Post #272518 by Dr.TikiMojo on Thu, Dec 14, 2006 1:19 PM

As to the TAPA CLOTH, here's what my current supplier in West Samoa wrote back:

"Hi: Too bad you don't know someone in Tonga as they are the champion big tapa makers. Unfortunately, there were riots in Tonga a couple of weeks ago and they burnt down 80% of the downtown of the main town so they probably still have no phones or power!!
anyways, they don't make big tapa here. The biggest is about 18 squares, average 70" x 50", and because they make them all slightly different in size, even if I could get together several of those larger samoan tapas here at this time of the year, it would probably be a pain for the bar owner to try to piece them together so they look OK. Probably the better way to go would be the approx. 14" x 14" tapa squares and then they could just be staple-gunned or glued up on a wall. So say 42" high would be 3 squares high and 32 feet long would be about 27 squares wide for a total of about 80 squares. And I could probably pick up that many squares in the market right now (like 'quickly' I mean) but around and after christmas production around samoa pretty much slows down to a trickle until near the end of Jan. There are getting to be a huge amount of overseas samoans visiting here now and they will clean out the markets before they leave.
so you can get back to me on that if you are interested.
Fa'afetai lava, Mari"

http://www.tikihunters.com

[ Edited by: Dr.TikiMojo 2006-12-14 13:21 ]