YOUR WATER
Spoken Word by Merci Tuiavi’i | Vailoa Palauli, Manunu, Lalomanu | She/Her
“Your Water” is a spoken word piece I composed of personal experiences and encounters in my life through which I explore the topic of identity and a perspective of its link to culture. I based this piece off the Samoan phrase “E lele le toloa ae ma’au i le vai” which translates to “Wherever the duck flies, it will always return to the water.” Through my personal recounts, I compare the two environments of Australia and New Zealand and their impacts on how I personally identify as Samoan.
This piece tells my story as an Australian Samoan migrating to New Zealand and is a reflection of the ways my phases of an identity crisis have taught me to be accepting of myself as Samoan. May my fellow Pasifika brothers and sisters be encouraged by my project—to be able to identify with confidence as a Pacific Islander, despite the lack of knowledge they think they might have about their own languages, customs, and ways of life.
TRANSCRIPT:
PART ONE: AN AUSTRALIAN CONTEXT
I was 6 years old and at a loss for words
How do you explain koko laisa ?
A sea of brown sisters, petite girls from town misters,
I met India, South Africa our friction caused my blisters
I was bigger than them all, my physique here was unique
So big was she, yet no one knew of her small Islands in the sea
“So, it’s chocolate and it’s rice and with milk it goes down nice”
And there I was at the beginning of my unexplainable self.
I would siva to a song whose words I never understood,
I used to question why my mother spoke in ways I never could,
And how I couldn’t speak my language & I never got to learn it
Yet I stood proud as Samoan because by birthright I had earned it
So as the only Poly girl at every school that I had been to.
I embraced my Samoan culture like it was all that I had been through
And there I was, too Samoan for my friends and that was that
I was small next to my siblings and at school they called me fat
They used to think I was “Mary” cause my family came from Aotearoa
And each time they mispronounced my name I felt my head dip lower... & Lower
TUIAVI’I it’s too hard to say. TUIAVI’I It’s too hard to spell.
I’d achieve something at school and they would chuck in an L
The smell, a stench of ignorance I guess they couldn’t tell TULAVI or TUIAVIL close enough aye?
But could I blame them they’d never seen a Samoan name.
So, like this isolated city, I too, felt somewhat lonely
And back I went to Aotearoa to see if it was homely
PART TWO: MIGRATION - AUSTRALIA TO NEW ZEALAND
I was 18 years old and at a loss for words
What did it mean to be Samoan?
“You don’t know what paifala is?”
I grew up on sausage sizzles and vegemite
Eating chop suey was an event
And I don’t mean to vent but
My mum had to pay rent
And the koko for our rice was twice the price spent anywhere that we went
So no, I didn’t know what paifala
And was it wrong I never knew?
Was it unsamoan to be raised true blue?
Am I less Samoan cause I hadn’t tried a food?
Same sized feet as my mum and yet I can’t fill her shoes because…
I’m a: Plastic Samoan
Fake Samoan
Doesn’t like seafood or fish cake Samoan
Un Samoan
Less Samoan
Has two or three puletasi dresses Samoan
Palagi Samoan
Untrue Samoan
Copes better in the heat Kangaroo Samoan
Suddenly ashamed Samoan
Embarrassed to identify as such
Cause what I knew of my culture turned out to be... well, not much...
So, there I was again, the minority.
Letting the majority have this authority
To make me feel an inferiority
Cutting me up, correcting and testing me orally
I thought this should feel like home
But alone, I felt again
Too shy to siva, especially in front of my Samoan friends
Cause maybe my hands might seem ungraceful
Maybe I couldn’t dance with appropriate facials
Unfaithful, I prayed till the sea fell from my eyes
I used to think God gave me some sort of disguise
With my Samoan face and beautiful brown skin
Yet in this foreign place I wonder of my Samoan within
I had left the Indian Ocean behind,
Said my goodbye to the hot sand that was fine,
Crossed the country, left behind the last 18 years of my life
To learn of you, Samoa.
My effort to know you, Samoa.
Like my ancestors traded, I traded my life
And in this one Earth God created
we were separated by a serrated knife
And now we were worlds apart—seas apart
PART THREE: A CONCLUSION OF SELF ACCEPTANCE
But maybe my longing to be with you has no need to exist
For you are the very blood that runs through my veins
The very cells of my brain, my name the reason there is only me and no one else the same
My sacred centre. Who am I without you?
“O Le tagata ma lona Fa’asinomaga”
All my life I wondered of you
Wondered what it meant to be like you
“E lele le toloa ae ma’au lava i le vai”
But wherever the duck flies, it always returns to the water
Like how wherever I travel I will always be your daughter
As the Arctic Tern leaves her home maybe never to return
She will always be known as Arctic
I thought I knew you well but after all I see there’s still a lot to learn
Throughout my flight I’ve felt your ocean breeze and your summer sun that burns
The world has told me how to look like you but like your waters it is clear now
Your crashing waves have beat my ear drums and suddenly I hear now
My Sacred Centre, my Samoa
You are small, yet you are vast
And at last I’ve reached your sea
Finally, I see your face,
And your water reflects me