Ta’afuli Andrew Fiu was born in 1965 in the village of Lefaga, Matautu, a small province of Apia in Western Samoa. In 1970, Andrew, his parents and younger brother migrated to Auckland, New Zealand.
In 1979, at the age of 14, he became seriously ill. A doctor’s misdiagnosis of his condition as a‘bad cold’ resulted in rheumatic fever, damaging Andrew’s heart valves and becoming untreatable through medication.
During the next 26 years, he underwent four planned open-heart surgeries and one unscheduled reopening.
(According to some health professionals, surviving five open-heart surgeries is a record.) On two different occasions he has died and been revived. Andrew grew up in hospital, and his years in cardiac wards have armed him with life experiences most people will never encounter. Although he must continue to live on a cocktail of medications, he thrives and continues to be an optimist.
Now aged 40, he has four children and is co-director of Pacific Mango Media and Design Agency Ltd. He is also studying for a post-graduate Diploma in Not-for-Profit Management and is active in the community.
Check out Andrew's biography Purple Heart:
It’s me
Free me
If only you could be me
Strapped here in that bed of pain
Trying to be human,
Trying to regain,
Me
Please me
Care for me
Don’t you believe it?
That all is gone and lying here before you
In this half nothingness
Isn’t me
Me, see
If I stood where you stand that I could only be… me
And not some other man
Forget my stitches, the iv drips and scrambled fucked up face.
Its laughable, circus freakish, samoanish clown, ugly even funny
Below the bandages wrapped like tapa cloth looking out with brown eyes
It’s me
Lord, give me a white man!
Lord, give me a white man!
Her voice is searching, screaming for providence.
I thought of leaving her before.
Jesus Christ!
I’m tired of coconut men fucking my life up!
Down the hallway I hear
The words ricocheting off cold Housing Corp walls.
I stare over the shopping bags to the washing line outside.
The rain crying for me,
Moist laden winds, blowing sadly against the door.
Leave the Chop Suey to someone else
Let the fish keep its scales and leave it in the sink
Maybe another man will see to that
Because the milk is sour in that fridge.
Though I will know more than he can see,
because a picture does not paint a thousand words
It paints much more
but the Palagi – white man can only see so much.
And sure enough she looks fantastic –
the brown skin
And fine chiseled nose,
the seductive motion she weaves
Both selective and taught
from traditional Seafarers under breadfruit trees
That would gut a fish just to savor the stench.
Lord give her a white man or any man indeed
Let them be mocked and humiliated.
And let him be rewarded with fake love
as he brings home wet fish.
Let him stand alone in the kitchen subservient.
Long enough
So I can be free.
What type of fuckery is this?
What type of fuckery is this?
All this time I am listening, the sounds of impossible words
Slap me, mock me and then tease me,
Words known as ‘lies’ kissing me in greeting like I was new to this
Unravel the bullshit
Let the truth travel
so I can wonder aloud
so I can marvel
Still or not but let me choose.
What type of fuckery is this?
You speak like actors do
Mimicking after watching movies, playing for the camera
A songstress one minute and then a wounded hero simpering so weakly
The next scene
Make believe again
Day after day
What type of fuckery is this?
You have another lover it screams to me
Yet the sweet spit left from your sugary statements
Trail still
Linger awfully long on those plump lying lips
Decency, No longer trying
What type of fuckery is this?
When my memory conveniently forgets,
Journeys through a fake association or
Call it what it is
A bullshit relationship
Waving like I do to flying birds passing by
Like the albatrosses of my life
Because it’s attached around my soul,
As well my elongated neck
What type of fuckery is this?
When this charade is all I live for,
When those hollow words I have come to breathe
Because they tumble from that perjured tongue
Weeping stupidly, falling naively
Caressing my earlobes
Because I believe this fuckery is bliss
