Coming to America...or Am I? Part 1

I'M HERE!

(Where exactly is here?) 

If we could edit each other's dreams, what would we change?

Well, that was a pretty ominous epigraph. It's making me want to write some kind of poem. 

Alright, so...I caught my first ever flight to Honolulu on a hot Friday afternoon. Sweat was in my hair, on my neck, even on my memory-deprived OPPO A3 phone. I had no time to reflect too deeply on anything. To appreciate that I was going somewhere I had never been before. I had a few moments whilst packing. I slipped my mum, dad and grandma's memorial pins into my makeup case. One can't be too sentimental when one has a big trip to the Free World coming up. 

The six hour flight from Samoa to Hawaii was by no means the longest or most stressful I have ever experienced. Remember, I endured the world's fourth longest flight (17 hours, whew!) twice in the space of, like, five days last year. But...I was still a little anxious when the cloud pockets started moving us around as we approached the Northern Pacific. One thing I immediately figured out is that there's a lot of turbulence around the Hawaiian archipelago. I would experience heaps more of it, flying out to D.C, and even leaving, towards Fiji. 

On the flight, I was seated next to one of my soon-to-be RPIL colleagues from Fiji. Ironically, she would end up being my roommate during our D.C field immersion. Life is cool like that, I reckon. Halfway through the plane ride, she asked if we could switch seats. This gave me her window seat, and I was so so soooo excited because I could now take a video of us landing in Hawaii. The beautiful ocean, The tops of palm trees. The...people. 

Ah, but all dreams must die. Mine did, quickly and quite hilariously. As we touched down in Honolulu, it was drizzling, the turbulence had made us tired, and...I could not see a THING! Just, nil. There were the usual orangey-red lights on the wings of the airplane as we descended, and I could just about make out the shapes of buildings in the nighttime haze. But that was it! I'm ashamed to admit (but I have to- won't learn if I don't) that I had for so, SO long ascribed to the colonizer's gaze. You know, Pina Coladas and alo'a shirts...It's pretty stupid, really. I'm Samoan, for heaven's sake. We have so many of the same darn problems. In the first week of our fellowship, we learned that any person from a colony or former colony inherits a colonial legacy. That often includes the colonizer's worldview, wherein native people are "subjects and objects" (a former boss of mine once gave us that wording as she tried to describe this phenomenon). We allow ourselves to be subjected and objectified, before (sometimes unknowingly) subjecting other indigenous people to this brand of objectification. 

Very quickly, I established that neither Hawaii nor this fellowship was here to play. Someone once wrote that when she was getting her malu tattoo, she wanted to look at the tufuga before the actual process started. She wanted to ascertain that he meant her "pain". That he was going to test her physical endurance and mental fortitude. I took one look at the graffiti in the last tunnel we passed through as we drove to Manoa Valley, and knew that this place and its people had weathered centuries of pain and suffering. I knew I would not leave here without having seen and felt it too, even in the smallest possible measure. 

READING RECOMMENDATIONS :)

💭 Every few blog entries, I'll recommend two books from my reading list. I'm a very eccentric reader, so I'll post everything from historical fiction to homicidal manifestos.  

1.

"...the minority must posses their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression."-  Thomas Jefferson

I know, I know...why ON EARTH am I promoting a collation of speeches by dead American presidents?❓ 

Well: why on Earth NOT? 

I'll say of my decision to promote this, only this: give the men in this book, the founders of what can still be a beacon of democracy and economic growth, a chance. American politics is currently at a strange and interesting crux: it makes us nervous but also it's our favorite joke on TikTok and Instagram. I was never really keen on it myself, no thanks to tRuMp and his...just everything he does, really! HOWEVER, after my Capitol Hill meetings and tour in May, I wandered into the Visitor's Center gift shop where I stumbled upon this gem of a book.  In its pages, and in words that are older than my great-grandfather from whom my surname comes, I have found so much wisdom, hope, and encouragement that I can't help but be inspired. Maybe, just maybe, you will too. 

