Nowhere to call home

By Vatapuia Maiava 14 September 2016, 12:00AM

Life is expensive even for those who are employed with a decent pay.

But just imagine if your whole family was living on $100 or less a week.

For 39-year-old, Sio Mika, from the village of Vailele, that’s exactly how he is living his life.

“Right now life is so expensive, even $100 is not enough for anything,” he explained to Village Voice yesterday.”

“I admit, right now I need help for my family, we have no one employed and I have been trying my best to take care of them.”

“The one thing we are in real need of is a water tank.”

With the little money he makes, Sio is trying his best to build a small house for his family to call home.

“I am working alone to build a small house for my family,” he said.

“But it’s hard because we don’t make much money for proper lumber. I earn money from working in my small plantation; all of it goes to taking care of the family and the children.”

“Even if you have a plantation, it’s not like you just plant and you will get money right away.”

Without a proper source of water, the family is forced everyday to walk long distances to a river. The walk requires a lot of bush tracking.

“Life is tough, we currently have no proper house to live in and we have to walk very far to get water,” he said.

“When the wooden floor and the poles are in place I am still not sure what I will do for a roof because we have no tin, but I will try and find a way.”

“A water tank would be a dream come true for me and my family so we can store rain water.”

With his family barely making it through on his strength, Sio understand that even his own strength isn’t permanent.

“We are barely making it out of sheer strength alone because that’s all we have to live on, my strength to work the land but what happens when that strength is gone,” he said.

“I make a little bit of money from doing chores for other people as well. We are trying really hard.”

“And with the little we make, there is a lot of things to spend it on. We have to pay registrations, school stuff for the children, and so on.”

“The only joy I have is putting my children through school. It would be nice to if school was free but it’s not, to make it worse we even have to give extra money to take care of the teachers.”

By Vatapuia Maiava 14 September 2016, 12:00AM
Samoa Observer

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