Storms do not ravage a modern insulated home as they do Samoa’s traditional fale dwellings
In a thatched fale, a traditional Samoan open home, the sound a cyclone makes is harsh, raw and scary.
I lived through any number of cyclones with my mother, siblings and extended family in our village of Safua in Savai’i. On the first day, as we sat in the living room, watching the wind through the glass sliding doors, protected by meshed wiring. She said: “It’s quiet.” The cyclone was in full force outside, trees were being uprooted, homes were destroyed before our eyes and the river that runs through the land was overflowing into people’s homes. I looked at her and we sat there for what seemed like an eternity, struggling to listen to the sounds of the cyclone.
She was right: in an open fale, even when it is boarded up, you are barely protected from the winds and the rain, and most certainly not from flying debris. In a modern house, you have no worries other than losing power and water, and even then, those things can be addressed with a generator and a water tank.
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