Today is the beginning of a three day Prosperity Conference for Pacific People out in Manukau (Telstra Center).
It's about time the Ministry did this.
Pacific people are constantly burdened with familial, church, community obligations that drains so much of their limited resources.
Every Sunday, cash donations are read out in CCC of Samoa Churches, for e.g. faifeau’s donation (alofa/peleti), taulaga nuu ese, taulaga Samoa, saogatupe a tiakonoetc etc
Meanwhile, the villagers are struggling to make ends meet.
The same sad story applies to Samoa:
Case 1Lalomalava Village, Savaii.
There are approximately 300 people in Lalomalava.
Children start school at the local government Lalomalava primary school. If you visit the school, you will find 10 basic rooms, run down desks, old blackboards, and hardly anything else.
After Primary School, many attend Mataaevave High School, where most of the district students attend. This is much worse than Lalomalava because there more than 200 studentswithin congested space, with pitiful limited resources and poorly trained teachers.
Money does not come by easily for people in Savaii.
Many still rely on subsistence for sustenance. This is not for being lazy to produce surplus, but because you get very little returns for a year’s effort of growing taro, kaamu, fishing and the selling it for a lousy $SAT20.00=USD8.00
A teacher at primary level usually earns approx $SAT5,000 per annual. How’s that for pathetic?
Case 2: Salailua Congregational Christian Church, Savaii, Samoa
Salailua is like many other villages in Samoa, proud hard-working people who religiously attend church twice every Sunday, and donate to the church.
A few years ago, they built a monster, aka, house of worship in the midst of the picturesque seaside village.
In came the concrete slabs, expensive outside lamp posts, carpets, chandeliers, and air conditioning!!!
Now thats gonna quarantee their place in first class heaven!!!
The end result is that they couldn't pay off the thousands owed to the Bank so the rest of the church goers had to pay (thru the headquarters in Malua).
See what pride does to people, it blinds them of the real important things in life, like your children, close-knit family. We have a problem, but the well-fed priests are not gonna come up with answers, nope, not if it means they have to give up prime beef for a night.

Today is the 18th October, in New Zealand, 17th in Samoa, ..thus making it the day I was born 25 years ago, in Tuasivi Hospital, on my pretty island of Savaii.
Now there's a good starter.
I am the fourth child to Moelagi Tiatia and Edward Barry Jackson.
I wasn't supposed to happen. At least not in their set plans. haha, their most gorgeous mistake in their lives heh...(i usually state that the older ones were the 'obligated, standard monkey chidren the parents weren't too keen about!!!).
Anyhow, my dad was basically after a small cosy family unit, of mom, and three children, one boy (Simon) and the two girlie girls (Lani and Omega).

Now, do note the one older than me is called 'OMEGA', also understood to mean, 'THE LAST'

I'm just grateful they didn't name me 'ACCIDENT', now that would be worrying.

We all grew up in Savaii, my mom was a teacher, then a gardener/high chief/mother of 8 + cousins we grew up with,.
My parents later started the Safua Hotel in 1978 because they had many random palagis(travellers) stopping in to stay with us.

Our upbringing was rather colourful, my earliest memories was with my baby sister Cherelle, following our older sibling around the plantation and the village. We basically crammed their style by wanting to hang with them.
So we had to make our own crowd, fortunately, our cousins were also our best buddies, like Diana and Saofai.
During the lopa season, we would pick the red beads off the ground and attempt to fry them on a hot iron.
Children playing with fire, duh, we even smoked leaves to have a go!
I learnt to swim at the age of maybe 6 or 7??? anyhow, i was so excited, i had teach Cherelle how to do it, at high tide in the Safua Pool.
I remember she was half drowning but we were both determined to learn.
But much to our dissapointment, our nanny, Tufue came yelling out of nowhere, ready to give us a hiding.
She would come to one end of the pool, and we'd (attempt to) swim to the other.
Mind you, she was about 65 at the time. Poor lady.

OKay, enough blabbering, the boss is back soon, hehe

I shall continue to yada later on...

Matai Titles,
For Sale or For Service??

'Can you smell what the Rock is cooking???'

Okay, here's an interesting topic, Matai Titles.
The Rock, Dwayne Johnson, a former WWE champion and recently hollywood hottie, is Samoan by descent.

Last year 2004, he visited Samoa with his mom and a jetplane load of staff and hanger-ons.
It was the biggest crowds EVER Samoa has witnessed since perhaps the first independence in 1962.

Anyhow, he got bestowed the title Seiuli from Malietoa Taumafili II the Head of State. This was well received by many, but others disagreed.

Some bitched about it among themselves, others wrote poorly structured columns and tacky frontpages on it, the rest just went along for the ride.

Either way, here's my own 2 sene to the whole thing.

Pros: Good publicity for Samoa.
Many thought the title bestowment was selling ourselves to the palagi $$$, and blahblah,,...meanwhile, i think it's a smart move.

From my tourism perspective, we are too broke-as to launch million dollar (or 10,000!!!) promotions about Samoa as a tourism destination, esp to the US market.
+So any publicity is STUNNING publicity about Samoa.

