Nafanua, Falealupo lady warrior and prophetic words...

Have been sick as of late, with the cold, and now hoping that it will soon subside with our impending family trip to Samoa this Saturday.

So as well as being sick, there's definitely been no rest as have been putting the finishing touches on another picture book that we hope to launch in Samoa whilst over there.

Our latest book has been on my mind for a while and I started working on the text last year and then decided to change tact with the artwork and to work with ink and coloured pencils which would give a different 'feel' to this new series which I've called 'tala fa'asolopito' or Samoan historical stories.

This particular story of Nafanua was first introduced to me in Falealupo when I was on fieldwork in 1989 by the late Aeau Taulupoo Lafaialii who passed away in 2015 when I first started writing.

And the story of Nafanua is so important to me because it would have been a tala (story) that my great, great grandmother Melea Solia would have known having lived in Falealupo with her family including her daughter Eleni (my great grandmother and namesake) before moving the family to Fale'ula with Melea's Scandinavian/German husband Charles Spitzenburg (my great, great grandfather). They were all lain to rest in Samoa in Fale'ula but this special connection brings us together in time.

The other connection that I was able to make was through reading the narrative in a book by Rev. John Williams in 1830, who wrote about Fauea, a Samoan who was living in Tonga with his family for 11 years and when he found out that Rev. John Williams was returning to Samoa from Tonga, he asked that he join him there as he had missed his Island nation.

Nafanua had already left a prophetic message to Malietoa Fitisemanu that he would receive his title from the heavens as he had arrived too late to receive the titles that she had already gifted to other supporters in her cause. He died but the next Malietoa Vainuupo accepted Christianity into the nation of Samoa and this was believed to the fulfilment of Nafanua's prophecy. Other's have attested it to the recognition of the 1962 Independence of Samoa by Malietoa Tanumafili II but the wider view has been with the former.

I'm interested to see how this story will be welcomed as there are still many more stories to come but this new series looks at some of the more recent stories in Samoan history that I never got to learn about in schools and hope to share this story and many more with the next generations...