The Mangrove Coast

She can still remember clearly, even after so many years away from home. The scent of plumeria and gardenia, carried through her window by the sea breeze, soft on her face. It called her outside, and she was helpless to resist. She spent her days with her cousins, playing with the stray dogs and the chickens that wandered everywhere. The soles of her feet grew tough as she ran through the village, pounding over grass and sand, pebbles and road. She became good at dodging coconuts, avoiding injury and possible death from the fruit that dropped from their perches high in the trees. She never played in the same spot, choosing somewhere new every day in search of weapons to kill monsters and dig up buried treasure. And everywhere she went, always in the distance lay o le sami, the sea, turquoise indigo with a faint silver lining that caught her eye, glittering in the sun. 

The tide pool is where her mother and aunts did their laundry. Gossip flowed alongside the soapy water when the tide was low. There was news of her cousin who was made pregnant by a married man from the village down the road. She was forever referred to as “that cheeky girl,” which translates to “promiscuous.” Then there was an uncle who tried stealing taro from his neighbor but was caught because he told anyone with a pair of ears—including the dogs—how easy it was to snatch up the little root vegetables in the dead of the night when everyone was asleep. And then her grandaunt, the village taulasea, the village healer, who had too many yams and was giving them away. There were other stories too, but her attention was drawn to the muted boom! of waves crashing along the shoreline. As she sat next to the women, chewing on a stick of sugarcane given to her by her grandfather, her eyes automatically looked for the water, but to no avail. Between the tide pool and the beach stood o le togā togo, a forest of mangrove trees. Samoa had several places along her coastline that were full of mangroves. Their trunks weren’t very thick, but their branches grew outwards, forming long shadows. Their verdant green leaves were plentiful, completely shielding everything behind it from her searching gaze. 

The togo were enormous to her as a child; deeply rooted and perfect to play in. The ground beneath the togo was a mix of sand and silt made mushy from the vai sami, the seawater. Her toes still curl in disgust when she thinks of herself as a little girl rolling around in the mixture, not minding how wet her clothes would get as they clung to her skin, how itchy and dirty her skin would become from the salt marsh. The village children would climb in the togo, hopping from one branch to another like a group of wild monkeys. On Sundays, children would hide from the matai, the village chief, who would go to the beach looking for the ones avoiding church. Crabs would scuttle into the leaves and roots, using the trees as shelter. At night, villagers would go to the beach to hunt for the crabs, ducking and weaving through the branches, armed with machetes, buckets, and little kerosene lamps. 

When she asked her mother about where the togo came from, she couldn’t tell her. Even when her mother was young, they were there, fully grown and strong. As an adult, she cringes to think of how they swung from the branches of the togo, bending and almost breaking them under their weight, not knowing how valuable they were. In recent years, she’s noticed their fale, their house, moving closer to the waves. Their property is becoming more water than grass these days, no longer as safe as it once was. The togo helps where the seawall may not be enough. It keeps the sami at bay on normal days when the sun is out and the vai is calm. She tries hard not to think about the possibility of earthquakes or the tsunami warnings that are sure to follow. Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and Thailand on Boxing Day in 2004. Japan in 2011. Samoa’s sister Tonga in 2022. Did they also have togo or seawalls? Is it ludicrous to place so much hope in a plant to save islands that sit right in the middle of a large area aptly named the Ring of Fire? 

When her parents went to visit, the fale was so close to the sami that they could hear it lapping at the sand right outside their window. They would go to sleep fearing to wake up floating along with the tide in their bed. There are people in other places, planting their own togo, hoping to keep the sami from swallowing their homes. She is afraid that her family will be like those poor souls in Kiribati, whose islands are sinking faster than the togo can grow. And now she constantly wonders, when will their people, their culture, their language, all go the way of Atlantis, never to be seen again?