P.S. read it slowly. The syntax in here is something else!

2. 

"...how can you be a teenager when you is only 12?"- Bette Greene

Oh, man! Where do I even begin? 

I myself was only about twelve when I read this and if I can be really honest with all you random strangers on the internet, I found it kinda romantic. This sounds like a scenario straight out of one of my final year Lit papers, 'Awkward Books', where we talked about censorship and 'morality'. It was one of those courses that would just answer all your questions with more questions. 

If you're into historical fiction that's more on the Y/A forbidden romance side, this might be for you. Be warned, though: the age gap between the protagonists is about ten years. You do the math, and you figure out what works for your own moral compass. 

Note: This book is a challenged/ banned list one. Take up the challenge of reading it, and see why. 

in the interim

in the interim: what happens here? 

"It's the in-between..(where) you can become invisible."- K.W

That's Chicago, from several thousand feet in the air, on a United Airlines flight from the mainland to Hawaii.

I love to travel but hate traveling. Planes are a hassle, you know? All this notwithstanding, I got on a six hour flight from Upolu to O'ahu a few weeks after my mum's funeral. Zero time was spent processing anything - I just went for it. 

Back in January, I was selected for the Resilient Pacific Islands Leaders Fellowship. It's an initiative of the East-West Center, implemented by the Pacific Islands Development Program and hosted at the University of Hawaii. It was a lot of luck, I think, but also good timing. My mum was so excited when I told her, and I'm very glad she at least knew I was about to embark on my first fellowship, before she passed on. She knew I was going to be okay. Mostly. Hah. 

I haven't written anything in here for about five months. What can I say? I've been living and doing and being. It's kind of ridiculous that half a year has already flown by. I've been feeling as though l've been living in some sort of transitional, interim period. I've developed a whole new routine. My house has transformed into a new space altogether - one absent of my mother's mince pasta on Sundays and her sun-dried laundry on Tuesdays. My cousin Samkeyes has come to live with me. According to our Samoan culture, it would be negligent of my extended family to let me live alone (a.k.a independently 😂). I've always had a very great sense of self-sufficiency. I've had to- I took care of both my parents and have paid all the bills since I turned twenty-one. BUT, and I never thought I'd say this, it's been the BEST thing ever having my cousin over. He's got my dad's amazing cooking skills, my mum's love of clean clothes, and our grandmother's storytelling (☕ tea-spilling?) propensity. Having family members is actually wonderful. It's one of those things we don't often take time to truly marvel at. In this chapter of my story I AM (finally) GRATEFUL to be part of a big extended family. Of course, as with all extended families, there'll always be specific people I gel better with than others. And yes- there are some that I still don't see eye -to-eye with. But that's life. A family is essentially a basic social unit. Probably the most basic one there is. Social units are comprised of humans and humans have flaws. Right now, I'm just trying to live the happiest way I know how: simply, honestly, and kindly. What have I learned in this interim? That first and foremost, it's important to be kind to myself. I can show up better for my loved ones, and love them better too, if I love myself. 

I've started reading again- this month's task is to complete Kevin Kwan's sugar-sweet Sex and Vanity. It's my first time reading a contemporary rom-com. I'm both proud and ashamed of that. My reading list is so vast and I've only just found the...COURAGE to venture into this gem of a genre. I'm very pragmatic. And cynical. BUT THIS- wow! It's turning out to be just what I need right now. 

I'll write more about Manoa Valley, all the cute guys I saw, and all the amazing food I had in Hawaii, in my next post. Did that sentence sound vapid? I'm glad. I'm learning, also, to stop taking myself so seriously these days. 

What Do We Say to These Things?

When All Is Said and Done

"Oh Lord, You Know, I'm tired."

This is a blog post full of recycled sentiments. Studded memories. Sentences that don't start. Or end. 

Last week I lost my mum. 

