Apia, Samoa

Apia is the capital of Samoa, a nation composed of two main and several smaller islands that were controlled by New Zealand until Samoa was granted its independence in 1962. Formerly known as Western Samoa, the country changed its name to Samoa in 1997. Samoa lies to the west of American Samoa, an unincorporated territory of the United States that covers the eastern portion of the Samoan archipelago. Apia features characteristics of a small, modern urban center and has cultivated a growing tourism industry in the early twenty-first century.

Landscape

Apia is located on the northern coast of the volcanic island of Upolu, the most populous and developed island in all of Samoa. Upolu is surrounded by lagoons and coral reefs, which represent one of Apia's prime tourist attractions.

The city sits on a coastal plain in the shadow of Mount Vaea, which is located due south of Apia. It is bisected by the Vaisigano River, which provides a natural harbor. Apia's business district is concentrated around the harbor.

Apia consists of a cluster of what originally were separate villages that have coalesced together to form one sprawling urban zone. Many of the names of the old villages are used to denote particular neighborhoods in the capital.

Apia features a tropical climate marked by a dry season that runs from July to August. There is little variation in the average temperatures. Year-round, average lows of 22 degrees Celsius (72 degrees Fahrenheit) and average highs of 30 degrees Celsius (86 degrees Fahrenheit) may be expected. The capital is occasionally battered by tropical storms and cyclones from December through March. In December 2012, however, Apia suffered serious damage from Cyclone Evan, which was the most damaging tropical cyclone to affect Samoa since Cyclone Val in 1991.

People

With about 36,000 inhabitants (as of 2018), Apia ranks as Samoa's most populous settlement. The majority of the capital's inhabitants are of ethnic Samoan heritage, with a small percentage of people of mixed European and Polynesian ancestry, and a tiny number of people of completely European descent. The capital is also home to sizeable expatriate communities.

Nearly all of Apia's residents practice some form of Christianity, with Congregationalists making up the largest denomination and most of the remaining population divided among Roman Catholic, Methodist, Latter-Day Saints, Assembly of God, and Seventh-Day Adventist churches. Many Samoans are devout practitioners of their faiths, a legacy of the region's long history of contact with European missionaries.

Most residents of Apia are bilingual; Samoan, one of the world's oldest living languages, is commonly spoken in home settings, but English is the official language of business and government.

Economy

As Samoa's only city and home to the country's main port, Apia plays a key role in the Samoan national economy. The economy is driven by three key sources of revenue: tourism, agricultural and fishing industry exports, and remittances from Samoans working abroad. The tens of thousands of Samoans who live overseas pump millions of dollars into the economy each year, and their trips home account for about half of all the country's approximately 120,000 annual visitors, most of whom pass through Apia's international airport.

In March 2020, Samoa closed its borders to international travelers in response to the growing COVID-19 pandemic. Only returning Samoan residents were allowed into the country. Samoa reopened its borders to international travel in September 2022. Since reopening, the county’s tourism industry was slowly returning to normal. In September 2023, about 141,925 people had visited Samoa, compared to 183,970 over the same period in 2018 and 2019.

The most important exports that pass through Apia's port are fish, copra (dried coconut), coconut oil, coconut cream, bananas, cacao, and coffee, most of which is shipped to New Zealand. Australia, the United States, American Samoa, and Fiji also provide markets for these exports. The cultivation of subsistence and cash crops provides the main source of income for many of the area's residents.

Industry accounts for a large percentage of the country's GDP but only a small number of jobs, although the production of automotive parts at one factory located on Apia's outskirts employs a large number of workers. Other major employers include the two university campuses located in the capital.

Although Apia itself does not possess Samoa's most popular tourist attractions, the capital nonetheless serves as the starting point for most visitors to the area. Tourism is a rapidly growing industry that represented approximately 25 percent of the country's gross domestic product (GDP) as of 2019. Driven by the tourism industry, the services sector provided jobs to about half of the total workforce that year.

Landmarks

Although a burgeoning ecotourism industry, built on Samoa's remarkable biodiversity and unspoiled beaches, is drawing increasing numbers of foreign tourists, Apia is not without its own attractions. Several of them are concentrated in the old ceremonial capital of Mulinu'u, which occupies Apia's western district.

