The Incredible Fig

Happy Holidays. In this special issue we are reprinting our top stories of the past year. This article first appeared online in our “Harmony” issue in July, 2021.

One of my favorite walkways in the world spans a beautiful fig in the village of Falealupo on the island of Savai’i, Samoa, formerly Western Samoa. My colleague the ethnobotanist Paul Cox invited me to visit this island in 1994 at a critical juncture in its history. The 16 tribal chiefs were at a crossroads. The Western Samoan government required villages to build cement schools because their former palm-thatch construction could not withstand the frequent monsoons. But the cost of a school was over $50,000, and Savai’i did not have a cash economy. Samoans are incredibly supportive of their children and wanted the best possible education for them, but their livelihood was based on harvesting fish from the sea and fruits from the jungle. An Asian logging company offered to harvest the island’s timber in exchange for enough funds to build a new school. The chiefs were uneasy because their entire existence over many generations relied on the forest, and even their ancestors were part of this ecosystem, returning to earth as flying foxes in the canopy.

I flew to Samoa with two construction