Otele

The Samoan Tsunami Victims Memorial outside Apia.

Returning to Lalomanu in October 2010 was difficult. That’s an understatement, of course. Whichever words I might choose to describe the many different emotions in the many different places in Samoa a year after the tsunami and losing Clea will be meaningful to me, but I doubt they could be meaningful enough so that you, the reader, could actually understand them.

There were of course many instants full of pain, there were sorrowful moments; there were bizarre circumstances and truly uncomfortable situations. Yet there were also encounters that gave me hope that humankind is not as foolishly hopeless as I often rate it.

One of those moments took place when we stepped back into the Taufua resort on Lalomanu beach, rebuilt twelve months after the catastrophe of the early morning of 29 September 2009. I felt very uncertain about going back to that place; I had strange, mixed emotions, the fear of reliving the horror together with the need to revisit the place where so many people perished.

It was mid-morning and we had parked the rental car. We walked across the road; I could see a few tourists on the beach, near the new fales. Everything seemed almost normal, as it was on 28 September 2009. Inside the restaurant, a few more tourists were seated and gazed at the idyllic blue of the beautiful Southern Pacific.

I had taken a few steps inside the restaurant, uncertain about where to go, what to do. My mind was racing with contradictory messages: ‘Get the hell out of here!’, or ‘What will these people say when they see us? Will they recognise us?’. I hesitated.

Then my eyes met another pair of eyes and there was an invisible spark of recognition. I saw how one of the waiters at the resort dropped whatever it was he was doing and came straight towards us, his arms wide open and a sorrowful smile in his face. Otele had recognised us straightaway. He hugged me, I hugged him. I was crying, and I couldn’t give a damn what the few tourists at Taufua may have thought.

Otele Samuelu will probably never get to know this, but if he does, I hope he will appreciate my humble words of gratitude and recognition. That brief moment must have been one of the most heartening, enriching moments I have had in my lifetime. The fact that he recognised us and instantly dropped everything and came to embrace us speaks volumes about the kind of person he is.

What you, my patient reader, may not know is that Otele Samuelu is a true hero. But not the sport-type the media go on about. No. Otele Samuelu is a very humble sort of guy. Otele risked his life to try and save as many people as possible just before the tsunami struck and then jumped into the water to rescue the injured and the dead.

That day in October 2010 Otele told us he had been desperately knocking on the door of our fale, in the belief that we might still have been inside, asleep. Otele saved a New Zealand girl who was badly injured and who would have certainly died had he not acted so decisively. There were many other heroes in Samoa that day, but what I feel for Otele is special.

In his basic English, Otele explained how he still remembered our girl, our Clea, from the night before. He remembered Clea because she refused to shake his hand and frowned at him – how unusual of Clea!. He also remembered Alfie. He remembered it all. That night of 28 September he was serving dinner to the groups of papala’agi who, like us, were enjoying a wonderful, beautiful spot on the island of Upolu. There were many bottles of cold Vailima, some wine, cold soft drinks, cold water and delicious dishes on the tables. It was very noisy, but the atmosphere was one of friendliness, of camaraderie, of companionship. Hosts and guests were enjoying life, food, the ocean breeze, that magnificent view of an ocean that the next morning was to surge out into the land, a black ruthless monster of water that nothing but the hillside could stop.

I will always think of Otele as my friend. Even if I never see him again, I will always carry with me the memory of his hug that day in October 2010. I will always acknowledge that initially I was only able to respond to his hug with my tears, and I am not embarrassed to acknowledge that, not one bit.

Otele knows.

Forever travel: A sonnet

Popiltah Lake, Western NSW

Forever travel

They could forever travel far away,

See cities, towns and countries, go places,

Hide themselves behind pretexts, never stay

Put, or throw themselves into rat races.

They could forever more pretend delight,

Give parties and still chitchat, smile at friends

And greet people, declare that they’re alright,

Say the right words, nod and wave, make amends,

Never wake up, forever stay asleep,

Deny the dreadful nightmare, this new life;

Decide that never again should they weep.

Yet they feel this great pain, it’s sharp like a knife;

They can’t strip off this sadness or their grief.

Their daughter’s dead: they someway didn't survive.

The first draft of this sonnet I wrote while we were on a two-month round-the-world journey we did in late 2010 and early 2011. It was a journey we had been planning since well before 2009, and I was adamant that we still had to go ahead with the idea, we had to travel around the world for Clea.

The poem has changed a fair bit since the first draft. Originally I used the first person, and some rhymes in the last two tercets were not that great (or so I thought). I like it as it is now, and I hope the reader can also appreciate the poetry.

We have recently completed another journey; this time it was a road trip, which covered almost 3,000 km and took us to the eastern edge of the uninhabited part of Australia, where the desert begins, the point where one could start walking into the wilderness and would not see anyone for weeks (if you could survive, of course).

As I gazed into the vast Mundi Mundi Plains, one small stretch of the immense dry core of the Australian continent, a thought occurred to me: I could have gone in there on my own, and I would not have felt alone or lonely; not one bit. Sometimes one may feel more lonely when in company.

There is something about travelling that makes this new life more digestible, something of a relief valve one can resort to whenever it is needed. Some friends, who lost their daughter to a moronic car thief being chased by police, own a car that they call the Escape Pod, the E-Pod. I like the idea of an E-Pod. I understand it.

Unfinished Business

The screen grab I have reproduced above shows Clea’s scoresheet for game tasks completed on her Lunnis CD-ROM. The disk was a present she was given by her tía Mayca, and from the very beginning she found it very enjoyable and wanted to play over and over again. The games on the disk have been designed to teach the player all sorts of skills in Spanish, and are divided into three stages, for different ages: under 4, over 4 and over 6 years of age. Clea had completed almost all the tasks; only a few remained as never attempted or successfully completed. Clea was not given the time to complete the scoresheet.

