Visiting our old Host Family

June 9, 2011

Saloti with baby Lawrence

Kapeli Family who were at home during my surprise visit.

Our namesakes, Nicholas and Mary with father, Visi, and mother, Easter.

Snake in tree

With a little extra time on Savaii, I made a surprise visit to Mary’s and my host family, the Kapeli’s. Much had changed, and hadn’t.

Living in our little house now, after some difficult times in the Hawaiian construction business, was American Lawrence and his wife, Fa’apesa the older, who is Kapeli’s sister. They were building a Samoan-style house up in the taro plantation and loving, at least he, their new life.

Fa’apesa. the older, was the woman who had previously been promised the baby Lawrence, which is the first child of Kapeli’s oldest daughter, Easter. Little Lawrence has ended up being raised by his grandmother, Saloti, who has claimed it as her own. His baby teeth were already rotten from being spoiled with sweet drinks. Kapeli’s youngest daughters, Manuli and Fa’apesa, had matured even more and where about to be shipped off to New Zealand this Christmas to continue their education, get their citizenship, and probably work there while sending money back home. The middle daughter, Taia, seems to be pregnant, expecting in November. I had not confirmed that bit of information.

During my one-hour visit, I kept getting text messages from Easter, who lives in Apia and wanted to see me. I did visit the next day, “loaning money” to feed her babies’, Nicholas and Mary. After my last visit to them, they did take baby Mary to the hospital where she received anti-biotics for her typhoid.

The big excitement was a small Boa Constrictor snake that was in a bunch of bananas. Usually these poor creatures imported from abroad to eat rats are quickly hacked into hundreds of pieces. I picked it up and gently but it in a tree where it later moved into the thatch roof and devour the rodents living there.

I got a ride back to the ferry from the President of the Women’s Committee, also known to some readers of this blog as “The Tyrant”. I couldn’t help notice as we passed her sister fabric store, the several treadle Singer sewing machines, seemingly for sale. The shop never sold sewing machines before. Could they be some of the sewing machines worked so hard to get for the village women? No…they couldn’t be.

If all this seems confusing to you, welcome to Samoa.