NGAPARE Samatua

The bottom line for shell farmers

By Florence Syme-Buchanan

wakes up at 3 am every morning to make dough nuts, if there’s time she will sew clothes to sell in her small shop. She works hard to support her pearl farming husband and sons in Penryhn. But it wasn’t supposed to be like this. If things had gone according to plan, the Samatua family would have been harvesting their first pearls this year. But, they, like other families, have been the victims of thieves,

who stole not only the families entire cache of wild pearl shells, but the hope of a bet ter life.

Week after week, Ngapare Samatua watched her sons dive into Penryhn lagoon, stopping only when too exhausted to haul themselves into their tiny boat. She says a lazy thief stripped her family of all that hard effort and they now have to start over. First time pearl farmers, Samatua family laboriously collected 3,000 wild pearl shells from the depths of the lagoon. ’’All the work of my sons, my husband, my grandchildren...l cried,” says Ngapare

Samatua. Theft of pearl shells is not uncommon.

Especially for first time

farmers who leave the island and their shells on banks to get farming supplies in Rarotonga. The unwatched sitting shells have tempted a few and broken the hearts of hardworking families. Pearl farmer Peter William says it “happens all the time in Manihiki and Penryhn with people who are part time farmers.’’“They go and things disappear.” William says serious farmers never leave their crop unwatched, “That’s like leaving your shop unlocked.”

Ngapare Samatua says she reported the theft to Penryhn police who haven’t come up with anything since early this year. ■