Five New Zealand children are trying to find their mothers who are living in Samoa.
The children, most now adults, were separated from their mothers either through family split ups or because of immigration issues.
They have approached the New Zealand television programme Missing Pieces to help find their mothers. Missing Pieces is one of New Zealand’s top rating tv programs. It reunites families that have become disconnected, taking lost children to meet their parents they have lost contact with.
“It is a programme about happy endings, where we get children to meet a mum or dad they have never had chance to know,” says programme producer David Lomas.
“We don’t try and say who was right or wrong – we just try and make sure people who do not know their parents get to meet them.”
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“Often when a child becomes separated from one of his parents there are two truths to story – what the father believes and what the mother believes. We find that the real truth is a mix of those beliefs.”
“There is so often misunderstanding - and sadly it is the child that suffers.”
“When you hear the stories of the people seeking their mothers and fathers it makes you cry.”
One of the people seeking their mother is 15 year-old Raveena whose mother, Avalua Tuia, was deported from New Zealand taking her eldest daughter, Lousia, when Raveena was just five months old.
“Originally we thought Avalua left Raveena with her friend and returned to Samoa because she believed her youngest daughter would have a better life in New Zealand,” says Lomas. “But we have since discovered she had hoped to return to New Zealand to reunite her family. Sadly, for whatever reason, this has never happened. And now we have a 15 year-old girl who wants nothing more in the world than to meet her mother and sister.”
When he was two, Iaokimi’s father died in Talimatau and he was brought up by his aunt and uncle who later moved to New Zealand. Now in his late thirties he’s desperate to find his mother, Faaloggoifo Sale and his brother, Sale.
“Ioakimi feels, without knowing his mother and brother, that he has lost part of his identiy. And now he has children of his own, it is even more important for him to reconnect with his family.”
43 year-old Daniel was born in Fasito’o-uta and adopted by a loving Samoan family in New Zealand. Now his adoptive parents have passed away he’s incredibly keen to find his birth mother, Poloa Tulu.
“Despite having a loving family, Daniel has been haunted by not knowing his birth mother. He wants to know his Samoan family from a cultural point of view and to finally discover a sense of belonging.”
Another mother is being sought by her two sons, one of whom is a top New Zealand boxer. The boys, who were born in Moto’otua, lost contact with their mother, Nive Kiasi, when they moved from Samoa to New Zealand with their father.
“The boys regularly return to Samoa and they have looked for their mother but they cannot find her.”
Lomas, who is the programme presenter, has reunited more than 100 families in the last five years on Missing Pieces which plays on TV3 in New Zealand and is also broadcast in about 50 other countries. Lomas has strong connections to Samoa.
His father Noel Lomas was the manager of Samoa’s airports in the 1980s and his brother, Peter Lomas, was editor of the Samoan Observer for several years.
If anyone has any information about these people, please contact 770-0961.
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