Oscar Kightley: Samoa - paradise lost

Opinion

Samoa is my mother. New Zealand is my father.

It's a common feeling, I'm sure, among Samoan New Zealanders. I struggle to watch rugby tests between the All Blacks and Manu Samoa because no one likes watching their parents fight. Likewise, no one likes it when something bad happens to their Mum.

While the 180,000 people in Samoa are reeling and working to cope with this disaster, one cannot overstate its affect on the 130,000 Samoans living in New Zealand. Still, even as we process our grief and shock, our thoughts are ever with the people in Samoa coping with this crisis. As well as with those coping with loss in American Samoa, Tonga and here in New Zealand.

I am thankful to be one of the lucky ones who hasn't lost immediate family to the tsunami.

Every Samoan living in New Zealand is feeling it. The ones you see on TV or sports fields, the ones you know from work or family connections, the ones you see in your city, town or suburb ... all would be keenly affected by this disaster.

Samoa's biggest export really is Samoans. Its sons and daughters roam and settle around the Pacific Rim in search of education and opportunities for their children. In search of income streams that could be directed to family back in Samoa.

Though they make homes in new lands, though they are shaped by and become a part of their adopted homelands, the ties back to Samoa are never broken. They are life-long. Some of us drift in and away from it but we can never get too far away.

It doesn't matter how many experts the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank send to gatherings of Pacific people telling them to stop sending remittances home, because it doesn't help the economy become self-sufficient or some other such stuff. It's never going to happen. How do you not send your grandmother $40 if she needs it?

One has almost become used to coverage of communities around the world being hit by natural disasters and the elements. It's just about an annual occurrence. And it seems to hit, most often, in countries of brown people.

Despite Samoa's vulnerable geo-graphic location, I never thought it would be hit by such a natural disaster. I really did believe God would always look after it.

They've had two public drills in the past two years. Before the drills, there was cynical talk of them being a waste of time. Talk of people not taking it seriously.

I was there during one of the drills. As I drove to the airport to catch my flight back to New Zealand, through the crowds of people responding to the rehearsal, it was pleasing to see most people taking it seriously.

There were schoolchildren holding hands, a few laughing and enjoying the exciting novelty of it all, but most were rehearsing in earnest.

How thankful will they be for those drills now? I shudder to think how the mood actually would have been during the mad dashes for life during the tsunami.

The 30km drive from Faleolo Airport to the capital Apia along the northern coast of Upolu is one of the most interesting in the world. Villages line most of the route. It's an endless procession of life, children, chickens, pigs, cricket games, volleyball games and people strolling. The Pacific Ocean is on one side; on the other are tropical plants which rise towards the country's lush and mountainous volcanic centre.

Five minutes after leaving the airport, you come to the village of Leulumoega where there is a right turn. You'll know it because there's a large tree and a shop on the corner. Take that right and it will take you down the south coast towards the southeast tip of the Island. Along that whole coast is an array of beautiful beaches so postcard-perfect it's almost ridiculous. Keep going around that tip and you come to the Aleipata district featuring the incredible Lalomanu Beach.

Most of the way is paved with beautiful villages, water holes, churches, shops and the same cricket pitches, volleyball nets and open meeting houses that cover the island ... life as it has unfolded in Samoa for centuries. Traffic hazards include children - lots of children - chickens and large families of pigs roaming freely.

Damage has been inflicted on 7km of that packed coastline where barely anything is still standing. Village after village has been transformed to rubble. Bewildered grieving families standing around in empty spaces looking at the ground where their villages once stood.

One of the most heart-breaking images on TV3's Campbell Live was the sight of a father and his family having a small, hurried funeral for his 3-year-old daughter. They stood around in lavalavas, too shocked to reflect the enormity of their grief. Their little girl was wrapped in some blue sacking as they carried her down the road.

And there have been lots of people carrying their dead along the road. Bodies being dragged from rubble and corpses being washed ashore.

The stories are only just starting to emerge as the public react in collective shock.

The group of Kiwi kids from Palmerston North who watched in horror while camped on an island. They saw the tsunami rush straight past them to the shore where they had been camped the night before.

The 8-month-old baby pulled by the water from her father's arms, the Auckland lecturer from Lalomanu who lost 11 members of his family.

The Christchurch man from Lalomanu who has lost 30 members of his family.

Funerals are a big deal in the islands. Loved ones are always laid to rest with the love and care that sometimes take time. Not now. The morgues are too full, the casualties too high, the temperature too hot.

Riding in pick-up trucks has always been one of the delights of the Pacific. Travelling on the back of one - although illegal in the West - through beautiful countryside, alongside the forestlands and coastlines, while the trade winds from the Equator fan your face ,is one of the joys of hanging out in the islands.

Now these same pick-ups have been swamped by what everyone is simply calling, The Wave. Now these same pick-ups cart bodies around. Brown feet protrude from underneath tarpaulin. That's not what the trucks are supposed to be for.

