Samoa shop caters to gift-giving traditions
By Vicki Viotti
Advertiser Staff Writer
The icons of special occasions in Samoan culture — white hats, frilly dresses and lavalavas, bolts of Polynesian-print fabrics — are now available in Waipahu at the first U.S. outlet of a popular American Samoa chain that caters to gift-giving traditions.
Gregory Yamamoto • The Honolulu Advertiser
And Metro Samoa is about to move its operation — which opened quietly a year ago in its small space at the Westgate Shopping Center — to permanent quarters about a mile away, taking part of the space vacated by Arakawa's, the old plantation-era store that closed in 1995.
Metro Samoa sales clerk Finaumauai Oshiro measures out the Polynesian-print fabric for Yostee Phillip, who planned to make a mu'umu'u.
March 1 is grand-opening day for the new store, and perhaps few could be more delighted than Gus Hannemann, who now will be saved from shopping trips hither and yon to round up requisite items.
"How many times I've been asked if I can find hats?" said Hannemann, who serves as a liaison for the American Samoa lawmakers and officials here and frequently finds himself shouldering the demands of protocol. "I got to go to six different stores, and they don't have the kinds of hats the Samoan ladies like.
"The other thing I've done is shop for fabric, but nobody can stock it the way Metro does."
There are more than 28,000 Samoans and part-Samoans living in Hawai'i, according to the 2000 Census.
More retail space
Metro Samoa opened the first of its six American Samoa stores 18 years ago, and its president, Tony Chen, is due for a Friday stopover here in preparation for the grand opening, said the Hawai'i general manager, Larry Yang.
At 2,700 square feet, the new store will have about three times the current retail space, Yang said; the remainder of the total 9,000 square feet will include offices, an upstairs warehouse and ground-floor storage.
Like Arakawa's, Metro Samoa sells general merchandise — luggage, handbags and sundry items line one wall — but the emphasis is on apparel and fabric. On Monday, Yostee Phillip, a Marshallese living in Waipahu, stopped by to purchase fabric for her family's needs.
However, said sales clerk Finaumauai Oshiro, most of the clientele is Samoan, many of them trying to fulfill the custom known as sua, the bearing of tributes to important people or on important occasions, such as weddings and funerals. Fabric is one element of a sua presentation; Oshiro had just finished cutting two lengths of fabric that Taifilele Mitaina had purchased as gifts for the one-year anniversary of a family member's death.
The fabric stretched out over a display case containing fancy Sunday hats, veils and headbands favored by girls and women for the yearly White Sunday church service, which this year falls on Oct. 10.
White Sunday is a day when everyone decks themselves out in their finest white outfits — often newly purchased — and perform for their families at church.
Hannemann, whose own aunt and uncle ran the old department store South Pacific Traders, remembered the uproar of White Sunday shopping each year.
"At our store, that was one of the biggest days of sales, another Christmas," he said. "It's the biggest day for hats."
The rest of the year, the store will concentrate on the demand for sua, which also traditionally involves gifts of food. Yang said the company is contemplating additional stores in Hawai'i and may sell some of these items as well, as space expands.
Sua remains a vital expression of love and respect in both times of celebration and need, although it has adapted to modern times, said Delsa Moe, born in what once was called Western Samoa. She is now director of cultural presentations at the Polynesian Cultural Center.
The newer items, Moe said, "are just a substitute for the traditional gifts that were used."
"It's so difficult to get hold of the fine mats and tapa cloth, so we substitute with material," she said. "In place of cooked chicken, we've used canned. In place of taro, we've used crackers."
Maintaining traditions
After the occasion, the family might simply put away the tributes for later use or distribute them among the extended clan, Moe said.
She added that in her homeland, now simply called Samoa, more of the old-fashioned traditions are maintained, especially in the more rural areas.
"When I went back for my father's funeral, all our suas were done the old way, except that instead of giving slabs of beef we gave corned beef," she said.
With the diaspora of Samoans beyond their home shores, the challenge of the community is in maintaining their customs in places where woven mats, the substitute Polynesian prints and taro are in critically short supply, Hannemann said.
"To me I think it's time for a Metro kind of operation to come to Samoans in their new home," he said. "If I were them, I would suggest that they would open stores in California, Seattle, Utah."
But the requests Yang is hearing are for something much closer to home for O'ahu Samoans.
"People have said to open one in Kalihi," he said.
Reach Vicki Viotti at vviotti@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8053.
