Her arms are twice the size they should be, and her hands look more like snow gloves.
Her voice is barely a whisper as she recalls what happened on the day she lost her three children to a tsunami she calls evil.
The 27-year-old was starting another day, playing with her children - Jesasa (6), Uena (3) and 8-month-old EJ - at the Taufua beach resort in Lalomanu, where the family lived.
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, `OK, 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 [EJ] 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 and the the two girls were swept away.
Inside the family's home, 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 . . .
"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 EJ 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."
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 and fainted.
She was later found by a couple and taken to hospital, where she had three operations on her broken arms.
Up to 11 Taufua family members - including the three children - were buried together at a family plot in Lalomanu.
