He Who Rallies In My Hour of Need; Samoa Head of State on Why We Laugh In Dark Times

Do you notice how Pacific people, even in tragedy, find a way to laugh in the midst of sorrow? We’re used to  laughing at ourselves in the midst of any crisis.  It has helped us cope with tragedy, with loss, and the  bad things that happen in life.  Still, seeing survivors laughing was a sight that surprised mainstream journalists who reported on  Samoa, Niuatoputapu and American Samoa after Tuesday 29th September this year. They were taken aback . Judging by their reaction on camera, they did not expect that our people could still find reasons to laugh in their darkest hour.

In this weekly post on the writings of Samoa’s Head of State, Tui Atua talks about the vital role of humour in the lives of Pacific people.

O le e lave i tiga, ole ivi, le toto, ma le aano

He who rallies in my hour of need is my kin

Tui Atua Tupua Tamasese Ta’isi Efi
Head of State of the Independent State of Samoa

New Zealand Families Commission Pasifika Families’ Fono
3 November 2009
This address is dedicated to the victims of the 2009 Tonga and Samoa Tsunami

Excerpt of Keynote Address

When I think of the idea of family, I think of the relationships of kin and belonging and of the ties that sustain us as social and spiritual beings. As I have said elsewhere,

“I am not an individual; I am an integral part of the cosmos. I share divinity with my ancestors, the land, the seas and the skies. I am not an individual, because I share my tofi (an inheritance) with my family, my village and my nation. I belong to my family and my family belongs to me. I belong to my village and my village belongs to me. I belong to my nation and my nation belongs to me. This is the essence of my belonging”.

…..

When I say that I am not an individual, I do not mean that my individual happiness is not important. The ideals of family in the Samoan context are shaped by respect for each person’s mental, physical, social and spiritual wellbeing. It is the responsibility of the family, especially the heads of families, to make sure that each person in the family is happy.

In my Samoan indigenous reference, each member of the family has an inheritance, including individual gifts and talents that are bestowed from God, nurtured within the family and shared with the community. Individual talents are used for the benefit of the whole. Ensuring that the good of the whole is always just requires competent and vigilant family heads, capable of commanding authority or pule on the one hand, and demonstrating grace and personal integrity on the other.

When preparing for this address I kept thinking about what it is that holds families together and keeps them well despite the turbulences of life? How have the values of a Samoan family survived such turbulences? How have we named and captured these values? How do we celebrate the joys of family? How do we cope with its challenges, paradoxes, ironies and riddles?
Sometimes the best way to provide an answer to hard questions is by telling a story.

…..

Humour as coping mechanism

In the Pacific context humour is often used to deflect, if only for a moment, the deadening weight of pain or rejection. In the opening quote of this text, I stated that I am not an individual because I share divinity with my ancestors, the land, the seas and the skies. For indigenous Samoans the sea is kin. For those who lived near the sea before the tsunami, the sea was their friend, their provider; it was family. The trauma of the tsunami was not only felt in terms of the devastation impacted by a life-threatening force, but also in terms of the pain of being rejected and chastised by kin.

In dealing with family trauma humour offers natural relief. The ability to laugh at one-self is healthy. This applies whatever the crisis. Status and social stigma take on fresh meaning when viewed from different front seats.

In a story told by and involving a catechist – a Catholic feasoasoni – the idiosyncrasies of Samoan humour as coping mechanism is exposed. Taking full advantage of the opportunity to make a point to his wife, a very large Samoan woman, the feasoasoani becomes infectiously alive as he forgivingly exaggerates his story; delighting all in his audience, except of course his wife. The feasoasoani shares that in seeing the wave coming towards him he runs for his life, as he passes his house he sees his wife, he turns and nonchalantly says to her, as if going on an ordinary run, ‘fa’ [see you]. He then climbs up a nearby breadfruit tree and looks back towards her, she is now screaming at him to come and help her. Clinging onto his breadfruit tree trunk, he calls out to her, ‘pii mau [hold on tight]’.

Then he see’s the highest ranked chief in his village, Ale, being swirled around by the wave, he looks over at him and waves to him. He yells, ‘fa, Ale’ [good-bye Ale]. There is insight here not only into how our people are coping with the trauma of what they experienced, but also how they make their points about social roles and status and poke fun at the fragilities of our humanity.

When such natural disasters take place, worrying about social etiquette just seems silly. In sharing stories, a group of men told of how the wave took one of them, twisting and twirling him towards the sky. In the process this man, who is of significant status and mana in his village, lost the lavalava or sarong he was wearing and that morning he did not have any undergarments. In an uproar of laughter they explained how two of them were below, looking up at their chief swirling around in the sky, naked from his waist down, his private parts fully exposed and dancing all on their own – one part going one way, the other parts going another. In those moments one could not care less about the stigmas of society.

New times, new sources for family power and wealth, each create opportunity for shifting old or irrelevant norms and/or boundaries. Where Pacific household heads in the past could control and regulate change through stringent appeals to precedence, history, custom or tradition, today the forces of change are too great.

What Pacific household heads can do is to appeal to ideals and values, those that are life-affirming, love-affirming and faith-affirming.

This does not mean we deliberately ignore the depressing challenges, negative contradictions and recurring problems that also face many Pacific families.It means that hope for a positive way out is better generated when leadership approaches are based on strengths-based rather than deficit-based models.