Arrival in Samoa

As our plane lifted off from the Auckland airport on February 27^th we had no idea that between then and when we landed in Apia, Samoa, a major earthquake would hit Chile, causing tsunami warnings to be issued for much of the Pacific. We arrived in Apia in the early hours of the morning and were greeted by Chris Jackson, one of our Samoan hosts, who informed us of the tsunami warning and assured us that we would have a place to go inland from the city.

The drive from the airport to the city was surreal, not only were we in a very different country from the one we had just left, we were witnessing what amounted to a massive evacuation of all of the coastal areas. Villages that would normally be quiet at 4 AM were lit up and busy as people waited in line to fill up their cars with petrol, and purchased food from shops that were taking advantage of the business. We also passed people who were simply sitting at the edge of the beach looking out, presumably towards Chile.

Needless to say, this was not how we had envisioned our time in Samoa starting out.

We relocated from our hotel in the city to one up in the hills were we spent the rest of the night getting a little sleep on the lobby floor (the hotel was already full when we arrived), listening to New Zealand news and tsunami bulletins, thinking about our families who were no doubt thinking of us, and thinking of the Samoan people and the tragic tsunami that they had experienced six months earlier. We were thankful when the 9 AM hour came and passed with no waves, and a normal chorus of roosters. In the moment, it was almost tempting to write off the circumstances of our arrival as an inconvenience and a hitch in our schedule. However, perhaps in the end our participation in this experience along with the Samoan people we would come to know and appreciate over the coming weeks gave us some common ground. Most of us come from fairly stable locations in North America, and few of us had ever experienced what it is to be a displaced person with nowhere to sleep but a concrete floor, let alone the seriousness of a tsunami warning.