It feels so weird typing that out. She was just here a few days ago, listening to me read some of my old entries out loud. Telling me even the lackluster ones were great. Just being a mum. 

I'm not a caregiver anymore. Caregiving has been a definitive part of my life for so many years. Hospital pharmacy. ER. Ward. Operating Theater. Outpatient clinic. Back and forth, over and over. One of my favorite poets once wrote that repeated things become welts. It's the friction on your knees from too much praying. Or your back hurts from sitting on a cold floor for too many days. 

I'm using for this entry the same quote I used for the previous one. I am tired but I don't know what of. I was tired when there was so much to do and now I am tired when there is nothing to do. No one to wake up every two hours and check on. What am I going to do with all this freedom?

Here's a list of stuff I've been considering:

1. Turn into a mermaid

2. Finish my MA Thesis

3. Go on a blind date. Or any date at all, really. I couldn't date much when I was in the hospital half the time and in my office the other half of that time. 

4. Become a TikToker. Someone told me I should do makeup tutorials or something. In this heat? I have NO tips for ya'll. Just use Matte, please. Only thing that doesn't start running like water off your face after three seconds in the sun. 

5. Enter a beauty pageant...lol. Fat chance. Those are fricken scary if you have anxiety!

6. Get married. Again, another difficult proposition. My finances aren't consenting to THAT right now. Probably won't for the next ten or fifteen years. 

The funeral is in two days and I am trying to tie myself together. Like shoe laces, I think I'll finally master the art of BEING amidst this loss, when all is said and done, and everything has folded back into some kind of normality. Did I tell you guys I only learned to tie my own laces at seventeen? And quite by accident, whilst recalling a Spongebob song called, "Loop-dee-loop and pull"? Yeah. But you never forget those kinds of life skills. Walk in your new shoes a few days, months, years, and you'll get to where you're supposed to be next. It just may hurt a little in the adjustment phase. 

New Year, New...Hair?

"I Got My Hair Straightened", and other Ways to Say the Media Wins This Round

CONTENT/ TRIGGER WARNING: Mentions of racism, colonialism, sexism and mental health issues 

"I am not your expectations."- India Arie

Well, it's 2024! 

Five days into the new year and I am thinking about new beginnings. A new beginning can be as vague and non-dramatic as changing your usual alarm time from 6:40am to 6:45am. Or, in my case, it can be as chemically charged and appearance-altering as permanently straightening your signature long, frizzy, thick hair. Yes. I am that overly concerned person when it comes to my hair, skin, clothes and really anything that is part of-or comes in direct contact with- my body. Someone once told me flesh is a prison, and we are all prisoners. If that's true, I want to decorate my cell with things that make me feel good. Or at least, make me feel less bad. The world is a negative enough place already. Call me vain or conceited, but human bodies are politicized structures and spaces. This is particularly true of human cis-gendered female bodies of colour. We are politicized from the moment we are born. As a person who, since birth, has ticked 'yes!' to several of these so-called 'minority' criterions, I think about my physicality a hell of a lot. How can I not. We are reminded, every day of our lives, even in the most subtle ways, that we are 'other' and 'alternative'. Never the default. 'Political' is only an umbrella term. There are subsections to this 'otherness'. Colonialism, imperialism, colourism, classism, sexism (specifically, misogyny). 

Why did I straighten my hair? To make it more manageable. A simple enough reason. To me, a good enough one. And yet, as with most things in our communal Pacific societies, I had to answer a few questions from people who wanted to know whether my decision was a 'statement'. And by that, some of them meant to ask, have I given up 'the fight'? The fight, of course, is the 'resistance' that our region must put up in order to continue decolonizing our minds, bodies and natural environments. It is not unlike the resistance that formerly colonized peoples of colour everywhere have had to put up, and continue putting up, even decades after the end of political colonization. For women of colour who have textured hair, keeping that hair in its natural state is often regarded as an important part of resistance. We are, after all, resisting the editing, whitewashing and otherwise 'altering' of us into anglicized forms that comply with the dominant majority's perceptions of beauty and worthiness. 

