Satitoa Diary

Wanganui Chronicle reporter Anne-Marie Emerson is part of the Wanganui District Council-led reconstruction team currently in Samoa. The team is helping the village of Satitoa rebuild after the devastating tsunami in September. Anne-Marie is reporting daily from Satitoa.

6 December 2009

Today, the team members go to church, have their first taste of Samoan hospitality, and the site for the new building is chosen.

The crew woke just before 6am, and the first order of business was to make frames for our mosquito nets. I'm the only member of the team the mosquitoes haven't bothered so far, so I had a nice little sleep-in while the boys attempted to out-do each other in making the best frame.

At 9am the team split up and went to three different churches in the village. The LMS church was wiped out in the tsunami and their congregation is meeting in an army tent. The Assembly of God church remains intact, the Methodist church was destroyed and their congregation is meeting in a temporary fale in the coconut plantation about 300m inland from the village. There's also a Catholic church but their congregation is meeting in a church three villages along the coast.

Myself and a few of the other team members went to the Methodist church. The short journey to church was a sobering one, right through the tsunami's path. Most of the coconut trees are still standing but everything else is bent, broken and twisted. Whole trees lie on the ground, their exposed roots cluttered with debris, including items of clothing. Rusted pieces of corrugated iron are strewn about. Here and there the broken remains of destroyed fales can be seen. A boat that originally sat outside the chief's house on the beach is smashed up against the trees, next to it is a red car that we are told four people died in while trying to escape the tsunami. The ground itself looks shattered.

At the church we were greeted by the pastor Mika Timoteo and the chief Te'o Uiva Simi and the rest of the congregation, many of whom we met yesterday. Church is the highlight of the Samoan week and the people wear their best clothes. Even the little boys wear white shirts and lava lava, the girls wear pretty dresses, and the women wear elaborate white lava lava and hats. The service was long and very hot, but the important parts were explained to us in English.

Afterwards we were invited to eat lunch with Mika, Te'o and the other church elders. We were seated at long tables and served by the local teenagers, who kept bringing food out to us from the kitchen at the back of the fale. There was enough food to feed 100 people, and even Quentin couldn't make a dent in it.

The food was mostly unfamiliar but delicious. Palusami, breadfruit, taro, raw fish and coconut cream, sausages, roast pork and Samoan chicken. Our hosts kept urging us to eat, while the young people fanned us to cool us and keep the flies away.

While we stuffed our faces with Samoan food, Allan MacGibbon met with the church elders to discuss the site for the new building we're starting on tomorrow which will function as a preschool and as a meeting place for the LMS Church.

There has been some debate about where the building will go. Some of the church members want the church rebuilt where it was, but others want to stay in the plantation, at least for now. After what Allan described as "robust" debate the elders decided the building should be in the plantation.

Work begins on the building at 6am tomorrow morning. We're expecting to find it a challenge in the sticky heat, but we're keen to get started. No work is done in Samoa on Sundays, so now we're off to the beach for a swim.