They are among thousands who have set up camp inland, afraid or unable to go home
Scattered in makeshift settlements along remote gravel roads, most are scared to even descend to seek medical treatment for colds, cuts and bruises.
Instead, they wait, leaving untreated wounds that are at risk of infection and blood poisoning that could result in death.
New Zealand Defense Force troops are taking medicine, food and shelter into the hills.
Kilisi Tuiuli and 48 others from his tiny village of Utufaalafa are living high in the bush-clad hills.
Tuiuli’s relatives, and five other families living in one of the rough camps, have only two pots in which to cook the limited amount of rice and fish they have, and hardly any dishes to share around the hungry mouths.
They are cooking on an open fire which they ignited by rubbing flint rocks together. A small boy comes back to the camp carrying a pile of wood bigger than him, that he has chopped for the fire.
Aid agencies have visited, leaving a portable toilet — about 1 km. down the road. It is more than 3 kms. down to the coast and the men walk back and forth bringing supplies and looking through the rubble of their former homes, salvaging anything they can find. Everyone in the group is still wearing the clothes they had on when they fled the tsunami, or donated clothes left at the local Mormon Church.
Tuiuli, 28, whose home is in Wanganui with his Kiwi wife and four children, came back to Samoa a month ago to attend his father’s funeral and help his mother, who has 10 children, ranging in age from seven to 32 eight of them still living at home.
His 51-year-old mother, Elisa Tuiuli, was in bed with the flu when the earthquake struck. She leapt out of bed, gathered her children and ran for higher ground, fearing a tsunami would follow.
But at least eight of her extended family members, including a family of five — Kelaise Kalasine, her husband Sio Pati and their three young children — perished.
