I had a lovely birthday the other day. In the morning we got up and went to the town center and watched the flag raising ceremony. The police band and colour guard marches from the police headquarters about 400 meters to where they raise the flag. The band was pretty good and all the policemen wear the traditional lavalava, as it is called here. We had breakfast and then headed off to find the Samoan Museum. We enjoyed browsing through the historical artifacts and reading about the history of Samoa. The Germans took control of the island in the late 1800’s. It was captured by a New Zealand regiment in 1914, one of the first places to be occupied by the Allies. There wasn’t much history about what happened after that but I think that the Germans, the British and the Americans administrated the island until independence in 1960. There were lots of great photographs, one of a huge German ship that had gone aground and there some artifacts that had been taken from it.
I decided I needed more sustenance, so we headed to Aggie Grey’s hotel, a spot that provided R and R for many British soldiers during the war. We indulged in huge fruit smoothies, Barry’s banana being far superior to my papaya. On the way back to the boat I collected the outfit that I had sewn up for me, the material costing next to nothing in American Samoa. Having a tailor made Samoan style outfit just made my day and it was in my favourite colour. We ended off a memorable birthday by having a steak dinner aboard. Last year at this time we were driving back to Yellowknife from James and Kendra’s wedding in Innisfail.