Thursday,Jun 18 2009, 10:36:35 AMA phone call to my father.

I have finally spoken to my father over the phone. It has been five years since I last spoken to my father. Before this it was nearly seven years since I last spoken or had seen my father. I last saw my father when he was fifty seven years old. My father is now sixty nine years old now.

I am ageing as well. Life has been, on the whole, ok for me. I have lost loved ones and I have become estranged with my father for over a decade now.

It is very unusual for me to finally decide to pick up the phone and call him. But, I did just that and I felt strangely happy to speak to him.

My half siblings are doing well and there have not been too many misadventures over the years to speak of. Families, in an extended sense, have grown as well, unfortunately for my sister and I, living here in Brisbane, Australia, we have not been fortunate enough to share their nurturing formative years knowing who they are.

My father asked me whether I have any children of my own? I replied, 'not yet'? Heres hoping?! No, I have never met anyone, nor has my sister, which is indeed very frustrating to say the least.

I have decided to reconnect with my father whilst I still have time to do so.

I have lost my mother and now my grandmother and people are dying all around me and I am somewhat unsure of whether I will be able to consider my own future life as being viable apart from reconnecting with loved ones who are still with us.

What is killing us?

First and most salient of all for most Samoans is our health habits.

Our lifestyle dictates our inner wellbeing.

Alcohol and Samoan food is the cuprit for most of the debilitating diseases that kill us.

My sister, has developed bloodshot eyes which is symptomatic of hypertensive retinalopathy, this is caused by high blood pressure, or hypertension. This is eye disease may lead to heart disease, strokes, diabeties, and obesity related illnesses.

The foodsource which are primary targets are:-

Sugary foods, sweets, excess sugar in tea, coffee high in glucose (diabetes related illness)

Transfats: mainly saturated fats, as in pork, skins from chickens, fats from beef and lamb etc,(crackle).

Pe'epe'e:- coconut milk, as in Poi, fa'ailifu, and fai'ai eleni, etc, this is full of bad cholestrol levels and fats.

Samoan foods are good but only in dosages, just like alcohol, however, it is easy for Samoans to over indulge in everything, including Vailima beer, etc, and this is most evident in food consumption.

Samoans should not go on a diet, because this will only increase the opposite effect of people, people dieting often blow their diets only to become even fatter faster and becoming fat and obese again.

Rather Samoans must change this lifestyles and watch what they eat.

Do not go on a diet but concentrate on eating sensibly and in moderation.

Most important of all, exercise daily, walk, run, play sport at least half an hour of touch rugby, and volley ball, in the village.

Use the machete to trim the hedges and mow the the lawns the Samoan way in order to work up a decent calisthetic exercise in and around the fale. Try to swim in the beach as often as possible.

Eat bananas both green and ripen for a rich source of potassium, carbohydrates and glucose for energy. Supplement bananas with taro and Ulu for a a rich source of nutritional carbohydrates and starch for a very good source of energy.

Replace most cereals with rolled oats, or polesi, which is nice and cheap, but, most important of all it is highly nutritional for heart function. The fancy cereals by most palagi breakfast tables in the mornings are not good for you, nor for anyone for that matter, but go for rolled oats which is the best energy source and it is the best for the heart. It is cheap, easy to prepare and the better than rice, corn flakes, and bread.

When considering vitamins in the shops, be careful with what you buy, most Samoans can not afford vitamin tablets in daily usage, in fact, most foods contain the necessary vitamins that we all need. The esi (pawpaw) fruit is most nutritional, which is rich in vitamins for energy and inner health.

Protein that is most suitable is fish, with its omega 3 and omega 6, which is important for inner health and it is readily available for Samoans in and around the village.

To live a healthy lifestyle in Samoa theoretically is easy. In truth, the time and effort in gathering your needed vitamins and daily nutrition is a fulltime job so that in the end your energy is already expended just gathering your foodsource then having to prepare it to eat is energy sapping enough.

So why are Samoans notoriously fat then? Simple, modernity lifestyles are less hectic and food preparation is less strenuous than the traditional ways. The energy spent in gathering food is nolonger a fulltime job but it is easy to access and to acquire and the means to do so is based on the mercantalist consumerism of simply buying your food already prepared for you to consume. So less stress and energy wastage equals complacent and lazy consumerism which equals to unhealthy obese Samoans dying earlier than expected.

