Who said gone are the days when water and electricity were considered luxury items?

For some families, they continue to live without them.

Petaia Talalima of Tiavea-uta and Falelauniu know this very well. The 26-year-old and his family had just moved to where they are now from Falelauniu. It has been a month and a few weeks since the move and they are still trying to access electricity and water.

“The place where we were staying had too many people and that is why we moved here so we could start a new,” Petaia said to the Village Voice.

“This land belongs to my wife’s family and only three of us are here; my wife and baby daughter.”

“The two main things that we don’t have access to; is water and electricity.”

“As you can see, we have already done the electrical wiring or installation inside the house, we even paid the Electrical Power Corporation to switch on our power but when they came to assess our house last week, they said that the wiring wasn’t done right and whoever worked on it needs to do it again.” 

“So I don’t understand whose job it is then because the last people who worked on these wires were some relatives.”

This means the family’s light at night is very limited.

“You know, we need electricity because it’s too dark here and you have seen that there are no electric poles with lights on these roads. There are barely any families close by.”

According to Petaia, their only option is a kerosene lamp when night falls. 

“And we need water for making food, for drinking and especially for the needs of our baby here,” he added.

“To tell you the truth, I think it’s God’s love that this place is always raining but even with that, we can’t be sure that there will always be rain.”

“No one on earth knows God’s plan, so our neighbor are very good people and they lend us water.”

“They have also given us these two gallons to store our water.”

The family can do with a water tank.

“As you can see, we are a family that can’t afford to have everything we need. I mean look at our home, we don’t even have enough tarpaulins to cover it but looking at the weather; I think the rainy season has started so it will be hard to live comfortably.” 

 “Other than that, we are fine with all the other things that we have. I mean we have food because of the plantation and also our families in Apia sometimes come by to help.”

 “We also plan to look for jobs in the future but not at the moment because we just want to develop our home and land first.”

If you want to help Petaia Talalima of Tiavea-uta with a water tank, electrical supplies or maybe even some home supplies, please contact him on 7715144.