Mulinu'u is home to Samoa's Parliament House, or Fale Fono. Built in 1972, it incorporates structural elements drawn from the traditional Samoan homes called fale, the most elaborate of which are characterized by intricately carved beams and coconut-plait lashings. It is also the site of a flag-raising ceremony conducted each weekday morning by Apia's police brass band, whose members march from the police station to the front of the Samoan Government House.

Mulinu'u is also home to the Apia Observatory, whose hurricane forecasts and tropical storm warnings during World War II made a crucial contribution to the Allied war effort in the Pacific theater. It has served as the Samoan government's meteorological and seismographic services office since 1964.

The capital features several notable markets, including the Marketi Tuai, which specializes in traditional Pacific crafts such as hand-carved wooden bowls, fans woven out of coconut fronds, and tapa cloth—a geometrically patterned cotton-like fabric made from pounded mulberry tree bark. A newer market, Marketi Fou, housed under a tin-roofed pavilion, is the capital's most popular source of fresh fruit and vegetables, including taro, a local staple.

Mount Vaea, located within walking distance of Apia, is popular with hikers. Many of them brave the climb, often made strenuous by tropical weather conditions, for the purpose of paying tribute to Samoa's most famous expatriate inhabitant, the Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894), whose grave is located at the summit.

Stevenson's colonial-era family home, named Vailima, has been restored by the Samoan government and now serves as a museum. Its grounds are celebrated for the presence of carefully maintained gardens, which are rich in indigenous plant species. Besides the museum dedicated to Robert Louis Stevenson's legacy, Apia features the modestly sized Museum of Samoa, whose exhibits highlight traditional Samoan and Pacific culture and history.

Apia is home to several religious buildings, including the Mulivai Catholic Cathedral, which was built over a period of twenty years beginning in 1885. Nearby stands the Matafele Methodist Church, the main house of worship for a faith that took root in Samoa in 1835, thanks to the efforts of a visiting Tongan chieftain.

Other notable Apia landmarks include the city's clapboard colonial courthouse, one of the best-preserved wooden buildings from Apia's colonial era and the Town Clock, a World War I memorial located in Apia's center. The still-functioning Aggie Grey's Hotel & Bungalows, built in 1933, served as a popular gathering place during World War II for American servicemen on leave. There is also a monument that honors the Samoan soldiers who fought alongside New Zealander troops during World War II.

History

Human habitation in Samoa dates back to prehistoric times when Southeast Asian migrants first arrived in Polynesia. Traditional Samoan culture thrived through many centuries of isolation. The first Europeans, in the form of Dutch and French traders, arrived in the early eighteenth century. By the 1830s, Apia was home to a large number of British missionaries and merchants. It quickly became a key port for South Pacific–European trade.

From 1899 until 1914, Apia served as the capital of the German dependency of Western Samoa. In 1914, Apia came under the control of New Zealand when that nation seized control of Samoa's western islands from German authorities. New Zealand administered Western Samoa under a League of Nations mandate from 1920 until 1946 and then as a United Nations Trust Territory until 1962. At that time, Apia became the capital of the first independent Pacific island nation, a feat made possible in part by a homegrown resistance to colonial rule that came to be known as the Mau ("strongly held view") Movement.

In 2002, New Zealand's Prime Minister Helen Clark issued a formal apology in Apia on the thirtieth anniversary of Samoan independence. In her Apia address, the prime minister acknowledged the negligence of New Zealander colonial authorities in responding to the 1918 influenza epidemic that claimed thousands of Samoan lives. She also expressed the government's regret for its suppression of a nascent Samoan independence movement in 1929, which led to the subsequent banishment of local island rulers.

Following the death of Malietoa Tanumafili II, who was named the Samoan head of state (O le Ao o le Malo) for life upon the country's independence in 1962, Samoa changed from a constitutional monarchy to a parliamentary republic. The first elected head of state, Prime Minister Tuiatua Tupua Tamasese Efi, took office in June 2007.

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