lunch we have to wait again for who knows what so I decide to walk around and take pictures. Probably this will be of more use to the people than my job skills and certainly more than waiting for who knows what.

I wander through the clutter of disappeared towns and have a chat with the few people who are still there. Mostly short chats of asking how they are and if they are being helped. They like that. This used to be a tourist area, so people don’t look up from a white guy and speak English reasonably well. I feel welcome everywhere and after a chat people let me take pictures of their misery. Samoans are special because they keep smiling and joking despite their misery. Of course it’s also a façade but I’ve seen other reactions in hard times and it helps relieve the situation. I admire it.

When I return at the end of the day, I hear that the rest has done shit the whole afternoon. Of course that leads to nothing. Especially the whites feel that everything is poorly regulated. I think so too. It becomes increasingly clear to me that there is more to be said about the so-called aid that should be in place. There are stories of disappearing funds and even disappeared containers from the port. But most striking is still the total absence of government. In my three-day stay at the island I see no obvious action of the Samoan government. Apparently they have been determining their strategy for a month while a thousand basic things need to be arranged for, such as shelter, water and sanitary needs. Bizarre. Other aid organizations are nowhere in sight, which means that we, the inefficient mess, are actually the best-represented NGO around. Twenty men and more than half of them are waiting. I just cannot comprehend everything is so poorly regulated!

The next day is another one of helping out with one of the tanks and some other chores that keep six men busy whereas three would have been enough. After that I go shooting. Meanwhile, it creates a dramatic series about what it is, one month later.

That night I meet a Samoan from the same affected village as the prime minister. Over the past ten years he has lived in Australia. He says the prime minister has driven around for five minutes, didn’t step out of the car and has also not addressed the assembled press. They were classmates. He cannot believe it. Another thing he cannot believe is that he talked his Australian company into donating a million Australian dollars to the Samoan Red Cross and that they have lost the money. He traced it and it has disappeared. Vanished. Nobody knows what happened to it. He is furious. He lost three family members.

After one more day of photography in the damaged area have to move on and my tsunami series is finished. I try to get it published in the Volkskrant, but unfortunately I don’t succeed. No longer a topical matter and besides: who knows Samoa?