My earliest memories: Ole tagata ma lona faasinomaga

My earliest memories are from the year 1982. I'm in Samoa. Visiting. I'm 5. I've become a big sister this year... I have a little brother and I love him.  My mum is busy, but she's there.

The memories I have are of two men ... both very different from each other but also very much alike. One tall, broad and stern - the other shorter, smiles alot and seems gentler. One from Savaii and as traditional as they come - the other, from the opposite side of Upolu, afakasi and soft spoken. One liked dogs, the other cats. Both hunters, both hardworking and both respected chiefs in their own right. These men... my grandfathers.



What I remember most, is that they both had so much love for me, that even now, years after they've passed I can still feel the intensity of their love. I remember their adoration. I remember they made time for me in a time when that wasn't really done.

Perhaps their love was magnified because of the rarity of a visit from a granddaughter they hardly knew? Or perhaps an incling that they were in their final moments. But now, being a mother myself, I suspect it was more from an immense love that they had for their own children... my parents.

The year after we left, my afakasi grandfather died. My Savaii grandfather died two years following that.



I feel that I have come to know and understand these men and their influence in my life much more in my adulthood...but will forever be grateful for memories that include collecting cowry shells on the beach and sorting through them with my Papa.... and being carried with my brother, together, hurriedly (yet proudly) through the village to find a healer because my grandpa was so worried and didn't know what mumps meant or what to do when I would cry that my ears hurt.

My Dad says; "O le tagata ma lona faasinomaga" and no truer words could be spoken. Samoa is not my birthplace but it is my home. It dwells in my heart and lives in my soul. My grandfathers are buried there.... along with countless others who spoke my name, who wondered what I'd be like, who wondered what I'd be. They and their spirits along with the spirit of this small but wondrous land are my heritage. They are where I've come from. They're collective dreams, passions and efforts have all accumulated to instil in me a vigour for life and a fight to achieve. They are my culture. My faasinomaga.



Samoa is where my roots are. I go there to recharge and to be inspired. I go there to pay homage and reflect. I go there to be strengthened and to be reminded. I go there to be me.