+ In addition, he has put Samoa on the pedestal, and given light to his heritage (altho he doesn't speak 6 words in samoan).
+ Plus, Malietoa can bestow any title he wishes, to anyone that pleases him.
+ And, he has contributed hugely to charities and whatnot while he was there
+And he has inspired many young people, that you dont have to be truly palagi with blue eyes and blonde hair to make it etc etc...it helps tho, hehe

There are a lot more pitiful examples about titles that are given to idiots over the years, I wouldn't rate this Rock title as a poor decision.

oh well, on the down side, we have people in samoa who work hard in the plantation, go fishing, feed the pigs, scrape coconuts daily etc, to support their matai and families. Yet, most don't get titles.

At the end of the day, I truly believe that any positive contribution you have made to better Samoa and Samoans can justify you getting a title.

Here's some palagis with honorary titles; Galumalemana Dick Hubbard(Hubbards cereals,Akld Mayor)
? Prince Edward (bestowed in Iva, Savaii, Tofilau?
Tagaloa David Lange (NZ former Prime Minister)
Tupai Bruno, the circus freak, now thats a new low, heh
etc etc...

I just then wondered, if Malietoa's wife's sister's husband's niece died, and the Seiuli family has to do a sii and give money. Does the family in Samoa pick up the phone and call the Rock and say 'Ello, tis is your aunty Kikaka, all the matais have to give 2 pusa apas (tinned fish), 120 fine mats and a $100.00..shet, thats peanuts for the Rock!!!

Lalomalava is like any other Samoan village, where everyone knows what everyone is doing, going to do and did last week, last year, last decade.
Stories are told, retold, changed and eventually made legends.
Elders speak in soft tones and lament of yesteryear, when the influenza epidemic killed our people. The ‘death sickness’ that wiped out lives in many villages, leaving a community to mourn, while the dead are indignantly heaved unto government trucks, wrapped in aging fine mats and tossed into mass graves of sorrow and despair.
Our elders whose eyes glimmer with hope as they sing of our proud traditions. Our proud people. Our proud measina. Our proud triumphs from years of slavery, suffering, violence.

Wounds are revealed, pain is shared, victories are proudly announced, and violence is uttered in a language of hatred, fear, disgust, threats and childhood circles.

My childhood is no different.

When you have a weakness, by nature or nurture, you are constantly reminded of these deficiencies, day in, day out.

Kokive has polio and everyone calls him ‘cripple’, pipili. He does not care less, as he will just whack you with his walking cane as hard as he could. His use of the most vulgar terms made him the receiving end of many beatings from the thin edges of the coconut fibre broomstick.
Palama, a hard working young man, has problems hearing, so everyone ridiculed him a stinking deaf 'faipepe'.
Moe has big lips and cannot shut his mouth for too long, thus we used to call him 'guku faamaga, guku elo' meaning gaping mouth and stank breath.
We taunt him as we run as fast as our little legs could carry us, for a rain of stones is guaranteed to follow.
Fialupe is always caught and fined by the village fono for peeping at women bathing at the village pool, thus his title Ku Paipa, literally meaning, standing near the tap (water pipes), or Ku Kekee, standing on tip toes.
Sao being epileptic earned him the name 'maikeke ululeaga' transliterated ‘shaking nutcase’.
Tala is teased for being Vae sasape, screwed up legs. Petesa for being ai lalafa, because her skin is marred with spots and rash.

I did not escape this name calling, I was ridiculed for having skinny legs, thus likening me to the tuli shorebird with its stick-like legs.
Whenever I fought with my cousin over the rocking horse, she would yell at me, “You skinny vae tuli!”. Meanwhile, I would keep on pulling her hair screaming “Diana Popo Masa!”. Popo Masa being the ideal rhyme to describe a rotting coconut that we discard to the pigs.
Fifteen years on, I wonder, are we crippled by our discourse of negativity?

Despite these snide jibes, Palama went on to become an excellent fisherman, Petesa married well and is now a respected wife of a village pastor.
Koki was on television for his polio complications and was presented numerous gifts from donor organisations. He has since become the popular dude that you 'had to’ hang out with. Tala was given the chiefly title of his family. Diana moved to Seattle, graduated and looks every inch the Samoan beauty, far from being Popo Masa.

Unfortunately, Fialupe continues peeping as unsuspecting women bathe at sunset, Moe still can not keep his mouth closed, and has also now taken up the art of ku paipa with Fialupe. Sao was found floating at the village pool one Sunday morning, having had a seizure while swimming alone.

As for the labels?
They never go away, whenever Koki is on the Health Ministry television advertisement, we speak in an affectionate manner, ‘We are so proud of our pipili (cripple)!’
Whenever Palama returns with a boat full of fish, his mother cries with pride, ‘my beloved faipe (deaf boy) is such a blessing!’
And when Petesa visited the village with her beautiful children and well-off husband?
The old ladies weave their mats, heads bowed and mutter disquietly ‘Petesa has come a long way from being a colourful collection of spots and all rashes on earth”.

I wonder, still, whether some of us have become victims of our own close-knit societies? Can we move forward with a clean slate, start afresh and erase the faults we are born with?
I wonder now, could we have saved our loved ones from taking their own lives if we had called them beautiful things?