I don't consider the questions about my 'new' hair to be nosy, or overly inquisitive. I welcome them. They give me a chance to do something that I have always felt should also be an important part of 'the fight'- to speak FOR MYSELF, AS MYSELF. It is my belief that the constant over- homogenization of entire, distinct racial and ethnic groups drowns out the voices of the individual HUMAN BEINGS within them. It is yet another colonial ploy to keep us small and voiceless. We will never win that way. 

And so...this is my answer. I 'changed' my hair because I wanted to. Because I'm busy and don't have three hours every morning to comb and brush and moisturize and wash and dry and gel and style my hair. I have less migraines now that my hair is lighter, and I don't have to go around everyday with so much moisture (conditioner AND shampoo) on my head. My hair smelled bad (fact!) and often felt bad too. I made a decision that gave me an easier, happier, less expensive life. It is MY decision, for my body, and it has served me the way I had hoped it would. If THAT is not resistance, I don't know what is. 

I Was in a Musical about Silence, Part II

What Does Silence Sound Like?

"Oh Lord, You Know, I'm tired."

Is there anything louder than silence? 

That is the question we set out to answer as we stepped onto the stage at the Ministry of Education, Sports and Culture's Arts and Culture Center on Wednesday, December 6th 2023. I remember vividly the bright harshness of the spotlight as it illuminated our first scene, 'School Choir', against a blue-dark auditorium. I'll never stop being in awe of how stage and theater performers weave magic into the atmosphere, right before "a thousand eyes", as Sia once sang. Said audience was, that day, a mix of bubbly teenagers and thoughtful, maybe slightly cynical, adults. And why shouldn't they have been? We were bringing to stage a locally produced, locally directed showcase that was going to do the still-difficult work of opening up conversations about Intimate Partner Violence and Domestic Violence. Of weaving words and music into the spaces where silence belies the existence of such nuances as mental abuse, microaggressions and unexpressed psychological trauma.

The magic of Performing Arts is felt not only by the audience. We as a cast experienced it too, in a very real way that gave us strength and agility, maybe even more than we had during the dress rehearsal the previous day. From Eseta and Benjamin's melancholic opening dance, 'Tired', to my brother's narration of performance poet Ioane Otineru's post-colonial ode to gender disparities in Samoa, everyone felt strong and so performed STRONG. Our first review, by pioneering Samoan performance poet and novelist Sia Figiel, commended the "physical and emotional strength (as well as the) conviction and confidence" with which the production was presented.

When I stepped on stage to perform my first piece, 'Ode to She Who Held Up the World', I felt a power and urgency that pushed me to remember every single word. It also encouraged me to give our audience the full gamut of all the many, MANY emotions that I feel about generational silences and the way religion, economics and culture weave a 'quilt' of trauma around so many mother-daughter relationships. I thought of my Samoan grandmother- herself a mother to three daughters and a grandmother as well as great-grandmother to many more. It was not until she was gone that I learned she had always dreamed of doing the very thing I was now blessed to be doing: writing for and performing on stage. It made me sad and it made me angry and somewhere between the two, I found a new kind of strength. My main emotion 'generator' has always been sense memory, so I thought of my father when I sang those words, ua fa'afetai Iesu, Lou alofa, ua e aumai mo matou nei ni tina. Really good art forces the artist to look within themselves and find truth, or at least, meaning. When a thing means something, we feel it. And when we feel it, the art has done its job. It is successful. It is a nice song or a good book or a funny movie.

