This year’s Tuvalu Language Week speaks to me of my dad. He came to New Zealand for a better future, but always held strong to his identity, culture and language. I remember as a child asking what the word he wrote in the front of the Tuvalu bible for me meant: Taumafai.
He left the warm shores of Samoa where he’d been working to follow his heart. A New Zealand nurse he’d met there and the dream for his yet unborn children to have a better future.
Fakaakoigina tou iloga kae tukeli ke magoi mote ataeao. Embracing our culture and a more secure, vibrant future.
My dad took his culture and identity with him to the bitter cold dawn of Dunedin frosts. His Scottish and English in-laws had never met a Tuvaluan, let alone a Pasifika man in the early 1970s. He joined the inner city First Church of Otago as an elder and lay preacher in the Samoan speaking Service. He knew how important language was for the small group of Otago University scholarship students from Tuvalu, and helped start a language service for them. We were a tiny group sitting in the large towering and Victorian like church, but our hymns were sung, our language spoken.
I watched my dad as an avid supporter of the arts, a voice for his people in the 1980s on the Council for Maori and South Pacific Arts. He later supported language programmes at Reverend Laumua Kofe’s home with Vaeluaga Iosefa, the Fa’atoese family and other Tuvalu families attending. In the early 1990s, we joined a multi-cultural festival in the Town Hall, our small Tuvalu community dancing the fatele in this space, proudly saying we are here.
My dad taught me to stand proud in my culture and identity. To take it with me wherever I go, no matter how few of us were in the room.
Today, I hear his words speaking in Tuvalu to me. Taumafai. Words he repeated throughout my life no matter the size of the challenge ahead of me. Taumafai.
Fakaakoigina tou iloga kae tukeli ke magoi mote ataeao.
I wish you a wonderful language week as we celebrate our language, identity and culture in Aotearoa. No matter where you are in your journey, I want to encourage you too to keep trying and not give up. Taumafai.
Top image: Jayne King (right) and Malama (left) with her dad, Reverend Maheu Papau at the Museum's Tuvalu Community Day.
Bottom image: Malama's dad, Reverend Maheu Papau.