Getting by with ‘grace of God’

By Deidre Tautua-Fanene 05 December 2017, 12:00AM

Life is not easy. In fact it is becoming harder every day.

So says 31- year-old Lagi Ale of Toamua-uta who expressed her concerns about the expensive cost of living yesterday. Ms. Ale is a mother of five.

Her husband is the only breadwinner.

Despite all the other commitments, they prioritise their children’s education.

“As a mother of five, the cost of living is so expensive,” she told the Village Voice yesterday.

“It’s ridiculous because the cost of living is going up while people’s salaries are going down.

“The government should look into this. How are we supposed to survive? This is just not fair because these two things should be balanced?

“If the cost of living goes up then the salaries should also go up so that the people can able to afford it but that’s not how it is.”

Every single day is a struggle, she said. 

But their focus is clear.

“Our children are the future and that is why it is very important to us to put their schooling before anything else,” she said.

“We’d rather have them attend school than having electricity. Our family has just moved here in the beginning of June and we’ve never had our own source of electricity.

“We only applied for water but my husband and I decided to leave the electricity for now until school is finished then we will focus on saving enough for electricity.

“At the moment our family on the other side has helped us by sharing their power with us, so we use an extension wire to connect it with their power so that we can have some light in the evening.

“When my husband gets paid we give them something to help buy cash power and we are grateful to them for allowing us to connect to their power.

“But that is how we are living nowadays.”

The mother of five went on to say her husband works hard.

“He gets paid fortnightly and that is another struggle,” she said.

“We have to budget our money so that it can last two weeks until my husband’s next pay day.

“I have a cabbage garden myself to help out in the house so I can say we are okay. We are alive and despite all the struggles I know we are living by the grace of God. We just have to keep the faith that we will get through this.”

By Deidre Tautua-Fanene 05 December 2017, 12:00AM
Samoa Observer

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