Growing up, the only thing I really knew about being Samoan was that my parents spoke a different language to each other than the one they spoke to us and that ie lavalavas are great to wear on hot days, but only at the beach or in the privacy of your own home.
Because we lived on other Pacific Islands, I didn't look all that different from most of the kids at school, so the topic of my heritage rarely ever came up except when I had to tick my ethnicity on forms, or when I wanted people to associate me with famous Samoans...
The Rock is hot.
Yeah man, he's my cousin.
Shut up!
No for reals! Cause I'm Samoan. Go ask my mom...
Then in my last couple years of high school, we moved to New Zealand. My jaw just about dropped when I started at my South Auckland school and the kids were not only giants (<== completely off topic, I'll tell you about that later) but they also knew enough of my parents' language to cuss each other out and have loud, angel-faced backstab sessions in the full presence of our oblivious Palagi teachers.
I was even more shocked to find out later that most of these kids were born and raised not in Samoa, but in New Zealand... so after I had my obligatory, melodramatic, teenage whinge to my long-suffering parents about how SSOOO unfair it was that we speak English at home, I made a decision that I was gonna decipher for myself the enigma of the Samoan language.
I'm still far from a fluent speaker now, but I have made a lot of progress in the hundred or so years since that day. I went from bugging my mother for the Samoan translations of 'window' or 'chair'... to correctly spelling common swear words in the illegal notes I passed in class... to stringing together simple sentences that actually made sense...
...well, enough so that my very impatient grandmother finally stopped turning to whoever else was in the room in order to snap, 'O lea laga kala lea kau fai mai?!' (What's she trying to say to me?!)
And then I started reading the Samoan newspapers that were always around the house. That was a revelation. I learned that we don't go around picking up 'akauka', but rather 'okaoka' (rubbish)... and when someone inhales their food and chokes on a chicken bone, it's not cause he was eating 'fa'akokovale' but rather 'fa'aatuatuvale'.
More importantly, though, I began to have conversations with people about the stories I was reading in the papers. The fatal shooting of a government minister in Samoa lead to an in-depth discussion about justice in the islands...
But that's just corrupt, Uncle.
Corruption is a Palagi idea. This is the Samoan way of doing things.
New Zealand's one-time offer of Amnesty for Samoan overstayers set my auntie off on a rant about how, thanks to something that happened back in the day ('50s? '60s?), Samoans should rightfully be entitled to automatic citizenship here.
And, there's this funny thing that Samoan writers do when they mention people in their stories: they'll devote like an entire paragraph to acknowledging the person's village and connections to chief titles and land. My questions about that led to a fascinating conversation with my favourite matai cousin about fa'alupega and general Samoan protocol.
I soon found that my quest for knowledge wasn't just about the language anymore. I WANT to know everything, now... all the stories, the history, the legends and customs, attitudes and influences that waft and gel together to create the phenomenon of the Samoan experience - well, mine anyway.
And the journey continues here...
...in this, the instruction manual for how to be Samoan Like Me.
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