Partly for health reasons, but also because he fell in love with the Samoan people, Robert Louis Stevenson moved here in his later years; reciprocally, the Samoans fell in love with him, nicknaming him Tusitala ["the story teller."] In gratitude for his intervention and caring for a number of local chiefs imprisoned during a peaceful principled nationalist rebellion, they built to his hilltop house "the road of the loving heart" that would "go on forever".

From my brief experience, hopefully raising more questions than providing answers, and in gratitude for their very gracious and human hospitality, may fa'aSamoa ["the customs and traditions of the Samoan people"] follow that road--visually as well as verbally!

My personal thanks not only to my local contacts in Samoa, Roger Dale and the South Pacific staff in the Faculty of Education, University of Auckland, NZ, but also Charlotte Dale, Jonathon, and especially "little T", their "wonderful daughter" of all global origins, for helping to not only organize but also continuingly inspire this inadequate report of this all-too-short visit of this ethnodigitographical tusitala!