Rajeev's World: The Home Of Tusitala

The evening today in Apia, Samoa was quite interesting, and the schedule brought me to Villa Vailima...

Located about 5 kilometres at the base of Mount Vaea, the villa is located in a village called Vailima. The name Vailima literally means "water in the hand", which comes from an old Samoan legend that talks of a woman who gave some water (vai) in her hand (lima) to help her thirsty companion, thus saving a life...

The villa and this estate was home to the famous Scottish author, Robert Louis Stevenson, who is known for his many books, including Treasure Island which I so adored as a kid. Poor health forced Stevenson to shift to the Pacific, and he made Samoa his home after traveling through the United States, Hawaii, modern-day Kiribati and Tahiti...

In 1890, Stevenson bought 400 acres here Vailima, where the villa was built and the estate was developed. He took the native name Tusitala (Samoan for "Teller of Tales", i.e. a storyteller). He was regarded as a wise man by the Samoans and made him an influential person in local affairs and politics.

He was convinced that the European officials who were appointed to rule the Samoans were incompetent, and after many futile attempts to resolve the matter, he published A Footnote to History, which was a protest against existing conditions. The fallout was the recall of two colonial officials.

During his days here he wrote The Beach of Falesa, Catriona, The Ebb-Tide and the Vailima Letters. In December 1894, at the age of 44, Stevenson passed away. The Samoans insisted on surrounding his body with a watch-guard during the night and on bearing their Tusitala upon their shoulders to nearby Mount Vaea, where they buried him on a spot overlooking the sea. Stevenson had always wanted his 'Requiem' inscribed on his tomb:

Under the wide and starry sky,

Dig the grave and let me lie.

Glad did I live and gladly die,

And I laid me down with a will.

This be the verse you grave for me:

Here he lies where he longed to be;

Home is the sailor, home from sea,

And the hunter home from the hill.

Stevenson was so loved by the Samoans, and his tombstone epigraph was translated to a Samoan song of grief, which is sung in Samoa to this day.