Then again, as is the case in Australia, there is always the case of racism in hospitals in Australia whereby nasty people may make your life a living hell in the name of 'xenophobia', and following the movie script of 'Rompa Stompa' ( an Australian movie about a neo facist mob fighting Asians in Melbourne), as the Queensland health authority, is oft culpable of this charge.

In the end, then the ultimate message here is simple, when will they learn? The more you mistreat people the more they will continue to come over in droves.

The Queensland police service and its ultra right cabal have had its tainted history associated with indigenous people, and this attitude has also spilled over to the health authorities and with specific regards to the health concerns of indigenous peoples of Australia, which seems to indicate a very tragic story indeed.

The Australian Samoans have become the inadvertant recipient of the same white Australian attitude towards indigenous and coloured peoples generally in Brisbane and elsewhere in Queensland. Scienta est potestas is the school motto of my old school in Brisbane which has augured well for learning from the lessons of ignorance, the thought that knowledge is power, often means that whenb in health rights matters is concerned the medically naive are often the victim of unscrupulous medical practitioner's idea of a negligent joke, or maliciously contrived depending on how truly self aware you become after learning as much as possible from years of experience living in an inimical environment for a long while. 

The reluctance to treat Samoans as equal citizens within Australia in hospitals has been evident with my late mother's treatment with her medical condition which was annoyingly banal and unfortunately, to this moment, still left unresolved. She passed away for an undiagnosed terminal illness, she died from cervical cancer, which was prognosed with a heath robinson medical outcome by the Queensland medical authority at the time, this was in 1997-2002. The pleas for restorative medical justice was then, and still remains, found wanting.

Needless to say, this has drawn me to conclude that the Queensland ruling class elites seem to emanate from the most horridly corrupt purveyors of power, namely the rank and file within the Queensland police service, the judicature processes wherein Queensland justice system. Unsurprisingly then, that the likelihood of corrupt police officers such as Jack Herbert's are continually rearing their ugly, faceless, heads, within the Queensland police service and their banal antics are evident in other governmental agencies, such as the health services, which is most apparant with their treatment of their selectively targeted persona non grata amongst the community. The lessons of the Fitzgerald inquiry of yesteryear have become ignored with the passage of time. The royal commission invesitgation in 1988 of police corruption in Queensland led to the dismissal and imprisonment of the Queensland police commissioner, his deputy, and certain political figures within the then incumbent National government of Queensland. Queensland police officer Jack Herbert, the English bobby who transferred to the QPS, was to become the infamous bagman collecting insurance premiums from brothels and pubs for police protection and the nudge nudge nod nod say no more I see nothings in red light district of Queensland. The prostitution racket was always run and operated by the QPS then and still is today, except now it is legal to do so. The QPS were pimps then and still are today.  

The royal commissions that have arisen since and after the Daniel Yock case, in 1994, and the Doomagee inquiry, 2005, etc, have become a testament of the 'JOKE', that has arisen from the Oxley recruitment centres, of hired assassin thugs as uniformed officers of the law. 

 The situation now in Queensland is still a growing pains lesson of cultural interaction. The lessons learnt on hindsight is one in which we can truly see the imperfections of the purveyors of true restorative and substantive justice as viewed from an Australian Samoan man such as I.

The palagi man in his ivory tower has viewed myself, as a brown man Pacific islander, with such disdain for centuries and now the brown man's burden has turned full circle with the gift of knowledge through the cumulative process of experience and acquired learning. We can never cease to acquire more learning and certainly our imperfections must be made visible for the sake of posterity or at least so that those who will come after us will heed from the mistakes we have made. Or at least, you will become self aware and don't fall for entrapments so easily as I did.

Therefore, this brings me back to the begining of our discussion about reconnecting with my father and the thought about the hope for longevity for Samoan people and the inadvertant view to health issues albeit from a Samoan perspective.

We, as energetic and fit traditional Samoans, were once mesomorphic physique, likened to the 'ubermensch' warriors. In our own traditional sense we fought in wars and close quarter conflict as mesomorphic warriors and not as indomorphic obese men. I am happy to say that I have maintained the traditions of our mesomorphic past, even in my forties, although, unfortunately, I remain single still.

I might decide to visit Samoa for a holiday and to visit Dad. Then again it might be my sister who may decide to visit him. Do I have something to talk with him about? Where do I start, I wonder?

Keep in touch! and, in this instance, absense, does make the heart grow fonder. 

Twelve years, wow, where and what have I been doing with my life?

Peace!

Tim Tufuga

Brisbane 18th June 2009