Written by Edward (Ted) Pogai, K’aute Pasifika
Hindsight is always 20/20 and as I sit here and reflect on some of my learnings from retreat #1 I am reminded of the night before our retreat when with ukulele in hand, parents at the kitchen table, we were all singing the wonderful pesepese Tofa My Feleni. I was wanting the background story to this bygone anthem as I had just recently started an initiative at Wintec ‘Island Time, Island Style’ and was wanting to add this pesepese to our already growing repertoire of a Cook Island song Mou Piri, a Hawaiian song Aloha Oe (and next week we would be doing the Samoan song Tofa My Feleni). As I sat talking, singing and searching the story behind the pesepese my parents said that before the va’a lele (plane) arrived in Samoa international travel was mainly by va’a boat passenger ship. The passenger ship would stay beyond the reef in the deep ocean and the passengers would board small va’a from the wharf and paddle out to the big ship. The families of the passengers would come to the wharf and sing this song as they farwelled their loved ones on their voyage.
In my mind’s eye I could vividly see these events happening. I could feel the emotion of the moment when families would be there wishing, hoping, praying shedding tears for their departing loved ones. Hoping that they would make their destinations, to begin a better life for them and their island remaining families and especially for them not to forget where they came from as the lyrics sing “Oh I never will forget you”. Mum, Dad and I sang the song and tears rolled down their cheeks as they reflected the many times they sung this song to their families and loved ones as they watched them depart from the wharf and board the boat. My online research located only the 1st verse of the song but my dad began to sing a second verse. My mother remembered some words too and in a kind of reflective remembrance, ancestral intelligence kind of way they managed to piece some of the words together of verse 2 and 3. I searched online and discovered verse 2 and 3 and we began to sing those verses. Verses 2 and 3 speak to the pain of the heart in watching their loved ones leave but also of the hopes that they would ultimately succeed wherever their journey would take them and to be strong and true to their Samoan roots.
This is how I arrived at Retreat 1 (Va Tūpuna) of The Mana Moana Experience. I remember sharing how I arrived and that in a spiritual/metaphysical way I had been preparing for the Mana Moana voyage all my life and that the night before at mum and dad’s table my parents had traditionally sung me the song Tofa My Feleni as I symbolically paddled out to Mana Moana and began a voyage, a journey of self pacific discovery. In my minds eye, I could see myself leaving the safe shores of home, looking for an adventure, new learnings, growth and change and leaving behind the old me, the indoctrinated me, the colonial me, the me that has grown up in institutions that have and continues to reinforce systemic, cultural, colonial and racial structures that keep our people subjugated, indebted, dependent on the system working in positions of servitude for the greater good of the dominant culture. I was ready for change. I was ready for a new but old narrative. A narrative of power, of prowess, a narrative where our ‘Ancestral Intelligence’ was recognised as equal to if not better than the current dominant thinking and theories of today and boy did I find it in Va Tūpuna.
I end now how I began with a nod to the past. Tofa My Feleni, Goodbye my old self/friend whom I have left on the shores of the old world. An intention and discipline for the present. Welcome to the journeys of Self Pacific Discovery. Stay on course my new found friend, and re-collect what once was, but which has been lost for sometime, Ancestral Intelligence. Finally, a hope for the future - for it belongs to those courageous enough to look back and collect what is needed and discard what is not. May my generations yet to come collect and re-collect my gathered stories and Ancestral Intelligences and create their own pacific world views for a better future for them inspired by, in and through the Moana. This to me is the spirit of our tupuna the sacred Va’a of Retreat 1. “Oh I never will forget you, Samoa e ne’i galo atu, Goodbye I never will forget you, Samoa e ne’i galo atu. Tofa My Feleni.”