I FIRST met Wallisians
when I was in Nouméa last year (2012) for a two-week language programme.
In the two weeks I
was there, my host, a businesswoman, introduced me to a good number of
Wallisians, many of them her clients.
The host told me that
there were many Wallisians in Nouméa. (Wallisians are Polynesians.)
I met Dani, a nice
lady, who was working at the institute I attended for the course.
Dani told me that her father was Samoan but her mother was Wallisian.
Her husband, on the
other hand, had a Wallisian father and Samoan mother.
Figure: Map showing Wallis and Futuna and other nations. (Map from worldatlas.com)
When I later looked
at a map to see exactly where Wallis was, I realized that it was next to Samoa –
in fact, it was west of Samoa and approximately north of Fiji.
Wikipedia states that Wallis and Futuna has a
population of 13,484 from a July 2008 census (about 68.4% in Wallis and 31.6%
in Futuna). The 2008 registers a decrease from 14,944 in a July 2003 census.
Interestingly, more
than 16,000 Wallisians and Futunians live as expatriates in the other French
territory of New Calédonia.
Most people in Wallis
and Futuna are Catholics.
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