Life is a fiery wave away from depletion

By Lumepa Apelu

So the times have changed, it seems. 

The roles of women have with the departure of ships at the horizon, multiplied by education, expectation and capabilities too. Loving one’s self is another task, to add on the pile of plenty things we must own as island women. 

We are in multitudes competing for very few decent fellows, if any left at all. 

And if you are by birth lucky enough to know the difference between modernity, and being feminine all the while, high five to you, for your journey is cut short by a million pink ribbons on your hair. And you never have to live a moment in the hands of a heartless man. 

But there are prisoners escaping the gates of our unprotected prisons. There are corrupt police men. There are hard working politicians and smart ones too. 

There are in the mixed soup of our island life, complications, like the net we use to catch the octopus. In all that fiasco, we are an island of true unrealized femininity. Have you seen the whale that would not go away? 

We are attractive, by the tides of the ocean, inside the sheltered islands, of the southern-most sunset place. 

The poverty stricken are plentiful but by and large do not exist, as much as the kindness of the generous man who got locked up for feeding the homeless does not exist. His kindness was too much for the laws of his own country. 

But poverty here is too much for the mathematicians, whom are all deprived of time and freedom to calculate for colonial definitions far exceed what the eyes can truly perceive. 

No, the child who sells his goods on the street is a happy millionaire who lives in a mansion, by the riverside, and owns a bus or two running believers to the church and the bingo. That same child, is the star of the circus we call our happy island home. 

The same child will one day reap his rewards breaking free from prison, as the cycle of corrupted lives goes.

And so, when we kick stones on the pebbly roads of our homeward walk, mind the toes you own. You might be needing them for a longer journey, when one day, the sea rises, and we are by spiff’s fate left homeless, like the fate of Tuvalu, my other island. 

Could we be refugees? Who knows by the clock’s hand the meaning of all these things? 

Life is a fiery wave away from depletion, no?

In any case, Christmas is at the corner and with bad Santa not far behind the good one, merry yourselves a happy island nation as I relax in my old chair of reflections too. 

Is it time to celebrate, or have we been stupor all along? 

I shrug my shoulders and look out to the sea, where once, our warriors rowed here and belonged. 

Samoa Observer

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