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Salamasina Ale Taufua should be dead. She has bruises, deep cuts and welts on her body.
Her arms are twice the size they should be, and her fingers look more like snow gloves.
Her voice is barely a whisper as she recalls what happened on the morning she lost all three of her children to a tsunami wave she calls evil.
The 27-year-old was starting another day, playing with her children - Jesasa, 6, Uena, 3, and 8-month-old E.J. - at the Taufua beach resort in Lalomanu, where the family lived.
Her husband Etimani had just left for work, kissing each of them as he walked to the car.
Ten minutes later, the earthquake struck.
"I called Mani and told him. He said he felt it on the road too. We weren't panicking, though. Mani said to me, 'Okay, get out of the house at least'.
"I put the phone down and that's when I heard screaming. People were screaming and screaming, yelling 'tsunami, tsunami'."
Mrs Taufua still finds it hard to talk about that day, breathing in deeply and staring at the wall before continuing.
"I got the kids and yelled out to one of the other girls to come and get them, to run up the mountain. I grabbed baby [E.J.] and told Sasa and Uena to follow her.
"I saw this huge, enormous wave coming and I knew I couldn't run up. So I ran with baby upstairs and to the back of the house into the bathroom. I looked out the window and saw Uena and Sasa running up the mountain."
But the wave was too quick for the two older children, and they were swept away.
Inside the family's two-storey house, Mrs Taufua watched the swirling water surround the building.
"I looked down at baby and he was laughing ... he thought it was a game."
A ferocious boom sounded as the tsunami smashed into the house, ripping it apart.
"I looked down at baby and he was gone. He was just staring, he was dead. I think he died from shock."
Mrs Taufua held on to her son as the waves battered her, slamming debris into her body.
As a second and then a third wave rushed towards the village, the force of the water became too much, wresting baby E.J. from his mother's grasp.
"He just slipped out of my hands," she says. "I felt nothing after that. I only felt death. Death was coming and that was all I could feel."
But she grabbed a floating car door and battled the waves and debris for about 45 minutes until she became wedged between the posts of a house roof.
The dark bruises across her abdomen are signs of her struggle to escape before the wave swept her towards the mountain.
Exhausted, she fainted.
She was later found by a man and a woman who took her to hospital.
At the Moto'otua Hospital near Apia, Mrs Taufua has had three operations on her arms, both broken from battling the waves.
Her tears flow as she remembers her children.
"They were so beautiful and all different. Sasa, the oldest, was our quiet one. He was soft and very emotional. He just had his hair cut the day before, ready to go to his new school in Vaiala the next week.
"Uena was so cheeky. She would go stand under the ripe banana bunch hanging from the tree and wait for the guests to come so she can ask them to pick some for her.
"And my baby, he was so cute. What a beautiful boy E.J. was."
The three siblings were buried wearing the clothes they were to have worn for White Sunday, an annual children's day in Samoa.
Up to 11 members of the Taufua family - including the three children - were buried together last week at a family plot in Lalomanu.
How you can help
Pacific Cooperation Foundation
Deposits can be made at at any Westpac branch. All the money raised will go to the Samoan Government
Red Cross
- Make a secure online donation at redcross.org.nz
- Send cheques to the Samoan Red Cross Fund, PO Box 12140, Thorndon, Wellington 6144
- Call 0900 31 100 to make an automatic $20 donation
- Make a donation at any NZ Red Cross office
ANZ bank
Make a donation at any ANZ bank branch, or donate directly to the ANZ appeal account: 01 1839 0143546 00
Oxfam
- Make a secure online donation at Oxfam.org.nz
- Phone 0800 400 666 or make an automatic $20 donation by calling 0900 600 20
Caritas
- Make a secure online donation at Caritas.org.nz
- Phone 0800 22 10 22 or make an automatic $20 donation by calling 0900 4 11 11
TEAR fund
- Make a secure online donation at tearfund.co.nz
- Phone 0800 800 777 to specify Samoa the Philippines or Indonesia. You can also donate at CD and DVD stores.
