‘No challenges in the village,’ says Mitiana Konelio

By Sarafina Sanerivi 01 September 2016, 12:00AM

“There are no challenges in the village.” That is the opinion of Mitiana Konelio from Leulumoega. 

He is a 63-year-old father of ten from the village of Leulumoega. 

He told the Village Voice that there are no challenges in the village. Somewhat, everything is simple and free. 

“Agriculture is the main development that we rely and depend on every day. We only work to provide food for the family and that’s all. There aren’t other developments in the villages.”

“The only development that we can rely on for money at the moment is koko Samoa (Samoan cocoa.)  That’s the only we are selling now for money.”

“No one works in my family. We rely on our children living overseas to send us money every week.”

Out of Mitiana’s ten children, eight are living overseas and two are in the country. 

Mitiana thinks that poverty does not exist in Samoa. 

“If a person is lazy, he will end up being poor. I have been to other countries overseas and I have seen that if you don’t go to work, there is no point of you staying there.”

“But for us here in Samoa, we can live off the land and we don’t really need to depend on money every day for food. We can get food from the land and sea.”

He commended on the effort by the government in developing our country. 

“The government we have now is 100 percent,” he says. 

“Development is increasing.”

“I know this because in the past, if we don’t work, we will not get anything. Nowadays, we depend heavily on our children to provide money for us. If you don’t work, you will not know where to get money to send our children to school. But in terms of agriculture, we only work on the plantations to provide food for our family but not so much to earn money.”

By Sarafina Sanerivi 01 September 2016, 12:00AM
Samoa Observer

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