Ulamila
at a Wedding
I
feel uncomfortable instead of proud.
The
hard wooden stools in the Wesley Church in Lautoka, Fiji, make me ache for the
soft pandanus mats of my island home in Mali. To sit on the floor is so much
more comfortable than sitting upright and straight. It is the afternoon of
December 31st 1966 and the marriage of my third son to a vavalagi woman from Australia.
‘Nau, sit still,’ hisses my daughter
Suliana.
About
a hundred people pack into the wooden church, Fijian, Chinese, Indian, and
Australian. The organ makes its show, unmusical heaving sound. My son is
marrying a vavalagi. She is dressed
in a white dress and veil in the European manner. She is strange to me partly
because she is so unsure in my language which she speaks abruptly and
incorrectly. I have to listen hard to search for meaning.
Even
the language of the marriage service is mainly in English. I lean forward to
grasp some of the words but the meaning eludes me. It is easier when the
minister uses some words from my language. I wear my new blue cotton dress and
blue underskirt and I sit with my daughter Suliana, the two little
granddaughters, and I sit behind two of my adult sons dressed in their best sulu, jackets, shirts and ties.
My
right leg is itchy. I give it a scratch and Suliana smacks my hand.
Two
hours later we are at Jasper Williams School for the wedding feast. Four
hundred people throng into a long hall which is three classrooms opened out. We
all sit up at wooden tables. The marriage feast is excellent with turtles,
cooked pigs, taro, yams, cooked in the underground ovens by our relatives, and
the women from the church have made chop suey, rice, salads. I do not care for
the foreign foods and I eat fish, turtle and yams using my hands instead of the
silver cutlery set before me.
Formal
speeches are given and my son makes a brief speech in English. I feel a tremor
of unease that we are losing him from our culture to the stranger’s ways. She
would change his ways, make him eat English style with plates at tables with knives
and forks. He will not sit on the floor with us any more. Laugh, tell stories,
dance the meke.
And
she would not know how to plant yam, clean the yam garden and to harvest the
main food of our people.
An
earlier time comes to mind. How unhappy I had been when my father insisted that
I marry an ugly old man.
Many,
many years, perhaps thirty-two years ago, I was living in Cikobia, a small island
far from the mainland. My family, who were of chiefly status, wanted me
protected from the changing ways of the people. On Cikobia I learned to make
baskets, mats, to paint barkcloth, to sing, to dance, to catch fish in nets and
to find many kinds of sea creatures.
When
I was seventeen my father sent my uncle to fetch me for my engagement to a man
I had never met.
When
I saw this man I was devastated. He was tall enough, but his skin was so shiny
black and his eyes were the bold black eyes of the mountain men of Seaqaqa. His
bushy hair was long and spreading above his head in the old style of the
warrior. He was nearly forty years old.
I
cried to my father not to force me to marry this ugly man. ’I am an island girl
from Mali, the daughter of a Christian chief. My skin has been kept fair and I
am skilled at gathering seafood. This man might take me up to the hills to
live, and he certainly does not look like a kind Christian man like you Father.’
My
father reassured me. ‘You will live near the new Labasa town, not far away from
relatives. Irimaia Ratawa has good land
near the river and also land down the coast.’
I
thought of Labasa town, a swampy place with many Indian sugar cane farms, three
shops and two Fijian villages. Away from the sea.
My
father insisted and there were ceremonies of engagement and promises between my
Verata clan in Mali island and the stranger’s relatives from the bush. My
relatives gave many bundles of exquisite mats, cream and golden, and many yards
of brown Tongan barkcloth and the black and cream Fijian stenciled type. Many whales’
teeth were exchanged as well.
I
was often excluded from the ceremonies and just stayed in another house or on
the edge of proceedings.
‘Mila,
you must get tattooed before your marriage,’ my aunt said. There was no getting
out of it. The black designs in my private area would remain with me forever
and no-one would ever see them except my husband and the women when we bathe in the river each morning and
evening.
The
church ceremony in the Methodist church was brief and the short, stout minister
read from his hymn book and my relatives and my husband’s relative sang hymns
lustily but I did not listen well. I was dressed in a white dress and
underskirt and my husband looked uncomfortable in his new sulu, jacket, shirt and tie.
Later
we dressed more appropriately in yards of brown, black and cream barkcloth and
I also wore a gauze-like ribbon of barkcloth on my arm and another across my
breast to signify my family’s chiefly status.
Throughout my growing –up years my hair had never been cut short in the usual way. Behind each ear were long, curling locks of hair that had never been cut. This was called tobe, the sign of being a virgin. These were roughly shorn from me and my long curls floated to the ground.
I
was taken by my two aunts into the prepared bridal house where about twelve colourful
mats were placed on the floor with several new pillows. I was afraid and ashamed
to become intimate with the ugly man who was now my husband.
Next
morning my aunts checked the sheets and declared that, ‘Indeed, yes, Ulamila
had been a virgin.’ So there was now another feast for the relatives to
celebrate.
I
survived marriage to the man and bore eight children to him. I was contended
and loved the children and never hit them.
Now
the four children other young women bore to him, that was another matter for
argument, but I rarely raised my voice in anger.
When
Irimaia died, I returned to Vesi, my own home village and took two of the
children. The other six children were scattered to various relatives. It was a
time of loss as I had come to love the ugly old man over the sixteen years we
had together.
‘Nau eat your cake!’
I
am called back to the present when my daughter speaks to me. But it is too
sweet and made with sultanas which I do not like. The cake had looked pretty
earlier with its circle of frangipani flowers on top. I made a pretense of
eating.
I
looked over at my son who is sitting proudly with his vavalagi wife. Perhaps she too is a bit frightened about marriage
to a stranger and to become part of our culture now. There is a great distance
to leap, even more than when I as an islander girl was forced to marry a man
from the mountains.
I
smile at the white-skinned girl because she will find our ways strange. In
every generation there are changes. When my own mother married, as she told me
one time, the custom was to tie on a liku,
the short grass skirt. She did not have a ceremony led by a little stout man
holding a black book in his hand.
The
generations do go on. I look at my granddaughter, Ulamila Kisi, my namesake who
is sitting near me at this marriage feast and wonder also about the children
who will come for this new marriage. I
know that change in customs is not as important as the circle of marriage and
the bearing of sons and daughters.
My
son Pime stands up and comes to me, kisses me on both cheeks, sniffing in the
Fijian way.
I
decide to be kind to my daughter-in-law and will not be hard on her if she
cannot plant and care for the yam garden.
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