Afterword
It is mid-summer in Aukilani, and the days are hot and dizzy with the crying of cicadas. In the mornings, if it is fine, Reina and I go out onto our lanai overlooking our small garden and backyard and hoist up the now ragged beach umbrella we brought back from Hawai’i in mid-2008 when we retired from the University of Hawai’i. Sitting in comfortable, padded beach chairs, we write or revise, edit or read, or just doze, sip green tea, have lunch, imagining we are still in Hawai’i where I enjoyed four of the happiest years of my life. Because I am a tropical person and in my seventies I enjoy the heat except when the humidity is high. The summer heat heals, thawing out my aches and pains, allowing my body to unclench and stretch out freely, to believe it is again young and capable of performing any physical activity.
At the start of summer, Reina planted the vegetable garden she cultivates every year: various herbs, rhubarb, three different types of lettuce, beetroot, potatoes, tomatoes and beans. Now only the tomatoes are left; we’ve eaten the rest. Bursting crimson, lush and tender and sweet, I love the tomatoes sliced and, placed on buttered slices of brown bread, sprinkled lightly with salt and pepper. Homegrown vegies always taste better than those you buy. Must have much to do with having planted and cared for them yourself.
One day during my third year at Leififi primary school, our Papālagi teacher – I think her name was Miss Briscoe and we all loved her – told us during a social studies lesson that Jacob Roggeveen, a Dutch explorer, had discovered Samoa in 1722. My imagination immediately gave brilliant birth to his magnificent, masted ship, breaking through the horizon in a blaze of sun, cloud and my breathless admiration. I considered Miss Briscoe’s revelation a radical addition to my understanding of our country and of myself; knowledge that made me re-look at everything. And I wanted our grandmother Mele – at that time the most influential person in my life – to know about it. So I rushed home after school and asked her:
“Did you know that a Dutch man by the name of Jacob Roggeveen discovered our country?”
Patiently, she asked, “Who told you that?”
“Our teacher”, I proudly divulged.
“Were we Samoans here before the papālagi came?” she replied, slow smile on her face.
“Yes”.
“Was this man Roggeveen a papālagi?’ Her scrutiny was now focused on my face fully, patiently, expectantly. “Where do Dutch people come from?” She helped me.
“Holland”, I replied, with the truth of the matter sliding into my vision and occupying it. “So he was a papālagi”, I admitted.
“So when you go to school tomorrow, tell your teacher that we discovered our country. Tell her we’ve been here for at least 3000 years”, she said.
Now I was on fire with pride in my ancestors’ achievements, prouder than I’d been about Roggeveen.
I was very fortunate to have had that lesson about decolonising ourselves, when I was very young. That set me off on a journey which continues today: of challenging colonial perceptions of us, our histories and our ways of life; of trying to understand how our ancestors viewed themselves, their environment and the cosmos; of trying to comprehend what has happened to us – both indigenous and introduced – in our contacts, intermingling and fusing, over the last few centuries. Most of my writing has been about that. I also know from my long friendship with Tui Atua that much of his journey has been similar.
Reina and I were invited, by Tui Atua, to a retreat to be held at the Head of State’s official residence at Vailele, a few miles outside Apia, from Friday, 15 January to Sunday, 17 January 2010. I’d never participated in a retreat before, and believed they were held mainly by Christian religious groups and focused on fasting. But knowing Tui Atua and because it was sub-titled “Sufiga and Ānapogi”, I expected this retreat to go beyond Christianity. We assembled at the residence – a large, impressive house and fale afolau surrounded by lush gardens, lawns and trees, at the edge of the sea overlooking Vailele harbour – late on Friday. Because of the short period allowed for the gathering, we fasted for only half a day until midnight. At midnight we heard, emerging out of the darkness about 200 yards away, the squealing of pe’a, the hooting of owls, the barking of dogs, the iao and ve’a calling and the manuali’i flying around. Then we saw coconut frond flares being lit and bursting into flames that illuminated the heads, shoulders and outlines of the men holding them, as they moved towards us, imitating the animals. They were uncanny, mysterious, and more so in the thick, balmy air. They were obviously calling the atua to come and meet them. The men sat in a circle about fifty yards from us and talked, whispered. Out of the darkness surrounding us pierced the hooting of an actual owl, then another, and then came the cutting squeeling of pe’a, the baying of dogs, and the crying of iao, ve’a and manuali’i. Then an owl, flashing with the light of the flares, swooped down from the towering banyan to our right and flew across our sight and up into the air and darkness. They seemed to say that they were with us.
Tui Atua explained that these rituals were known as fonomaaitu (literally, a conference with the spirits) and that they involved sufiga and ānapogi. Although the ritual the men had performed was not quite fonomaaitu – strictly speaking it was a sunset-to-sunrise ritual performed in silence – it was a profoundly evocative recreation. Its re-enactment was meant to underline the point that there is sacred equivalence between humans and animals and our environment. It was new to us and to the men of Tui Atua’s āiga who performed it.
The study and performance of such rituals requires sufiga – a process of the gentle negotiation of boundaries, values and beliefs. Best done as an evening ritual – ānapogi – when the mind and the body are relaxed and contemplative, and the channels for dialogue between God and soul are more open or less cluttered. There is sufiga also within the ‘ava ceremony.
Under the beach umbrella in Aukilani over the past few days, I have been re-reading the thirty-eight essays and poems which make up this book and reflecting on our Vailele Retreat and what we learned there of sufiga and ānapogi. I thought that after many previous readings, while the manuscript was being compiled, I would find the text familiar, without any more surprises. But this reading has again generated new ideas and other readings and reassessments about the central discussion of this book and of what we experienced and debated at the retreat. I am buoyed by its potential to trigger more soul-searching debate and reflection, beyond us.
Once again, let me view this book as an ocean-voyaging alia exploring our great Pacific, with Tui Atua as our wise and experienced Tautai (Captain), setting and navigating our course, with a younger generation as his assistant navigators, and manned by an inspired crew and passengers from many parts of the planet, each commentating and writing their versions of the voyage. The result of our voyage is this book, this compelling cargo of essays and poems, which we hope will feed and sufi the minds and hearts of those who read and voyage with it.
On behalf of the editorial team, I offer Tui Atua Tupua Tamasese Ta’isi Tupuola Tufuga Efi our congratulations and gratitude for setting the course and guiding our vessel to this point.
I carry willingly the heritage of my Dead
my children have yet to recognise theirs.
Someday before they leave our house
forever, I’ll tell them: “Our Dead
are the splendid robes our souls wear”.