Getting the materials for this new house to Fotua was no small undertaking. The lumber had to be loaded on a flatbed truck in Pangai and brought to land’s end. Then ‘Inoke bundled up the lumber into a type of raft and towed it between the islands by hand. Once in Foa, he’d load it onto a saliote (cart) and transport it to our property in Fotua. Keep in mind he had the material of the house he’d torn down but he needed more because this newer house was bigger. There were very few electrical tools where he worked in the PWDP where they had generators and none at home. There was no electricity on either island. He built a lot of French windows and doors from scratch, with tools like planes, saws of all kinds, spoke shaves, chisels and a lot of sand paper and paint. The family helped out with sanding for our home.
I thought it a most beautiful home when I came back from ‘Atele School in 1958. ‘Inoke was working on the interior at that time. However I did get to observe him building the French windows. This house had two big rooms. ‘Inoke built beds, tables, chairs and all kinds of fancy furniture that we didn’t have before.
‘Inoke kept his tools razor sharp. You’ve recognized that I hadn’t had a good track record around sharp tools so far. Well, here’s another incident. One day I tried to help my brother cut a piece of pine along the grain. I put too much pressure on the saw and I sawed the lumber and the lumber broke. The saw caught my left big toe and split it in half lengthwise. It was awful. I went to have a tetanus shot at the hospital and to stitch up my toe.
Over the years I never have had any problem with hang nails on that toe where I’ve had to have doctors work on both sides of my other big toe to remove the pain of hang nails. So the toe splitting with the sharp saw did some good. At least I didn’t cut that big toe sideways. It would have been gone like my index fingertip.