I am not a dancer (not in public, at least 😂). Dance is on my bucket list of 'talents' that I want to somehow manifest myself into having. For this reason- but also because dance is beautiful- I have a very focused way of watching people when they dance. Samoa Performing Arts and Creative Excellence (S.P.A.C.E) produces some of the most magnificent, genre-bending dances Samoa has ever seen. Their storytelling is articulate to the point where words would only serve to misconstrue and spoil what is already perfectly clear and heavily palpable. Of all the things I love about S.P.A.C.E, one of the main ones is the willingness of their director, the brilliant Valentino Maliko, to let new and aspiring dancers join and also to work closely with them. Alofau Rile, my auspicious and highly ambitious student, had a late-night epiphany and decided he wanted to be part of the dances too. That they gave him the space and support to find his footing and leap into success is testament to how the right people in the right place can make dreams come true. Benjamin, Grace, Elisapeta, Eseta, Alofau and Tamiana all have unique ways of moving and feeling the beats and rhythms. They are, after all, individuals. No two people will dance the same dance to the same song in exactly the same way. I noticed this immediately in the all-male number, set to Hozier's 'Take Me to Church'. Where Tamiana's hand movements are strong and well-defined, Alofau's are graceful and fluid, whilst Benjamin's are swift and bouncy, with a hint of wit and gentle humor.

Even our poetry readings and recitations brought with them the unique personalities of each poet. Where Sia Figiel described my style as "commanding", she emphasized that Krystal's piece was "dexterous" and complementary to it. Lars, a rapper, brought in bars that hurled the message of SHE IS NOT YOUR REHAB at an eager audience who caught every rhyme and line. I think about it now as, many different voices amplify a common cause and help achieve a common goal. Our strength is in our differences.

Like any live performance, there were a few funny moments. Music queued at the wrong time, some wardrobe malfunctions, I even forgot my plain black tee in the morning rush and had to turn my 'HUSH' cast t-shirt inside-out for my narrations. But the combined good work ethic and high levels of trust between cast and crew put on what I know was a great show. And the reviews have all been stellar! (Also, people wanna buy t-shirts of us, so I'm guessing we looked good too, lol).

We've just wrapped filming our musical, something that I will talk about in a later post. For now, I am grateful, and I feel HEARD. The story has been told, and now, it is up to those who listened to live it, learn from it and pass it on. Also, someone said we should go on tour...

The cast of 'HUSH: The Musical' with directors: 

L-R: FRONT ROW- Benjamin Lelevaga (dancer, chorus member [tenor])Tamiana Olano (dancer, chorus member [tenor]), Lars Gustaf Bell (rapper/ narrator) 

CENTER- Maluseu Doris Tulifau (producer/ director/writer), Eseta Corrine Uili (dancer, chorus member [soprano]), Yvette Alalatoa (producer/director/writer), Abbey Tofamamao Heather (chorus lead singer, actress ['the Teacher], singer (soloist, 'Rise Up'), Krystal Elizabeth Juffa (singer [duet], chorus member [soprano], actress ['Toxic Girlfriend'], performance poet/narrator, writer), Grace Pauga Greed (chorus member [soprano], dancer, actress [' Silent Mother']), Jasmine Koria (chorus member [alto], writer, performance poet/narrator, singer [soloist, song as part of monologue, 'Ua Fa'afetai Iesu Lou Alofa']), Nathan Sam Pomare (chorus member [tenor], actor ['Toxic Boyfriend'], singer [duet])Valentino Maliko (director, choreographer, musical arrangements)

BACK ROW- Brown Girl Woke Representative (name not provided), Elisapeta Fepulea'i (dancer, chorus member [alto], actress ['Questioning Daughter']), Alofau Rile (dancer, writer, chorus member [tenor]), Daniel Koria (narrator, writer, text editor)

 NOT PRESENT- Ioane Otineru (writer)

I Was In A Musical about Silence, PART I

HUSH, and other Sounds

The beginnings of HUSH: The Musical

Starring: Nathan Sam Pomare, Krystal Elizabeth Juffa, Jasmine Koria, Daniel Koria, Tamiana Olano, Alofau Rile, Benjamin Lelevaga, Grace Pauga Greed, Elisapeta Fepulea'i, Abbey Tofamamao Heather, Eseta Corrine Uili, and Lars Gustaf Bell 

The Official Poster for HUSH: The Musical (2023).

