Tapa Making from Kanokupolu, Tonga
Malia is a 50 year old mother to her eight children. She is married to a farmer, and they live in their own home. She runs a tapa-making business.
She and her husband grow their own mulberry trees at the side of their house and backyard, and Malia joins a group of women in the village where they gather and make tapas as a group. Her business was running very well, until it was affected by the tsunami in January 2022.
Malia lives in Kanokupolu, the village that was affected the most amongst all the villages on the main island of Tongatapu. According to Malia, it took them three days to clean up just the interior of their house, for ocean waste filled the house.
She took a rehabilitation loan of TOP $4,000 to re-plant her mulberry plantation (shown in her photos) and to buy a new water tank for her family, so they can have clean water. “The loan helps me revive my business by replanting my mulberry plantation and helps my family with a new water tank.”
“The furniture and the belongings that were inside our house were badly affected. My mulberry plantation was wiped away. Our cement water tank was nowhere to be found, and everything was out of order.”
She took a rehabilitation loan of TOP $4,000 to re-plant her mulberry plantation (shown in her photos) and to buy a new water tank for her family, so they can have clean water. “The loan helps me revive my business by replanting my mulberry plantation and helps my family with a new water tank.”
Comments