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.

8 December 2009

Today the team gets a night visitor, the building gets a floor, and the emotional impact of the tsunami is brought home to the team.

Last night's sleep was disturbed by an unwelcome visitor - an u'u, or coconut crab, paying a visit to Tim Thorne's bed. Our fale is right across the road from the beach, and we've seen a few u'u around but this thing was a monster. It had burrowed itself into the frame Tim had made for his mosquito net. Eventually Blake Jones managed to haul it out with the BBQ tongs and took it outside. Our neighbours across the road, the family of the chief, heard our commotion and came to see what was happening. When they saw the u'u they were very pleased with our find and put it in a bucket in their living room ready for breakfast.

We started work at 6am in steady rain which cooled the temperature and made work far more pleasant. The building is going up so fast, we're ahead of schedule and our head builder Alan Hoskin thinks it should be done by Friday. Today the wooden floor was laid and the rafters for the roof were put up. After a couple of hours the rain became much heavier, and we were invited inside the pastors house for something to eat. After we had eaten, the pastor Afaese Falanaipupu showed us a DVD that was shot after the tsunami simply called "tsunami special report". It had no commentary, just background music of a Samoan choir singing. The DVD started in the immediate aftermath of the tsunami: a sunny day, a placid sea and Satitoa and its neighbouring village in utter ruin.

The special report showed what television news reports in New Zealand would never screen. Police and villagers methodically picking through the rubble on the grisly search for bodies. The painstaking recovery of a women's body lying face down in the water, her torso half-naked and bloated with water and heat. Families claiming loved ones from the morgue. A mother's face numb with mystery as she cradled the wrapped body of her child. There was not a dry eye in the house.

Afaese and his family watched the DVD with us, occasionally wiping away tears, but otherwise showing little emotion. I was amazed by their strength. Afterwards I asked Afaese about his experience of the tsunami. Fortunately, his wife and children were in Apia that morning and Afaese himself was at an early morning church meeting a few villages away.

"We felt the earthquake and the tsunami came to that village. But it was not very bad there. Then I came back to Satitoa and everything was different. Everything was gone."