Mother shares her fears

By Nefertiti Matatia 26 April 2018, 12:00AM

A mother of three from Falelauniu lives in fear for the lives of her children.

How so? According to Leti Ioane, their home is unsafe.

Tropical Cyclone Gita exposed this quite easily.

They also do not have any supply of electricity. She described that during torrential rainfall, they use a tarpaulin to prevent the rain from entering their home. Unfortunately, even a tarpaulin does not do the work. 

She says they used extra woods on the side of their house to make their house a more secure shelter. 

With her children being her priority, there’s not much that she could because of financial constraints. 

“There is a river that flows from Aleisa, which eventually comes all the way to our home. Usually when it rains heavily, the water would eventually come into our home.”

“The water flow has damaged the house and we are talking about the floor of the house. It is not cemented it is made out of wood. Luckily some of our shelves and valuable belongings were not damaged but everything else was ruined.”

“For four months we have been living without electricity. The cyclone ruined so much and at the same time cost us too much to get repairs done.”

 “The worse part of it all is that all the debris that is found on the road will be carried by the floodwaters and make its way into where we live.”

“All of the rubbish that you see at the back of our house is all the debris that we have collected from the floodwaters.”

 Mrs. Ioane said: “Money that both my husband and I make is what we need to develop our home. We have two children who are in school, while the others stay with my niece when we are both at work.”

“Most people think that we have jobs and we don’t have any struggles but we do. We are both working and the money that we make is not enough to fix our house.”

“We have commitments and everything in the church that we need to abide to. We are not earning heaps of money from the jobs that do.”

“I get paid weekly but it is not thousands. I work in a store and with the damages that we have in the house, my income is not enough.” 

For anyone who is willing to help Mrs. Ioane, contact the number 7290330.

By Nefertiti Matatia 26 April 2018, 12:00AM
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