The Spirit Survives

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The whole thing has changed since I was a grom. Now like everything, the media, content, magazines and film, everything is instant. You create your own content. How you want the world to see you. Then we saw you on the cover of Surfing at Pipe and it was such a revelation.

Like, I see clips of your kids surfing all the time now. Oh yeah, the Bali I grew up to what it is today is crazy. You had to bring your own snack and water. Kuta used to be all these fields with coconuts and mangoes, all different fruit trees, papaya, banana. We had all this stash.

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We know which tree… this tree, that tree, this mango will be ripe in a couple of days, this papaya is ready now. We were like jungle boys, you know. Mainstream tourism is there, international and domestic. This why we moved to Balangan. The old grandma walking around with no bra on. It reminds me of old Bali. For me to show them how Bali used to be. Good to always step out from the madness, you know. When you first started travelling outside of Bali as a kid how much of an eye opener was it for you? It was definitely an education. Travelling is the best education.

You see things and you learn quicker. It was an eye opener for me, travelling to Australia for the first time, meeting people and seeing the different culture compared to Balinese and Indonesia. How the Western culture and people treat their beaches and take care of their environment better is so different. I think they knew better than we did back then.

When you go to Hawaii, America, California, every place you go you try to take whatever is good from each country and bring that home with you. You learn a lot. What were your first thoughts of Australia? Australia was my first time overseas. To see people working! Is that guy digging a hole! It blew my mind away. And the big cars and the trucks, it felt like in the movies. It felt like a movie set compared to Bali. I was 15 back then.

I went to Australia for the Pro Junior in Narrabeen and stayed in the caravan park. I stayed with Danny Wills and Mick Campbell. We were on the Quiksilver team and Murph was the team manager.

Obviously Bali has changed a lot. How does that sit with you? Bali has become mainstream tourism. I think people who come here want a mix of the new Bali with all its comforts and the old Bali with all its tradition and ceremony. Bali still has that magic and that energy. You can feel it in the air, even though things are changing. Not too many places have that. There are not too many places in the world where visitors keep extending their tickets.

Then one more week! In Bali you have a choice of living; if you want to be high class you can, and if you want local style, you can do that too. If you want to go big then you get the most expensive villa and stay for a week. If you want to go cheap you can live here for months. The thing is you can choose how you want to live. You see it in Bali everywhere you go, people put offerings on their bikes, they put offerings on their warungs, they put offerings at the beachs.

People have so much respect for the gods and what they gave us. They pray on their motorcycle, they pray at the beach. Even the demons… you have good demons and bad demons. Uncle says that those lost "are still alive to us". It's a sentiment that's been given a dark twist of late. In a nation full of myths and legends - a far-fetched story accompanies pretty much every Samoan landmark - some are gossiping about ghosts haunting the tsunami-wrecked area which runs from Saleaaumua on the non-touristy east coast to Maninoa on the south coast; about 20 kilometres west of Maninoa lies the area where two seasons of Survivor were filmed back-to-back last year, pre-tsunami.

My companion from Apia, who spent the night of the tsunami making soup and hot dogs and collecting bottled water to sustain emergency workers the next day, shakes his head in disgust at the rumours. Lumepa's family and others who are rebuilding are desperate for visitors to return; that kind of talk isn't helpful. As we leave, we notice the family is following a post-tsunami suggestion to use traditional thatch roofing instead of corrugated iron which killed and maimed many in the disaster.

Heading for the Cross Island Road that will return us to Apia, we press on westwards along the south coast. To be frank, it's still a wreck. There's little heavy machinery; much of the cleaning up is done by hand. Everywhere are concrete slabs that were once part of somebody's home or an open-walled meeting house. Others that withstood the seawater are crowned with twisted iron, while random structures stand miraculously untouched.

A sign announces Habitat for Humanity volunteers are busy building a house. At Saleapaga there's a motley collection of fales sandwiched between sea and road. The owner of the Faofao Beach Fales, Koroseta Legalo, rebuilt her fales, restaurant and bar a mere six weeks after the tsunami, figuring it was a waste of time waiting for a cheque to arrive.

You can't help but admire her determination.

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If I didn't already have a bellyful of lunch, I would have pulled in here for another meal to support the family's efforts. Lots of visitors will come to Samoa and submerge themselves in the other parallel universe here, the one where you slide down mossy waterfalls as though you're 14 again, snorkel among technicolour fish, take the ferry over to the even more beautiful "big island" of Savai'i, work on your tan, swim with turtles, lounge in the hotel pool and slurp cocktails.

I did all of that and could have returned home sated by those adventures. Going to the south coast wasn't without some fear - the main one being that I'd feel like a voyeur of the worst kind or that people might stare me down or shout at me as a nosy intruder.

It turned out to be the best thing I did in Samoa. It was an emotional lesson in optimism, in how people can survive the worst and pick themselves back up. At Satitoa, on the east coast, as I watch young guys shovelling beach sand into a truck, Sinapi Lemalu tells me he's turning this sand into bricks for his new house to save on the cost of building materials.

We sit on what remains of his former home and he talks openly and easily about what happened, who he lost and how he's rebuilding further inland. He is, he says, grateful for the help from New Zealand and Australia. They literally pulled my pants down and exposed me. Stop and search laws spawned a movement of solidarity across underground Britain as information traveled between frontline areas. So we were very nervous about outsiders, but once they proved they were friends, they were really, really welcome, and Lee was one of those few cool white guys who could be trusted.

Racial discrimination by law enforcement was as synonymous as the war on drugs in eighties Britain and Lee witnessed the brunt felt by the black community through the eyes of Alchemy. Yet one of the most definitive moments was to still come in On Radio 4, David Mellor announced every Head shop would be brought to justice for selling articles to smoke cannabis and use class A drugs. Lee was the first to be summoned to court.

He was sentenced to three months in prison but slipped through the fist of the Iron Lady when he was released on bail two days later. A gruelling month battle ensued.

Then just as Thatcher was on her way out — Lee won his fight against a flawed system in a case that helped save the plight of Head shops across the UK. My shop was full of Rastas and outside there was a van full of 20 police officers, all glaring in at us. I came back to my shop the following week and looked under the shutters to find police photographing people inside so I quickly drove off.

Henk walked into Alchemy 30 years ago with a bunch of flyers for a hip-hop night at the Tabernacle and the pair have been best friends ever since. Firstly — everything here can be used for completely legal purposes. Lee begins to laugh.

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Lee is beaming excitedly from behind the counter. The spirit and warmth of my Rastafarian brethren has been so uplifting. I give thanks to Jah Almighty for being enriched by the Rasta culture and thank the good brethren for their love and friendship.