Freeloaders and Freeloading, or Fe’e as we all know it in every local bar and drinking hole, (our brilliant language has just the one word for the noun, verb and adjective) come in various forms. It has become a way of life and career for some who have successfully linked it to culture and tradition and travel the country plying their trade at any ceremony such as a church opening or funeral where traditional presentations of fine mats, food and money are made. Practitioners of this more sophisticated form of freeloading are seen by educated urbanites as being in that area of respectability usually reserved for used car salesmen and money lenders. At the traditional village level, there is a grudging respect and admiration and probably even envy from untitled men and some matai for these guys for their prowess as orators and their brazen ability to front up to any ceremonial gathering, present their credentials as orators and matai come to pay their respects to the dearly departed or to add their blessings to the new church, and walk away with a substantial amount of money, food and an ‘ie Samoa or two.
A freeloader is someone who imposes on another’s hospitality. It is not a new and totally foreign concept introduced by the World Bank or IFC. Those guys are just trying to get us to be a bit more foreign investor friendly for reasons better understood by money lenders and those frustrated by our reluctance to embrace high risk property investments involving our land. The internet scams the Governor and the Central Bank of Samoa have been warning us about are not the same thing either. The internet does play a major role in the much, much more sophisticated variant we were exposed to recently in that international freeloaders have access to information about our culture and world famous hospitality, and where anyone can also create web pages to support claims purporting to be associated with world wide respectable organizations. These people rely heavily on their intended victims to be naturally hospitable, hugely gullible and with a charming hint of naivety. And when they are busted and exposed as freeloaders and con artists, they resort to the most effective weapon in their arsenal which is a baffling bombardment of bluster and bullshit, challenging their accusers to prove claims that they are freeloaders imposing on their host’s hospitality. For the most part, this cannot be proven. If, as in the case of the couple armed with a letter with the One World Foundation of New Zealand letterhead, written for a totally different purpose but passed off as a letter of introduction from the One World Foundation, you do decide to spend the time and effort to find proof, the freeloaders are usually long gone by the time you get it. And they will still be screaming their innocence to the stars and a thoroughly disbelieving ‘overwhelming majority’. The internet content of web pages describing us as ‘the friendly and hospitable natives/inhabitants/Polynesians’ should be re-written to include something about being well-traveled, worldly-wise and very IT savvy! We do not want any more freeloaders getting the wrong impression about our world famous hospitality. They might not get away unscratched like the last couple did!
The onus of providing proof to support one’s claims in such cases should not be discouraging. When I was challenged to prove that the year has moved one click but it is still ‘same old, same old’, I honestly went about looking for some things that have changed for the better. A trainer in a management training course years ago was absolutely convinced that if we focused on the positives and disregarded the negatives, then we would have a cracker of a day every day, all year every year for the rest of your life. That of course is a load of crap in real life, unless you are a Public Servant. Try ignoring the negatives for a few days when you’re a business owner and see how big a shovel you will need to dig yourself out of the manure. You fix the negative cock-ups and make sure they do not happen again and the positives will never come as a surprise.
I spent a few days at the ANZ Bank watching if people were following the correct procedure for getting your turn to be served. On busy days, there were still some people jumping the queue. As a regular customer, I knew that the tellers guilty of allowing this to happen were the new and younger ones. It is not difficult to spot when they call over someone they knew without pressing for the next number. Some people also just forced their way in to be asked by the older and longer serving tellers to get a number while the new and younger ones will serve them. I wandered over to the brand spanking new Samoa Post retail outlet where they still employ the old stand-in-line-and-wait-for-the-next-available-teller scheme, on the last day for payment of telephone accounts before you lost your discount. The queue was moving slowly but I did not hear any loud sighs from those waiting. I actually thought nobody would dare to jump the queue there with everybody watching. Wrong! Some guy came right from the back and got served while we watched in amazement. According to Samoa Post Manager, Peniamina Vitale, they hired a Sekulaki to make sure that people waited their turn and did not jump the queue. Obviously, the Sekulaki and the new teller had worked in cahoots to get this gentleman to shoot right past us because according to them, he had been standing in the queue for a very long time! He must have been queuing for turkey tails at Chan Mow’s because he certainly had not been in ours. So what positives do you focus on in these two salubrious establishments where procedures have been put in place but still ignored by employees at times? Same old, same old!
I am determined to find an example of things changing for the better in this new-ish year and will keep you informed. And now some clever people have finally discovered what I have known for years, that fighting with your spouse can make you live longer! Another group is also about to release their research findings proving that death is good for the heart because it is the only time since it was formed in the womb that it can get some rest. But seriously, there are times when ‘same old, same old’ is good. A prime example is young Ben and Tricky of Star 96 FM’s ability to consistently bang out the ‘absolute music variety’ that we love. And if fighting with your spouse for health reasons turns out to be a lot of humbug, tuning in to these guys every week should be good for a couple of extra years at least. No research needed for that. Have a nice one folks!
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I enjoyed the vividness of your descriptions. Thanks