My father is a Matai.

I imagine back in the 70's .... leaving Samoa in your early 20s, having never been overseas, let alone another island would be a mammoth undertaking. I can only guess at the feelings that would have swept over my father as he heard his parents' decision to send him abroad. Having given up school at age 8 to cultivate and care for his family's plantation, so his ailing father wouldn't have to-: wake up at dawn, walk at least 5kms inland (many times without shoes) and then labour at length as the sun reached its peak with blunt tools and cracked palms, clearing land, pruning, grafting, weeding and labouring with all his might to produce a crop worthy of consumption. Then making the long trek back but this time with a load of coconuts, or taros, or bananas or whatever was to make the meal for that day… sometimes all of those things together… and not sometimes but every day. His family and village recognised he was a hardworker (and continues to be). His family...