Mad Mike

Mike's real name was Ueligitone. Mike was an American name he acquired while working for the tuna canneries in American Samoa. When he returned back to Western Samoa everybody started calling him by his American name Mike. I once asked him why the fuck he got the name Mike and he said, "Well if I ever happen to get into trouble and people say it was Mike. I would say I don't know who Mike is. My name is Ueiligitone". Smart and twisted I guess.

Mike was an interesting character to say the least. He lived in the portion of our village referred to as LA. I lived in the area referred to as the Jungle. LA begun off a dusty turnoff near the main road opposite a Mormon church. There was nothing glitzy about this LA. Miles from Hollywood some might say. It looked more like the shanty towns of Kingston Jamaica. Whenever a car took the LA turn off, hoards of children and dogs would run out onto the dusty road and follow the vehicle. Most of the children were half naked and covered with open sores. Many also had blackened teeth. Just off that dusty road was Mike's family home. A big tin roofed modern fale in the front, two smaller living fales behind it, and a umukuka (kitchen). Mike's shack was a small box looking addition attached to the umukuka. Mike's shack was lined with Bob Marley posters, drawings of marijuana leaves and semi nude photos of women cut from magazines. There were also car speaker wires run in all directions in his room all leading to an old tape recorder unit where Mike would queue his music. Not a shabby pad by LA standards. Mike was an old village buddy of mine.

Mike is not your typical Samoan well-disciplined christian teenager. He absolutely loved to drink and party. He smoked cigarettes and marijuana like a chimney. Ironically, he still looked athletic and loved to play sports. He was gifted with genes that could have made him a professional athlete. Instead he loved to drink and had a penchant for oral sex from fafafine. He absolutely loved fafafine palagi men from overseas that would come to Samoa and act as sugar daddy's. Anywhere Mike could get the next beer he would follow. Apart from the company he kept, I never sensed any homosexual tendencies from him. All of us around him would joke that he's gay but other than the fact he likes to be blown, he behaved like a regular guy. Hard to put a label on that one.

I thought about Mike because he came up in a topic of conversation with an old friend not too long ago. Since we had all grown up and moved on, Mike migrated to Auckland NZ and was working odd jobs here and there. Apparently old Mike was still up to his old vices. Then tragedy struck. Mike was involved in a murder case. He was involved in a beating where a man was killed outside a church social and as it turns out, Mike was convicted and sentenced to life in prison. The rumors were that it was his older brother from Samoa who committed the murder and Mike carried the blame. The brother was only visiting and had a family back in Samoa. Mike was, well still Mike.

Years had passed. Here and there I spared a thought for Mike. Prison is no place to spend any part of your life and I had hoped he would cope okay. Then recently an old friend told me that Mike has been released on parole. For some reason that was the best news I heard that day. Whether he committed those acts or not I don't know for sure. But what I do know is that at one point he was someone I considered a friend and was there when I needed a favor. I will not judge him for his sins. I will just root for his redemption.