Coming of Age in Samoa
of the dominant members of the gang, a little taller than the rest, a little lankier, more strident and executive, but very much a harum-scarum little girl among little girls, with a great baby always on her hip. But by April she had turned the baby over to a younger sister of nine; the still younger baby was entrusted to a little sister of five and Fitu worked with her mother on the plantations, or went on long expeditions after hibiscus bark, or for fish. She took the family washing to the sea and helped make the oven on cooking days. Occasionally in the evening she slipped away to play games on the green with her former companions but usually she was too tired from the heavy unaccustomed work, and also a slight strangeness had crept over her. She felt that her more adult activities set her off from the rest of the group with whom she had felt so much at home the fall before. She made only abortive attempts to associate with the older girls in the neighbourhood. Her mother sent her to sleep in the pas- tor's house next door, but she returned home after three days. Those girls were all too old, she said. "Laititi a'u" ("I am but young"). And yet she was spoiled for her old group. The three villages numbered fourteen such children, just approaching puberty, preoccupied by unaccustomed tasks and renewed and closer association with the adults of their families, not yet interested in boys, and so forming no new alliances in accordance with sex interests. Soberly they perform their household tasks, select a teacher from the older
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