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

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