Malololelei Reserve...and the legend of Mt Vaea

"When I lack perspective- it’s best to find a mountain and walk up it."

Malololelei is a small, affluent village, a little up the hills from my place. From there you can look out over Apia, and further east and west along the North Coast of Upolu. There’s a patch of land there- some 600 acres- which runs from the mid Upolu mountains down to meet the Mt Vaea reserve.

Trying to find Malololelei Reserve on a map or online is like trying to find a light beer in a Samoan liquor store. Walking tracks in Samoa hide…anything left for a short period to the forest- especially the resounding vacuum of a track- falls back to nature swiftly, as though embracing it’s abolition.

The land around Malololelei was once property of the Catholic Church, sections of which have been traded or sold off over the last half century. What has become Malololelei Reserve belongs to the Ah Liki family (an Apia dynasty)- and has been gifted to the people of Samoa. The reserve’s management shared in partnership between the family and the Ministry for Natural Resources & the Environment.

…and it is splendid.

Wide tracks graze the forest, treading ridges and folding down spurs- occasionally peeking over a canopy, salted with tava’e and manu sina. Tall trees, labelled in Samoan and Latin (surely a rare literary combination), shelter a host of small things, which harp and toot like woodland woodwind. Endangered manumea hide here. The fruit doves, fiau’i, manutangi and manuma appear in brief flight, before concealing themselves to hurl flutey remarks from the trees.

From the top of the park, you stare down Mt Vaea’s knuckled spine toward Apia, and the ocean beyond…

In legend, Vaea was born in Vaimauga (east, at the right of my view of Apia). He had only one brother- his name was Fa’atausili.

As they grew, Vaea became large & strong, dark &, handsome...while Fa’atausili was different; a small, pale and softly spoken shadow of his elder brother.

With Vaea’s strength came the attention of women and men, and so his pride grew, and eventually he became to believe in his own invincibility. If Fa’atausili was envious of his brother’s fame, it did not show, for he loved him as brothers do.

One day, 3 brothers from Fiji came to test the legend of Vaea and almost found themselves added to his list of conquests . They were defeated and saved only when their young sister Apaula revealed herself from where she had hidden in their boat, to beg for the mercy of Vaea, tears rolling down her shell smooth cheeks.

The great Vaea scorned the men, allowing them to escape with their lives but stripping them of their pride and in the bargain claiming pretty Apaula for himself.

It is said that Vaea and Apaula fell in love, and eventually Apaula fell pregnant with their first child.

When the baby was to be born, it was custom that Apaula’s brothers return to escort her to give birth to the child on their own island. Reluctantly, Vaea let his pregnant wife go, but he stood and watched their journey from Savalalo (at the foot of Mt Vaea).

As he watched the boat near its destination, Vaea saw Apaula go into labour and then give birth. He looked on with a growing realisation and dread as the baby emerged into the waiting arms of Apaula’s brothers. The child was killed before it’s mother and the distant eyes of Vaea, and the tiny body cast into the ocean to the creatures that live there. Vaea watched in disbelief and helplessness as they celebrated their revenge for Vaea’s arrogance and mockery, and Apaula wept and bled in the boat beneath them.

Vaea was overcome with grief. He roared at the men, at the sky and at the impassive ocean which held him at bay. He bawled and collapsed to weep- his hands and toes tore at the earth and his knees pressed great hollows in the soil. Sadness drained the strength from his muscles, and spilled it from his eyes and mouth to muddy the dirt. Vaea cried until the beat of his great heart began to slow and finally he found that he could not move, so great was his misery. His fingers and feet began to petrify, and lichens and moss began to inch over his hardening knuckles.

By the time Apaula was able to return her stricken husband, he could move no more.

Vaea murmured a few last words to his heartbroken wife, before his lips stilled. She must find his brother, Fa’atausili, that he might avenge their child.

Apaula ran to find Fa’atausili, not knowing where to look, and it was a long time before she finally found him at Falealupo, on the farthest coast of Savaii. When she came upon the pale Fa’atausili quietly sitting above the cliffs, she wondered how this insipid shadow of her great Vaea could possibly avenge their family.

As she spoke to him of her dead child and her petrifying husband, Fa’atausili remained still, his expression unreadable. Gently he reassured Apaula, and eventually he convinced her to leave him. Only when Apaula left, did Fa’atausili enter the shadows of a nearby cave and there, in the the darkness, gently uncoil and release the anger which lived inside him. What emerged from the cave was no longer the man Fa’atausili, but the embodiment of wrath, and it set forth to hunt Apaula’s brothers with wicked intent.

Apaula could only return to her still and silent Vaea, and curling herself about his massive earthen body, she wept. Her tears pooled beneath the mountain to create the fresh water spring at Lalovaea, which they now call Loimata o Apaula (the tears of Apaula)


Legend adapted from several sources…including
http://1samoana.com/samoan-legend-vaea-and-apaula/

birds at
http://www.samoanbirds.org/