The battle to survive

By Florence Syme-Buchanan

On Manihiki everyone has lost a loved one.

Everyone is a hero. This is just one such story from that fateful All Saint’s Day in Tauhunu, a

tiny once neat village, now gone.

It was that Saturday after noon as Anna Katoa and hus band Willie were in discus sion with another family whether they should leave their new beach-front home for a large boat.

The hot, El Nino afflicted South Pacific was rising angrily.

Suddenly they heard a loud thundering and turning, saw a dark wall of water rac ing towards them.

Anna and Willie grabbed their four year old daughter Katarina and seven year old Maureen and along with the other couple, ran for their lives.

There were terrible screams and suddenly they were all being dragged with tremendous force by the wave.

“I thought we were going

to die, knowing there were houses and trees in front of us. I thought we would be bashed against them. But when I surfaced I knew it wouldn’t be my end,” said Anna.

Katarina had disappeared. Anna fought to keep herself and seven year old Maureen afloat in a salvage maelstrom of water and debris from their village now shattered into a million pieces.

Willie struggled in the churning sea to a boat still tied to a frangipani tree. He then helped nine year old Penina Simiona aboard followed by papa Teira Taana, an elderly man who kept crying that his granddaughter was missing. Anna and Maureen were next. Then the frangipani tree broke.

Nightfall came as they were swept across the lagoon. More vast waves came and lifted the boat with its fragile contents

and smashed them all onto the deadly coral. And then the sea swept in and tossed then into the Pacific Ocean.

Papa Teira, Maureen and Penina were gone.

“We called and called for her but there was no answer. We couldn’t look for them,

there were 40 foot waves and Willie was injured. “ It was hell,” said Anna.

Willie had gashed himself badly on the reef. And now Willie and Anna were alone clinging to the overturned boat.

Miracles can happen anywhere, any time. At about Sam Sunday morning on the storm battered high seas, they found John Solomona. He was floating on his back and had been in the water for 10 hours.

He had nothing to hold on to, just hope.

Then another miracle. They managed to turn the boat over and under it, kept alive in an air pocket was Penina Simiona. But life was still in the balance.

“The boat was filling with water and the sea was still rough and windy, so I told John to untie the outboard motor. It was weighing us down and we did not have the

strengthen to bail,” said Willie.

“We grabbed coconuts, a sleeping bag

and bits of wood that were floating past us.

I opened the coconuts with my teeth and fed the water and meat to Anna and Penina. John and I chewed on the husk.”

Willie packed the huge gash in his leg with chewed coconut. Using the sleeping bag and lengths of wood he made a sail.

John had a plank of wood to row with and Willie steered using the same four by two.

Willie was worried too, Anna was six months preg nant.

“I had no time to be afraid. I just had one thought, to get Anna to safety as quickly as possible. I couldn’t let her out for long because she would lose the baby, and if that happened, I could lose her too.”

An experienced fisherman, knowledgeable on the cur rents and wind patterns in the area, Willie coaxed the tiny craft through the storm to Rakahanaga, another island about 40 kilometres from Manihiki.

Anna hoped help would come from outside.

“We waited and waited for the planes that we hoped had been sent out to find us but they never came. We did hear one for a few moments in the distance and then the noise disappeared ...

“But we never lost hope. I had faith in my husband Willie.”

They reached Rakahanga almost five days after being at sea but waited until daylight to cross the reef.

“We were thrown over the reef by a big wave. It took us right up to the beach ... I cannot thank God enough.”

They were to hear of another miracle too. Their youngest child Katarina, who had disappeared in those terrifying first few minutes, had been plucked from the waters by friends. In the big airlift that fol lowed, the New Zealand airforce dropped them together in Rarotonga.

Maureen is still missing. Anna says that if the baby, which is due at the end of February, is a girl, she will be named Maureen, in honour of a beloved daughter, a little hero. ■

Anna and Willie katoa... glad to be safe