Samoan Drivers Licence

We have been here a couple of months now and all this time I have been driving illegally! It’s amazing what you get away with as a palagi. Anyway today I was starting work late so I decided it was about time I got a Samoan drivers licence. Adam already has his and so I knew to leave plenty of time and to take my NZ licence and WST$100 with me (in cash as there is no eftPos). As Adam had the car (and as I’m not meant to be driving anyway – yeah right!!) I walked up to the licencing place. The walk started off nicely. Lovely day, sun was shining and the sea sparkling but of course I forgot about the heat of the sun beating down. By the time I got to the top of the hill and to the licencing place I was hot and bothered and trying not to look sweaty!! Anyway I found there were at least 9 other people waiting……. Adam had warned me that things may take time so I joined the mob and waited too. The thing was it seemed to be the norm for people (the workers?) to come in and out of doors past us all without saying a word and to disappear behind a closed door never to be seen again. I had no idea what was going on but figured all I could do was wait. There was another man in the queue getting slowly more and more frustrated. He spoke to me in English so I asked him how long he had been waiting and he said 1 ½ hours!!! Just to get a licence!!! Well I figured it was now or never so I waited some more. While waiting I had to amuse myself somehow so I took to examining the jandalled feet of the others around me. They have all colours of jandalls here, sell them in the supermarket, and quiet a lot of people co-ordinate their jandall colour with what they are wearing. Interesting right? Well it sure is when you have nothing better to do than look at peoples feet! Eventually a guy came and sat himself down at the licencing office desk. The agitated man let himself in first and anyway I thought I would wait for the stampede to die down. It pays to be a white palagi female though as it wasn’t long before I was ushered to the front of the queue and told to take a seat in the air conditioned office. When I finally got served the Samoan behind the desk was talking to me about living in Wellington and the Cake Tin! Oh he also thought the train service was pretty good. Eventually he finished filling out the application forms (they seem to do these things for you here) and he remembered doing Adams licence so he looked him up and copied the address etc. I was then sent through to IT to have my licence created. Only a few minutes longer I’m pleased to say and my photo was taken, I signed an electronic pad and a plastic card was produced from a very high tech space aged looking machine (well anything whizzy like that stands out over here). 1 hour all up. Well this is Samoa!!