"How many people live in your house?"

Tu Tangata, Issue 28, 1 February 1986, Page 34

"How many people live in your house?"

by Peggy Dunlop

Pakiwaitara

\ I low many people live in your house?' 1 Even after 30 years I can still hear the sharp voice of our over-the-I road neighbour, and see her puzzled frown as squinting her eyes and leaning forward over her gate she watched us walk to the clay track leading to our house on the hill.

‘Just our family' we would reply. ‘But how many in your family' she would say, opening her gate and following us as we began to walk the uneven zig-zag path our father had cut through the claybank and gorse. ‘Just our family' we would say, and then we would climb even faster to get away from her inquisitiveness. I‘m not sure why we learnt so early to give such ‘politicians answers'. Why were we so cautious? My mother had never said ‘Don't tell anyone about us. it’s none of their business.' Perhaps my caution was born when

my mother enrolled me in school and the teacher said ‘Another one? Surely not... Anymore at home?' Maybe it flowered when we went to pick up the ten loaves of bread on Friday afternoons in those days shops were closed for the weekend and the baker joked to the other customers about ‘how much bread that family eats!' If my mother had allowed it, I would rather have walked to five different shops and bought two loaves of bread at each, than listen to that baker's joke each Friday. Maybe it was my father's soft words to my mother when we were

making too much noise made us cautious ‘Keep the kids quiet... what do we do if one of the neighbours complains and the Social Welfare come and check how many people are in our house?’

From these incidents, the presence of large numbers of people in our house became associated in my mind with illegalness, things to be kept secret.

‘Who was our family?' At the time our neighbour asked, our family was my mother and father and six brothers and sisters, five first cousins from three different aiga and one aiga of a friend. But had our neighbour asked her question three months earlier or later, the numbers would have varied between two and six, more or less.

It was some years before I realised that our family was unusual for Wellington in the 19505, that most children in my class lived with only their mother and father and sisters and brothers. I was eight when I went to a friend's house to play. This practice was usually discouraged. We were a ‘straight home after school, and the older brothers will look after you’ kind of family. Anyway, there were always plenty of people to play with at home, so we didn’t need to go to other peoples houses.

But on this day, my mother did let me go to a friend’s house, and I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw the spaciousness of her bedroom. All for her, and only one bed. On that day, my one aim in life was to have a bedroom all to myself, but that wasn't to be for a long time.

It was probably at that time that I began to slightly resent the constant arrival of aiga in our house, that made our family ‘different’. It was then too that I began to differentiate between cousins, brothers and sisters. Before, all had been my ‘family’.

You see, our family was one of the first Samoan families to settle in Well-

ington in the mid 19405. There were few High Schools in Samoa at that time, and my Scottish father came to believe that if his children were to receive a sound education, then migration to New Zealand was essential. ‘Education... get a good education. That's one thing noone can take away from you' he would always say.

So, before I was born, he came to NZ and searched for a house to bring his family born and raised in the Vailima bush-lands. He looked for something close to the sea, like Apia, something up on a hill, like Vailima, and not too crowded in by other houses.

The house he selected was in the Kilbirnie hills, and fitted most of these requirements. There were three empty sections on either side, and a 44 yard steep ascent from the front road. We played in the vacant sections of springy moss and sand, and made a cricket pitch on the clay patches. And more importantly, there was no easy way people could pop their nose through the back window, or look over the fence to count how many people were in our house, or to see that all the noise was about. Because, once my parents settled in, keeping the noise down became a major requirement.

For almost at once, requests began coming from aiga in Samoa.

‘Please Moa, we would like our son to have a chance in New Zealand, just like your children,’ and ‘Please Moa, can you find a job for Siaomi, and can he come and stay with you?'

And none were refused.

My father built a rough hut at the back of our house with old packing cases. Its flat roof had to be re-tarred each year to keep the water out. The inside walls were lined with tapa cloth to combat Wellington’s Southerlies, and on to this tapa cloth, we pasted our favourites pictures: Betty Grable's legs, impossible body-building poses for my brothers to copy, and Don Bradman’s

cricket strokes. My cousin Lui still boasts that he learnt to read by reading these walls by the light of the kerosene lamp in the evenings.

It was dark and airless in that hut, because my father had put in only two push-out board windows. Whether this was for privacy, or because he didn't know how to put glass ones in, or whether he was scared a stray cricket ball would break the glass I’m not sure. My brothers were always hitting balls, and glass was expensive to replace.

In the evenings, my cousins would light the lamp, lie back, and inevitably talk would turn to Samoa, such a contrast to this dark closed-in hut. They would remember the open fale where you could look out and see what everyone was doing, and the hot air flowing through. My memories of these days are of huddling together in large double beds and mattresses, the guitar playing and games of suipee. Of half a boiled egg for breakfast on Sunday, and dripping on bread slices after school.

Anyway on that day when our neighbour asked her question again, ‘How many people in your house?' my brothers decided to play a trick on her.

The four of them, and my cousin Soo’ ran down the back path from our home and around the side road till they reached the front zig-zag path, a distance of about half a mile. Then, making plenty of noise so that our neighbour was sure to hear, they waited till they saw her come out of her house and then they began walking the hill path.

As soon as my eldest brother reached the house, he changed his clothes ran down the back path again, around the side road, and to the front zig-zag path. And my other brothers did the same. When they began the ascent again, they tried to alter their walks, so that our neighbour wouldn’t know it was them.

Then reaching the house again, they changed their clothes, ran out the back door around to the side road and then to the zig-zag path.

By this time they were really tired and almost staggered up the front path. But still our neighbour leant across the gate, watching.

As my brothers ran panting and laughing past the kitchen window for a third time, my mother realising what they were doing said ‘Enough’s enough!’

We never knew whether our neighbour was taken in by this trick, but she never asked that question again.

‘How many people live in your house?’

Our home was an open home for many. As more Samoan families settled in Wellington, the pressure on my parents and our house were reduced; spread amongst the new arrivals.

It wasn’t till I was seventeen that I got a bedroom for myself. All for me. And it was quite lonely.