Clea salavert . . . In memorandum

Had been out with friends celebrating the 100% all kiwi samoan influenced achievement but still managed to get up today at 6am ready to head to lalomanu with the library association of samoa. 25ish samoan librarians today helped set up the clea salavert memorial library which has been built by her family at lalomanu primary school in memory of a young australian avid reader who sadly lost her life in the tsunami while in samoa on holiday. We unboxed books sent by cleas school in australia, labelled, shelved and made pockets, cards and date dues for them. Yes it is a manual library as there is no computer or internet there yet. A terrific amount of work got done over a period of 6 hours but there is still plenty more to do. I spent a bit of time trying to crash course train someone to be a librarian and teach them in the space of a few hours what has taken me years to learn! Struggled a bit with the samoan lunch provided as i still have not got used to umu food and the taro sat heavy in my stomach. Thanks to those for preparing the meal however. No time for a swim unfortunately but checked out the tsunami rebuilding. Taufua is looking great and restored to former glory. Cant quite say the same for the neighbours who have built a great concrete monstrosity on the beach that ruins the landscape and loses the whole purpose of a samoan fale holiday. There are still remainders of destroyed buildings strewing the coastline and the place has turned into a ghost town now all the families are living inland but the vegetation is returning. I was hoping i could stick my head in the sand and avoid the 29th anniversary but that is pretty unrealistic especially as we will be remembering our dear friend peter from netball. The clea salavert library opens on the 5th october and i am looking forward to meeting her family though expect it will be a painful time for them. Photos of this event can be found here http://www.flickr.com/photos/libraryassociationofsamoa/sets/72157624929943355/