Speech: Dennis A. Smith, SWAP Foundation. Official opening of The Airport Lounge* by the Prime Minister of Samoa, Tuila’epa Sailele Malielegaoi, 27 August 2010.
Thank you people for coming today, many of you attending from the furthest corners of Samoa. Debbie and I appreciate the support that you are all giving us. Thank you for that. It means a lot to us and I now consider many of you to be my brothers and sisters.
I am under strict instructions to keep to the point so I do not have time to give thanks to you all individually. The team has a printed “Thank You List” which they will hand out.
When I was in New Zealand I took my children overseas one-on-one for a holiday with Dad. We would normally visit Fiji or the Gold Coast but I didn’t like the politics of Fiji at the time and so in mid 2009 I asked my daughter Rebecca if she would like to visit Samoa. “Oh yeah!!!” she said, of course! Neither of us knew anything about Samoa at that stage. Nothing. We simply knew that ‘It was an island somewhere up there above Fiji and all the factory workers and rugby players came from there!’
In the time between booking our flights and coming here, I found myself drawn into online research about Samoa. In New Zealand I had half a dozen companies, multiple staff, four computer screens on my desk, two phones and I worked around about 60 hours a week. After a week or two of getting constantly distracted by researching about Samoa online, I prayed “Lord, I’m going nuts! I have all this work to do and I am compelled to research Samoa online. I don’t understand what is happening to me!”
I would constantly call out to Rebecca “Come and have a look at this!” every time I found a new picture or a new website that mentioned Samoa. “Oh Dad”, she would say, “It’s just a holiday and we’ll see it when we get there . . . ” I spent around 50 hours trying to understand the country, but also analysing its online presence. That was my job – Internet strategy.
I am an author and a public speaker. I consult with company boards advising them on their Internet strategy; how to set, and then achieve their goals for Internet domination. The week before we came here, I was a keynote speaker at the first eTourism conference held in Wellington. I was sharing the concepts of WEB THOUGHT LEADERSHIP – how to be a leader, not a follower on the Internet. I invited Fasitau Ula, the New Zealand STA representative to Wellington for the conference and got him a complementary ticket. He suggested that I should speak at the upcoming TIDES conference in Samoa and he gave me Sonja’s details.
On the Monday night at midnight I clicked the SEND button to introduce myself to STA. Eight hours later, the Tsunami struck, and I then knew why the Lord had prepared me so thoroughly.
What has followed since is enough to fill a book. Rebecca and I were here as Samoa was working through the aftermath. I returned and filmed the entire Tourism Exchange. I worked with a family in Fusi Safata to establish a small tourism business for them and I returned to New Zealand, sold the family home and immigrated here in February.
Of course as an author, my experiences will be the content of my third book, Lord willing, one I hope to publish later this year. I will be sharing the experiences and process of engaging with and immigrating to Samoa.
Samoa is unique. It can be a brutal country for a Palagi immigrant – Samoa has a natural resistance to foreign influence, certainly some undesirables and the weather can be pretty hard on us. But it has an enormously rich culture, with large natural resources and a heritage that the Palagi are fascinated with. Once through the initial difficulties, and after adjusting to the cultural differences, and building a support network and friendships, I’m finding that Samoa can be a wonderful place to live.
I’ve preached from the first day I came here, to Misa, Sonja and every tourism operator who would listen to me that the 2009 Tsunami is the greatest event to occur in the South Pacific since Pearl Harbour. International goodwill toward Samoa is in the stratosphere and will be for years to come. This creates an extraordinary opportunity for Samoa to tap in to if . . . if . . . if only . . . . if only many things.
We all have our own ideas on what needs to be done and how to do things. I’m aware that many Palagi have come and gone before us with big talk and empty promises. Henry Ford said that “You can’t build a reputation on what you are going to do.” I know that talk is cheap, that’s why we’ve been relatively quiet thus far.
But we believe that the Lord has called us to Samoa to assist in post-Tsunami tourism recovery and we’re just doing what we can. It wasn’t in our plan to sell all and relocate to Samoa – in fact neither of us were excited to live in the heat and deal with some of the less desirable aspects of living in Samoa – but we believe that we have unique skills and experiences. We believe that we’ve been specifically called to work hands-on with the smaller businesses at village level – teaching and helping with branding, marketing, Internet and IT things beyond the reach of people who need this sort of help. Those are the core aims of the SWAP Foundation. We are not a government agency, nor are we a large operation yet, but we are growing daily in size and influence.
We’re not rich by Palagi standards but we’re committed and have a clear vision. To date Debbie and I have funded every cent of our move to Samoa. We have used all that we have to do what we believe is the right thing to do, and the fact that we have friends and support from the Prime Minister to our landlords Sa and Eniko here; and from High Chiefs from Aliepata to the top of Savaii, literally, we believe is testament to the work of the Lord in making preparations for us to “do our thing” – as well as the genuine Samoan hospitality of course!
We teach biblical principles in business – to work hard, to be smart and scrupulously honest, to work collaboratively and to exercise real faith in business. We teach people how to understand the Palagi and how to improve their business, and in many cases how to start a new business and we love what we do!
We soft-launched the SWAP Foundation in April of this year at Lotopa. Some of you were there. George and Viva, and others, thank you for coming again and supporting our vision. It’s all starting to happen now!
The Airport Lounge is our first commercial operation, a booking and information centre that will give us a central base from which we can do our work. It’s a small business but it’s a start. Over the coming months we will be launching the Ninth Heaven™ brand, the Samoa Village Stay™ programme, The Samoa Story™ portal website and more.
Before we hand over to the Prime Minister for our official opening, the team will share more about some of the projects that we have all been working on.
Thank you!
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