Land? Yes. Basic necessities? No.

By Aruna Lolani 29 May 2017, 12:00AM

There are people out there who are saying you have to work in order to have access to water and electricity, but maybe they should ask themselves about what it’s really like to have a home without water and electricity? 

Paulo Iosefo from Faleasiu is a person who knows what it is like and he was in a reflective mood as he told Village Voice about being in this situation.

Aged 63, Mr. Iosefo pleads for help in this matter.

“Water is life and I think that tells a lot about my situation because we don’t have a tap,” he says to the Village Voice.

“Adding on to that is having no electricity and you know for most people, when they don’t have electricity, it feels like the end of the world.

“This is our home, this is our own land and I want everything to work here instead of us relying on other people for the things we need.

“For water, we get it from my wife’s sister’s place and we basically prepare everything from there.

“For instance; cooking our every meal there because we don’t have most of the things we need here at our home.

“Nobody wants to have that kind of life, even my wife gets tired of it sometimes so she just goes and stays at her sister’s place sometimes.

“I don’t want to stay at anybody else’s place because this is my home and I find freedom here, so I stay here by myself most of the times. I want to develop these lands for our family.

“It’s better for me to try and do something here on our lands, you know to try and develop it for the future.

“And you know in the Samoan life, if you don’t stay on your own land, you don’t get any peace of mind at all.”

Mr. Iosefo has five children, they have their own families now and they are staying on their own.

“I need help with water because as you can see, these are the buckets I use to fetch water all the way from my sister in-law’s house.

“I also need help to have access to electricity because I can’t afford to pay for big things like that.

“I only have cucumbers and beans from my plantation to sell to earn a little money and that’s all I have together with this land.”

By Aruna Lolani 29 May 2017, 12:00AM
Samoa Observer

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