Raphael Kessler

I spent a couple of days in American Samoa, which is unfortunately a bloody expensive place. The cheapest hotel around was sixty-five dollars a night but thankfully the airline I flew with put me up for the time I was there, as I had been delayed considerably.

There were some nice enough looking parts to the island I went to, though Pago Pago the capital was not attractive in the slightest. American Samoa makes for a perfect sociological case study, as it emphatically shows the differences between what happens with a US colony in comparison to Samoa, an independent country. Essentially a country divided between two masters. One part subservient to the United States and the other in control of its own destiny. In American Samoa, the majority of the work is done by "Westerns", those from Samoa, formerly known as Western Samoa. American Samoa also has most of the social ills of the mainland US, with crime and gun control issues as worrying factors. Comparatively, Samoa has almost no crime and no guns, there is no army and the police force do not carry weapons. In American Samoa the army and government are two of the biggest employers.

When I toured the island I did not have my camera with me, so only took photos from the airport and the air. Unfortunately neither of these pictures show what beauty there is in American Samoa.