Better than working, this is me

By Vatapuia Maiava 21 September 2016, 12:00AM

When life becomes more expensive, there are some who complain but there are others who work much harder.

For Sopoaga Sopoaga from the village of Sa’anapu, he believes in less talking and more action as his one and only priority is to look after his family.

“The work I do every day is done to simply look after my family,” he told the Village Voice.

“It’s a real blessing knowing that what I do is for my loved ones. People don’t realize just how fulfilling hard work is and the sort of blessings the land can provide you.

“I intend to share that blessing with my parents and everyone else in my family because I owe them for the work I am doing.”

 Sopoaga believes that if you farm smart then you will make life a lot easier for yourself.

“Right now my family has enough money for what we need,” he said. “We have enough because we plant a lot of crops in our plantation around the back. The thing is, if we want to live a good life then we must use our common sense and the brain that the Lord gave us.”

According to Sopoaga, there is no excuse to not being able to look after you family well.

“In these rural villages there are many men in each family,” he said. “There are also many coconut trees everywhere as well as banana plantations. You have many different options to look after your family every day, especially with the land being fertile.”

“You have no excuse not to be able to look after your family.”

But even extremely hard working people run into a few bumps along the way.

“Don’t take me wrong, we do have our fair share of struggles,” Sopoaga said.

“There are only three of us living in this house and our livelihoods depend a lot on our taro plantation. When we plant taro, there is a seven month waiting period before we can make money from the crop.”

“We have enough at time but there are also times we don’t because of the village and church obligations that drain a lot of our money. A lot of money also goes towards the transport costs for the children’s schooling.”

Even with those humps slowing Sopoaga down, he would not trade his life for any other.

“Despite those few hardships, I prefer this life to any other,” he said.

“You see, many of those who have jobs in the town area have to wait for two weeks before they get their pay but it’s different for farmers. If you organize your plantation well then you will have money coming into wallet every day.” Another problem faced by Sopoaga is the expensive cost of living only getting worse over time.

“The cost of living is indeed getting a bit expensive,” he said.

“The costs of goods are rising and pretty soon the money we make will not be enough for anything. We barely get by as is so any more rise in prices will really make us struggle.”

“But what else can we do? Ill just continue to work hard and provide for my family.”

By Vatapuia Maiava 21 September 2016, 12:00AM
Samoa Observer

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