Real freedom for Samoa

Dear Editor

Re: We’ve become so reliant on others 

I somewhat enjoyed your diatribe mainly for it’s reminiscent value. 

It is always with great fondness when childhood memories are shared and comfort foods are mentioned. 

Thank you for the walk down memory lane. If we can only wave a magic wand! 

However, there is no need to continue beating on dead horses and people already down, perched on a white horse, Sir. I, an expatriate, detest that patronizing approach. 

Yes, the good old days of communal life, in Samoa, where the village raises the children and people look after each other, are long gone. Samoa was the way it was because they knew and felt LOVED and CARED for, from those significant others in their lives. 

No one was left behind. Leaders of the country loved Samoa, the country, and its people. The village council looked after the well being of the village, the family Sa’o saw to the needs of each family in his Aiga potopoto, the family, consisting of several generations, ate together, played and prayed together. 

Each individual member of society was valued and loved, even the village idiots were loved for who they were and for the blood in their veins. The Faifeau and his wife honestly cared and nurtured the spiritual growth of the whole country.

Not so today, for the most part. Each to its own seemed the prevalent attitude from top to bottom.

Most of Samoas shared cultural traits of compassion, empathy and honest reciprocity, are of a bygone era. 

Samoa’s Political leadership leaves a lot to be desired. They’ve become effective models of the worse in humans and a country’s leaders. The villages are fragmented and village folks are leaving the traditional villages by the numbers for the facade glitter & illusive riches epitomized by Samoa’s privileged societies and Apia.

The fairytale life styles of the rich and famous, lived by politicians and the few elites of Samoan society, became the bait and additive drug for many, as they come as lambs to the slaughter. 

A scheme well intended and planned. Where are their homes? Where are their aiga lands? Ask the Sao!

These clueless people have exchanged fertile lands of their ancestors for the slums of Apia and make believe villages of government created subdivisions. Lured by the promise of financial freedom and greed, they’ve. 

Desiring incognito to escape traditional cultural responsibilities to the Aiga potopoto and the continuity of their stewardship of Customary Lands, they’ve left. 

Yes they left and have met disillusionment, they have come into poverty, into slavery, into incest & rape, into prostitution, into drunkenness and dismay, even into murder, dreaming incognito all the while, a modeled life style.

Is it a mans fault to hope and dream for better lives, life styles modeled and promised by its leaders? Perhaps. And who can tell a Samoan what to do and where to go in an atmosphere of hopeless and lost trust, ...of lies and corruptions, anger and frustrations? Who can escape a lifestyle of Greed? Who can reverse the mass psychology of a nation that has been psychologically drugged for decades?

We can only pray and hope for new generations of Samoans to be born into a new era, a new dawn of Samoan awakening.

EDUCATION, EDUCATION, EDUCATION is the tool for freedom, ...political, economic, social and spiritual freedoms for all. 

Real freedom is not from the organic garden instead of a manicured lawn, nor from mats of dried cocoa beans and copra without a secure market to sell them to. No! Who wants to live a subsistent life style in the age of cell phones and ipads unless it is by choice? 

Most expatriates can live organically with manicured lawns, because they have options. The poor in Samoa do not have that luxury although it seems that way through tainted lenses, as I once did.

 

Asipau McMoore 

Samoa Observer

Upgrade to Premium

Subscribe to
Samoa Observer Online

Enjoy unlimited access to all our articles on any device + free trial to e-Edition. You can cancel anytime.

>