Apia

Apia began as a cluster of small villages beside a reef-sheltered bay, and grew because ships could anchor there. Whalers, traders and missionaries arrived from the 1830s, a beach settlement of stores, grog shops and consulates took shape on the harbour front, and by mid-century the town had become the commercial centre of the Samoan islands and a stage for rival German, British and American interests. Those rivalries turned into armed standoff in the harbour itself: in March 1889 seven German, American and British warships refused to leave the harbour as a storm closed in, and the cyclone wrecked the German and American ships. The 1899 agreement between the powers placed the western islands, and the town, under German rule from 1900.

Robert Louis Stevenson bought land above the town in 1890 and built Vailima, where he died in 1894; he is buried on Mount Vaea behind the house. Under the German administration Apia gained wharves, plantations and public buildings, and in August 1914 a New Zealand expeditionary force occupied the town. The SS Talune arrived from Auckland in November 1918 and was allowed to berth in breach of quarantine, beginning an influenza epidemic that killed about a fifth of the population; and on 28 December 1929, remembered as Black Saturday, the New Zealand constabulary fired on a peaceful Mau gathering in the town and killed the paramount chief Tupua Tamasese Lealofi III.

Apia became the capital of an independent Samoa on 1 January 1962, an event the country celebrates each 1 June. Cyclones remain the town's great hazard, and much has been moved away from the exposed harbour front since: the main produce market was rebuilt inland at Fugalei, the telecommunications hub at Maluafou, and a new courts complex and bank headquarters were built in the 2000s.

Apia is a town of villages, and fa'a Samoa, the Samoan way, still orders life in them: extended families under matai, titled chiefs, who answer to the village council. Church is the other pillar. Sunday morning fills the roads with families in white, choirs can be heard from the street, and families share an umu meal in the afternoon; on White Sunday, the second Sunday of October, the children lead the services. The Catholic cathedral, the Congregational and Methodist churches and the Mormon temple are all prominent on the skyline.

The town is also where Samoan culture is performed for a wider audience. The Teuila Festival in September, one of the country's largest cultural events, brings siva dancing, choirs, sport and competitions to the town centre and ends with the Miss Samoa pageant. Tattooing endures as a serious commitment rather than a souvenir: the peʻa for men and the malu for women are applied by hand, without anaesthetic, by master tattooists.

Rugby is close to a civil religion, and Manu Samoa test matches at Apia Park empty the town. Kilikiti, the Samoan version of cricket played with a three-sided bat, fills village greens at weekends. Manners are formal in public: quiet voices, covered shoulders, shoes left at the door, and speeches and gifts at any occasion that matters.

About 36,000 people live in the Apia urban area, close to a fifth of Samoa's population, and many more come in daily from along the coast. It is the country's only town, holding the government ministries, the courts, the hospital, the National University of Samoa, the wharf and almost all the shops, so the roads into the centre are heavy with buses and pick-up trucks in the morning.

The economy runs on government employment, the port, retail and wholesale trade, a modest tourism sector and the remittances sent home by relatives in New Zealand, Australia and the United States, which support households across the town. Families grow taro and bananas on land behind the houses, and market gardeners and fishermen from Upolu's villages supply Maketi Fou and the fish market.

The day starts early, before the heat, and business slows in the afternoon; shops close by evening and the town is quiet by nightfall. Housing spreads inland up the ridges as families build on customary land, and the pressures of that growth — traffic on Beach Road, drainage and flash flooding in heavy rain, waste and lagoon water quality — are steady local concerns, alongside the risk of cyclones and of a tsunami reaching a low, flat waterfront.

Apia eats from the market, the sea and the umu, the above-ground oven of hot stones. Palusami, young taro leaves baked in coconut cream and wrapped in banana leaf, is the dish most associated with Samoa, and oka, raw fish cut into cubes and dressed with coconut cream, lime, onion and chilli, is sold ready-made at the market and served in every restaurant. Taro, breadfruit and green bananas take the place of bread and rice, cooked alongside chicken, pork or fish.

The Sunday umu is the big meal of the week, cooked before church and eaten in the early afternoon: a whole pig on special occasions, with palusami, fresh seaweed, crayfish, baked taro and rice. Everyday cooking leans on tinned corned beef, pisupo, imported from New Zealand or Australia and served with coconut rice, simmered with taro leaves in coconut cream, or turned into sapasui, the Samoan version of chop suey and a mark of the long Chinese presence in the islands.

Koko Samoa, a thick, strong drink made from locally grown roasted cocoa beans, is the everyday hot drink, and the same cocoa goes into koko alaisa, a rice pudding; green coconut water serves for thirst, and 'ava, the kava of Samoa, is drunk in ceremony before any occasion that matters. Vailima, the national lager, is brewed in Samoa, and the cafés along Beach Road serve Samoan-grown coffee.