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.

10 December 2009

Today Anne-Marie contemplates being a Samoan housewife and "the chainsaw man" begins the clean up of Satitoa.

It's official, I've become a Samoan housewife.

That was the thought that crossed my mind this morning as I swept the front porch of our fale dressed the traditional Samoan way in a tee-shirt, lava lava and bare feet. Across the road at our neighbour's house, the chief's grand-daughter was sweeping her front porch dressed the same as me. After I'd swept the house I did the dishes, cleaned the bathroom and had a general tidy up ably assisted by Milly, a Samoan girl about 13-years-old. Milly and her family live in Apia, but the family owns the fale we're staying in. They're spending a few nights in Satitoa and are sleeping in the upstairs floor of the house.

Milly doesn't speak more than a few sentences of English and she's very shy, but she can really work. She didn't even offer to help - she came downstairs, saw me sweeping, and picked up the other broom. So we worked together while she sang Christmas carols in Samoan with the voice of an angel.

I haven't spent much time recently at the construction site, no matter what I'm doing, even if it's just cleaning up, the Samoan men working with us try to stop me. They say "You mustn't do that, go and sit down," and take whatever I'm carrying out of my hands. It's done with the best intentions, and the men are always friendly, but it means I can't do much.

Another person in our team who hasn't been on the site much recently is Blake Jones, who is becoming known in Satitoa as "the chainsaw man". With so many hands working on the building, Blake decided he would be better employed with his chainsaw and steel-cutter making a start on cleaning up the village.

Satitoa must have been postcard-pretty before the tsunami. We can see the outlines of it still - white sand fringed with coconut trees, the pretty fale and the friendly locals. But there's been a lot of rain in the past few days and the shambles that is the tsunami's debris has become a dreary swamp. In the tsunami's aftermath, some basic cleanup work was done - the main road was re-established for instance, but the ruins of fale and everything that was in them remains, silent and chilling.

"It's like the place has been nuked, then had a rubbish dump thrown on top of it," Blake said this morning when he came in for a break. Many villagers don't want the ruins moved; the concrete foundations have become monuments to the villagers who died there. But leaving them is dangerous, as most people here walk around in bare feet. So Blake has been using his steel-cutter to get rid of the reinforcing steel, and his chainsaw to chop up fallen and dead trees.

"The idea is to make it a bit safer and also to encourage the locals to start their own clean up."

It seems to be working. Yesterday for the first time, we saw some women moving small pieces of rubble away with a wheelbarrow and there were more people today. Some of the local men have enlisted Blake and his chainsaw to help clear trees and rubbish on their properties. Blake said what is really needed is a few diggers and bulldozers to spend a month getting rid of the debris.

"But that decision has to come from the village and they're just not ready for it yet."