No, not the group Wet, Wet, Wet but the weather. It's still raining.
Yesterday Quarantine, Customs, Immigration and the marina rep visited us in turn to do our clear in. Unknown to us despite checking the website bringing a cat into Samoa without pet passport and importation papers is a infringement. Sulaman of Quarantine told us he would bring the vet that afternoon to see what could be done. They didn't turn up. However, this morning Sulaman came back and the story had changed. The vet was off island and wouldn't be back for a month. His boss was coming to deal with us, possibly, if we were lucky, his boss would give us an import permit for the regular fee and Polly wouldn't have to be destroyed. He wrote out a seizure order for Polly and handed me a copy.
An hour later Sulaman and his boss, a younger man, came back to 'discuss' the issue. We went around the houses as they say, about letting us off if we purchased a permit at a cost of 130 tala. The alternative was to tell the police who would shoot the cat. I pointed out she wasn't big enough to eat and too small for a bullet. Then we came to the real purpose of their visit. For 100 tala (about £25) they would tear up the seizure order and no more would be done as long as we gave them the cash and didn't tell anyone. A straight forward bribe, backshee, hush money.
With rain and corrupt officials Samoa was quickly losing it's appeal.
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