Written by Jack Scanlan, Massey University

I wasn’t aware of The Mana Moana Experience until my Doctoral Supervisor, Associate Professor Tracie Mafile’o at Massey University suggested it to me last year (“I was thinking you might want to be a part of a Pasifika leadership programme”). At the time, I struggled with my studies, unsure of the my career direction and trying to balance life as a husband and father. I was struggling for a while with writer’s block, unable to string together coherent sentences for my thesis. I sat on the application contemplating, on top of everything else in my life and with COVID, if this was something I wanted to pursue.

I applied so that I could tick a box, not thinking it would go anywhere. I was interviewed, and to my surprise, I was selected. This was my second blessing for 2021 as I had just started my dream job for Massey University as a social work lecturer, and surprise surprise, Associate Professor Kieran O’Donoghue (Head of School – School of Social Work), gave me the green light.

At Retreat One – Va Tūpuna: Remembering, you meet other Pasifika leaders and learn of their journeys. I thought to myself: even Ashley Bloomfield would be impressed! Then your voyage begins with Pasifika navigational references, drummed in by the 2020 Alumni to be prepared for the rough seas that lie ahead. Listening to tales of the Moana, I can hear my family and friends saying that I don’t do anything vaka related as I get seasick!

A reflection from a fellow participant struck a particular chord in me: He recalled the story of the song Tofa my Feleni sung by one’s aiga before the ship leaves Apia Harbour destined for Aotearoa, New Zealand, never to return. Straight away, it made me think of my late mother, who left Samoa as a teen bound for New Zealand. Not only did she leave her aiga, but she left her identity as she was once known as Ululaau in Samoa, only to come to New Zealand and be referred to as Margaret.

On the surface and to others, I honoured my late mother by naming my doctoral research “Ululaau”. Yet, there was something still missing. It wasn’t until a reflection exercise where we were given a few minutes to compose something in one’s writing journal that it struck me. I have never thought of myself as a poet, but here’s what I imagined:

Tofa my Feleni

Dear Jack,

You don’t know me, but I have known you your whole life.

I have reached out to you many times, but you have denied my existence.

I am you; you are me. I am your inner soul waiting to be your outer soul.

I come to you in your sleep, in songs, in food, in smell, and you sense my presence.

I am no longer your voice of shame but your voice of strength.

We connected when you were younger, and you embraced me much like the warm hug of your mum in her embrace and in her words.

So, I have come back to you, Jack, on day three of connecting with who you are. And I see you have invited me to meet other souls who, like me, lay dormant waiting to erupt not with anger, bitterness or sadness, but with joy, forgiveness and discovery.

So, prepare yourself, Jack, take your sea leg medication because the sickness you feel is not the motion-sickness of the physical but the healing of the new you, spurred on by presence by the thousands of ancestors before you.

Tofa My Feleni