Grief feels like unfinished business, too. Just like the tasks Clea was not given time to complete, the loss of your child is like a wound that will never heal completely. When someone does have the guts to ask, I always tell them that the blow has softened after two and half years, but the pain the blow caused remains exactly the same as on 29 September 2009. It is unfinished business. On the one hand, you are painfully aware that you cannot turn back the clock. On the other, as much as you would want to turn forward the clock, it will never be the same. Some sort of limbo, a timeless swoon. Trapped forever in a time and state you do not wish to be in, unable to get out of the dark, exit-less tunnel your life has become: you cannot go back, you cannot go forward.

I guess this is a very widespread misconception amongst people who have not experienced the loss of a child, a traumatic, irreparable loss, that the bereft parent eventually will get over it, or even ‘has to get over it’.

I recall a telephone conversation around Christmas 2010, a little over a year after Clea’s death in the Samoan tsunami. In this particular, very brief conversation, the person who then wished to talk to me (it escapes my comprehension that some people decided it was OK to call me while I was visiting Spain but would not do so before: it’s not like telephone calls across the world are that prohibitive, are they?) asked me how I was. I hardly replied, I think I said "How do you think I am?", and this person (a relative) said to me: “You have to get over this”.

I think my silence was the most eloquent response I’ll ever make. You just do not get over the loss of your child. Ever.

On later reflection, however, what I find most revealing (or is it disturbing?) is the way the caller resorted to a rather vague word such as “this”. It is such an unclear, equivocal term! What exactly is (or was) “this”? It brings to my mind the title of Francisco Goldman’s book about his deceased wife Aura, Say Her Name. That’s what I feel like yelling to people who tiptoe about the subject. SAY HER NAME! HER NAME WAS CLEA! CLEA DIED IN THE TSUNAMI!

For someone who has lost a child, “this” is deeply offensive, because it aims to create a distance between the person speaking and the deceased. Our child had a name; our child had a life; mentioning our child’s name does not hurt us: it is our child’s death that has hurt us beyond repair. Underhanded approaches conceal cowardice; there is no respect in deliberately avoiding saying the deceased’s name.

She was my first child. Her name was Clea Soledad Salavert Wykes. She was six years and almost nine months of age when a tsunami struck the beach of Lalomanu and drowned her. Her family were all very close to perishing. She could not complete all the tasks on her Lunnis CD; she was unable to obtain the antidote to save the inhabitants of Luna Lunera.

Alfie

His name was Alfie, and he was just two years old. He had come to the Taufua Beach Resort in Lalomanu with his parents, both migrants from England and residents in New Zealand at the time. The night of 28 September 2009 at the Taufua Beach Resort restaurant, Alfie wanted to sit near other children; he asked to be sat next to our three children. Now I remember looking at him briefly and smiling at him sympathetically when it was not possible to make room at our end of the table. Everyone at the table was having a good time: communal eating is a Samoan cultural trait, and we were all either enjoying the local beer or other beverages. It is still difficult to comprehend that twelve hours later the whole place would be wiped off and thirteen members of the Taufua family would perish in that very place.

Alfie was his parents’ only child, their most cherished, their life. Alfie was taken away by the water the next morning. Unlike Clea, Alfie was never found. We have returned a few times to Lalomanu since: in October 2010 we went back twice to open the Clea Salavert Library at Lalomanu Primary School, and we took the boys back to a beach for the first time since 29 September 2009. In November 2011 we went back again a few times, to hand over the management of the Library to the Samoan Government, to check the Library out and to attend the Prize-giving Day at the School.

Even though I am now unable to remember his face, what he looked like, I often think of little Alfie. And I also think about his parents, who, on top of being completely destroyed with the loss of their only child, were left with no body to bury. With nothing at all. I often wonder how they are faring in this parallel, interminable journey of pain of theirs. For a while, Trudie kept in touch with Alfie’s mum. We know they went back to the UK and were living in Spain for a few months. Details were sketchy, scarce. Communication then ceased.

In October 2010 the four of us took the walk we could not finish a year before. We retraced our steps past the fales that were slowly being rebuilt on Lalomanu beach. A reunion then occurred: the man who helped me get my son out of the water recognised us. He then led us to the spot where Clea was found, by a huge tree trunk that eventually died because of the saltwater. Faleaga and his wife Masela recognised us from that morning. Faleaga grabbed his machete and cleared the way towards the place where the tsunami had dragged Clea.

It was hard to believe that so much vegetation had grown in just twelve months. The whole area between the seashore and the hillside had been inundated by seawater; needless to say, it eventually killed almost every plant on it. Samoans have their own words for a tsunami, Galu afi: the wave of fire.

That day we learned that their own little baby, Frazer, aged 2 months, had also been found dead right there, very close to where Clea was found on 30 September. He was ripped off his mum’s arms by the water. Faleaga and Masela had another daughter, Meri, whom he was able to take up the hillside seconds before the tsunami hit. It makes me glad to know Meri has a doll she can play with. We bought it for her in Apia, as an early Christmas present.

I sometimes wonder what sort of response Alfie’s parents got from the people who should have been there to support them. I wonder if, after the initial condolences and the worn phrases, they found themselves suddenly facing some unwritten cowardly code of silence, too.

I wish to say that Alfie deserves to be remembered, even by those who never met him, who never heard his voice or saw his smile. I feel I was fortunate to meet him, and I will never forget he had a life. Too short a life. I will never forget Alfie. I will never forget Frazer. Why would I forget. How could I forget.