Elderly father highlights importance of unity

By Aruna Lolani 01 July 2017, 12:00AM

A family doesn’t need to be perfect; it just needs to be united.

Paogasue Fasitupe of Leulumoega is someone who values his family so much.

He’s a 69 year old father who gave life to a son and two daughters.

Now they’re all grown up, with their own jobs and families of their own.

“My eldest daughter now has eleven children, but she’s doing pretty well with her life because she has a job to make money for her children and her husband works as well.

“It’s just me, my children and my grandchildren because my wife; the mother of my children passed away 7 years ago.

“It was hard but we’ve learned to move on and handle life no matter how difficult it is.

“Now with the children’s success, it sort of makes everything seem bearable sometimes.

“You know we’re never poor when it comes to food because we have the kids’ plantations to depend on for food.

“Eating taro is like eating meat sometimes for us, not forgetting the koko Samoa, you know it makes you full.

“But I think the reality here, is that even if you have a job, money is always something that you stress about.

“That’s why my children and I, we always do everything together; we always chip in for what we need.

“While my children pay for most of my things I want; like church obligations and village obligations, I told them to leave the water bills to me to pay.

“So whenever I get my pension, I use some money to pay for our water because I don’t want my family to be one of those families that are struggling with having no water. 

“It’s good to help out each other because it makes a heavy load lighter right? 

“Sometimes people ask me if I don’t want to have another wife, and I said to them, it’s okay, my children are old enough to take care of me and that’s all I need.”

By Aruna Lolani 01 July 2017, 12:00AM
Samoa Observer

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