Author: Christian Letourneau / Source: Atlas Obscura
A ruddy stalk of oblong orange bananas hangs in the breeze at Tisa’s Barefoot Bar in Alega, American Samoa. Run by Tisa Faamuli and her New Zealander husband, known only as Candyman, this casual amalgamation of hut and patio, anchored by a few bottles of rum and one overworked blender, serves as an oasis for expats, sailors, and members of the island’s artistic community.
If you ask Candyman about the prominently displayed bunch, you’re liable to be there a while. The ensuing tale spans centuries of history and migration, a treatise on vitamin C and potassium levels, with a cameo by the last great Tui of Manu’a.This banana, known as the Soa’a, comes from the Manu’a Islands, a small archipelago about 70 miles east of American Samoa’s population center and territorial capital, Pago Pago. Candyman suspects it has a royal pedigree. “The Soa’a never spread to other Samoan islands, only on the King’s plantation on Manu’a. We think it came as a gift to the King, from some people coming from near the equator, and that’s why nobody else grew it,” he says. “I’m still looking for one more of the Soa’a [varieties]. We have two. There are roughly three.”
Candyman collects bananas. Acquiring a new one can be as simple as trading with the farmers next door. “I’ll be driving down the road and see a banana that I don’t have, and I’ll turn the truck right around,” he says. Occasionally he travels to outlying islands to identify varieties he hasn’t tried. Sometimes, it’s a matter of figuring out if what one farmer calls a “boiler” is really different from what another farmer calls the “goldenfinger.” When one plantation owner went to prison for assaulting a would-be banana thief with a machete, Candyman had to wait until the farmer returned from his five-year sentence to politely request an offshoot of his famed Misiluki banana.
“I found a survey conducted of the territory from the early 1900s that identified 35 different types of bananas,” says Candyman. To date, he has tracked down and cultivated 22 of those varieties on the volcanic hillside plantations he and Tisa manage above Alega Bay. He hopes to find all 35.
Candyman’s plantations are almost indistinguishable, to the untrained eye, from the emerald expanse of jungle that engulfs them. There are five, about an acre each, spread out across the hillside, chosen for sunlight, slight variations in soil quality, erosion control, and resilience to extreme weather. One snakes up behind the tiny gravel parking lot across from the bar. Another sits below a crest in the ridge that forms the village’s eastern border, sheltered from extreme weather. Except for one unsealed road, small footpaths connect the permaculturist patches of taro, breadfruit, lemongrass, and banana. “We make little footprints,” Candyman explains.
Of all his fruits, Candyman holds the little orange Soa’a in highest esteem. “The orange bananas I fell in love with because of the way they grew, the way they looked,” he says. “It took a…
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