Two weeks ago I was in my first-ever musical. The work was a collaborative production of Brown Girl Woke, Samoa Performing Arts and Creative Excellence (S.P.A.C.E), the United Nations Education, Social and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the Ministry of Education, Sports and Culture (MESC). I was a writer, vocalist and narrator/performance poet in the show. Busy does not even begin to describe this season of my life. 

At our first writing session, we, the writing team, threw around several onomatopoeic words and phrases. We knew right from the beginning that we wanted the narrative to have a poetic, lyrical flow. Think, ocean waves and sandy sea breezes. The focus of our work was to be IPV (intimate partner violence) and DV (domestic violence), and the way in which silence both perpetuates and prolongs these societal woes. We talked about the sound 'shhh' that is often heard when a child talks too loudly. 'Shh' is a very interesting expression- it can also be used to menacingly get someone's attention, or to jokingly brush off someone's attention. For some reason, as we all sat around the table making the 'shh' sound, the word 'HUSH' came to my mind. I blurted out, 'Shh sounds like HUSH!"...and everyone thankfully indulged my idea (lol). Thus, the musical got its name. And the serious work of drafting scenes, sequences, choosing songs and arranging the cast list began. 

One of the things I am most thankful for is that I starred in my first musical under amazing direction. Brown Girl Woke's Doris Tulifau and Yvette Alalatoa, and S.P.A.C.E's Valentino Maliko were an absolute dream to work for. They were visionary, perceptive, creative and super accommodating of our cast's different schedules (and personalities!). Directing and producing a musical in the developing Pacific is very different from running a show in, say, Auckland or Sydney. For one thing, you will most likely be working with artists whose 'art' is but a part-time or spare-time endeavor. Most people- especially young people- in our part of the world cannot afford to do their craft full time. The majority of our cast, and even the directors themselves, has full-time work and study schedules PLUS a myriad of family and community obligations that we had to very carefully work around. Then, of course, there were the usual setbacks like illness and bad weather. I should know...I had a bad episode of vertigo mid-week, two weeks before the show opened. I literally woke up in the E.R (fun times!) with a nurse (who happened to be a former student of mine!) telling me I had low blood pressure. Side note, I could barely talk but was so bloody proud to see my student living out the full fruition of his dream! Yay for Pacific success :)

Something I'll never forget is the human compassion and kindness that our directing team extended. They wanted the show to be a success, yes, but they also cared deeply about the health and well-being of their performers. I got the rest of the week off and they checked in on me constantly. Dream work environment, if ever there was one!

The final cast was a twelve-member ensemble. We were all versatile performers, the majority of us being able to sing, dance, write AND act. The Pacific is brimming with talent, but still lacks opportunity. Just before opening day, my brother arrived from Melbourne for his usual end-of-year holiday. He's an amazing performance poet, writer and rapper, so of course I kinda-sorta talked him into joining us. Yes, Samoa is THAT small-you and your entire family be in a play together before you know it 😂 

As a cast, we got on GREAT. Everyone was super supportive- there is nothing quite like knowing your co-workers are truly, genuinely rooting for you. If I had to attribute our success to any one single thing, it'd definitely be this. We had a lot of laughs, and a ton of great conversations about everything from where we grew up to how to become TikTok famous. Remember when Nelly sang "we started as strangers, now we leavin' as brothers'? Yeah. This was the vibe. We worked long nights sometimes, plus there was the general exhaustion and of course, for us narrators, a couple of slip-ups and forgetting lines. But we worked through it, and an absolute gem of a lesson that I have learned from this experience is that PEOPLE make all the difference. You can have the most high-tech, state-of-the-art facilities or the biggest budget in the world. An unsupportive team holds everyone back. I'm so blessed, so grateful, that this was not our case. We were a team in that cliche but important way: together, everyone achieve(d) more. Thanks team!

(to be continued...)