A ga a'o a'i gi maile o sili (Would have been better to teach dogs)


I was speaking to a couple of friends after a church activity on Saturday. One has Filipina heritage and the other Korean. They both will be visiting their homelands at the end of the year and were both voicing their frustrations about their quests to lose weight. Their reason for doing this now was the same "because people back home are blunt and will tell you as a greeting that you're so fat!"

I giggled as I listened reflecting on how Samoans are exactly the same. And relatives of any generation will embrace you on arrival regardless of whether or not they've met you before and say as loudly as possibly "Oh my! How fat you are (perhaps distant cousins of the big bad wolf... hehehe!) :)

As a young girl just entering puberty I was horrified when one of my aunts almost suffocated me as she hugged me and went on and on about how HUGE I was and oh your legs and cheeks and arms were all so chubby. Mind you - this is when I was 17 and a size 12 Australian.

My parents obviously diluted by the Australian air offered this explanation, "your family only speak the truth because they love you. They would lie to you if they didn't care." Amusing now but at the time I thought it made sense.

In teaching his children, my father was somewhat poetic, he used alot of religious reference,  symbolism and imagery, mixed in with some bluntness of his own.

Listening was the key he taught. The power to learning anything and every success. To listen with your ears, your eyes and your heart. Retain as much as you can he'd say. Watch and learn don't just stand there and talk. His father taught him everything he knew by showing him. And he would listen with his eyes and his heart because his father didn't really talk much.

Don't let the treasures of knowledge be like the water on a ducks back he'd say. And dive into one of hundreds of scripture stories, either about Job and how he went through so many trials ... or Abraham and how he had such faith or Moses and how he chose God over riches.

And then if we were being rebuked for being really disobedient or for a repeat offense he would say "a ga a'o a'i gi maile ua sili aku ia oukou!" You know what makes me laugh... is that last week I used the same quote on my own son. It came so naturally... it shocked me....you know what's funny?  It felt good.. and truly depicts the emotion felt when you've taught the same thing over and over again but haven't gotten through. Dogs taught to sit or roll over again and again eventually get it right?! #Malie










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