Samoa is a group of islands in the South Pacific or Polynesia.

Samoans believe that their ancestors sailed from the East Indies, Malaya or the Philippines.

Around the early 1900s the United States and Germany claimed ownership of the Samoan Islands. Germany got Western Samoa and the US got Eastern Samoa.

After the First World War, the US maintained control of Eastern Samoa and named it American Samoa. It is an unchartered US territory which is administered by the Office of Insular Affairs of the US Department of State.

The UN gave New Zealand the authority to administer Western Samoa until its independence in 1962.

My focus is on Western Samoa. It is a nation of islands. It has a population of about 170,000.

Its economy is based mostly on agricultural exports and remittances from overseas. The tourism sector is booming though.