The beautiful Sinalei Resort is an absolute jewel nestled in amongst the villages of the Falealili and Siumu District near the south-eastern tip of the island. The resort is run by Tuatagaloa Joe Annadale who is also the high chief of my mother's village of Poutasi, one of the worst hit. This family have worked their bones off carving out a resort that worked within the local environment and the people. Their efforts made their resort one of the finest in the Pacific.

Their lovingly crafted units and facilities now lie in wreckage on the south coast, alongside that of many other fine resorts and surf hotels that lie along that incredible South Coast.

Similar dreams were shattered in the nearby Coconuts Beach Resort and the Maninoa Surf Resort ... all the hotels and resorts, both big and small, that lay along that coast. All destroyed - and all places that hold special memories for holidaymakers from New Zealand and further afield who stayed there.

But Tuatagaloa has lost more than his resort. He also lost his life-long partner in the struggle. Tui was one of the most beautiful women in the Pacific, the irreplaceable matriarch of her family. She was one of the many victims of the tsunami, on the back of one of those trucks with her wheelchair-bound mother in the cab upfront. When the wave caught them, Tuatagaloa kept going to deliver his mother-in-law safely to some village boys. When he returned for his wife, he was too late. At her funeral, Tuatagaloa calmly spoke of how the wave "roared, and roared and roared".

My heart and prayers go out to Tuatagaloa and his family - as are our sympathies and prayers with all the families in Samoa, Tonga, New Zealand and American Samoa coping with loss.

Every Samoan in New Zealand will know someone affected by loss. David Tua lost an auntie. My friend Teuila tells me of her relative who lost his mother and father, his son and daughter, plus his wife is in a critical condition.

My friend Mario was in Samoa last week. He and his family stayed in the Taufua Fales on Lalomanu Beach last week. His 8-month old son's playmate there was a 6-month old baby from the local village. He was the youngest of three children. Their mother survived but all three children were among the victims of the tsunami.

Every Samoan will know someone who has lost their life in this disaster. There are probably fewer than half a million Samoans in the world. In Samoan culture, the individual is less important than the group. When something happens to one of us, it happens to all of us. When one of us does something good, we all bask in the reflected glory. When one of us does something bad, we equally feel the shame. When one of us is suffering, we all suffer.

Texts are flying around as Samoans here talk of fundraising appeals and concerts. Everybody wants to do something, anything. Within hours of the disaster, several organisations had made large donations towards special tsunami relief bank accounts.

Response from the people of New Zealand in public, via texts and on the internet has been heart-warming. The ready way our Government offered assistance is fantastic. It shows that we truly do feel like a South Pacific nation and that what happens to our neighbours, happens to us as well.

Scientists have said that a rupture in the ocean floor, possibly 300km long and 200km deep, caused the tsunami that devastated Samoa.

They estimate the magnitude 8.1 earthquake would have pushed the crust on one side of the fault up to seven metres higher than the other side. This generated waves that were more than three metres from crest to trough when they hit the Pacific islands, 200km to the north.

Press reports have stated the quake occurred in one of the most geologically active areas of the world, where the Pacific Plate is plunging westward under the Australia plate at a rate of 86 millimetres a year.

A senior seismologist from Melbourne, Gary Gibson, told reporters that while quakes are common in this area of the Pacific, this one was unusual in that it was due to a north-east to south-west tension in the crust. "The earth [was] being stretched rather than compressed," he said.

The science isn't exact but one thing that is known is that people hit by a wave of only half a metre in height would not have been able to keep standing.

On land, a wave would move at about 30km/h, too fast for humans to outrun. Top scientists say that three metres of water flowing at tens of kilometres an hour is incredibly destructive. Some reports have said the wave that hit Samoa was up to seven metres high.

Samoa will come out of this disaster but it will be painful and it will be slow.

Kiwis are already digging deep to contribute to relief efforts. The Samoan tourism industry will be hard hit. So many beds and places to be rebuilt. But once they are ready, we can help just by going there and spending money and love on the economy.

In the meantime there is lots of rebuilding to be done of homes, of families, of communities.

How is one supposed to come out of something like this?

Faith will play its part. The country's motto is Samoa fa'avae i le Atua. Samoa is founded on God. Religion plays an important part there. It was one of only two countries in the world to ban The Da Vinci Code.

The country and its Pacific neighbours now know that a tsunami is a real danger and they will be better prepared.

But if there's one thing that people who live on an island are good at it's at making the most of the available resources and just carrying on. What other option is there?

Among the many photos of devastation that have emerged, there was one photo of an old-style fale that was still standing amid the wreckage of the surrounding village.

Samoa gets the last sunrise in the world. And even amid the wreckage, tears and headache, with each sunrise will be the hope and belief that, just like that old fale, Samoa too will still be standing.