Vā by Lani Wendt Young

Author:Lani Wendt Young [Young, Sisilia Eteuati and Lani Wendt]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lani Wendt Young
Published: 2021-12-13T00:00:00+00:00

a dress for mother

by Audrey Brown-Pereira

An arranged marriage of sorts

by Rebecca Tobo Olul -Hossen

It was Tata who first pointed out the teacher from a foreign place to her.

From that time Iakangim tried really hard not to appear to be looking at him. It was hard not to look. Especially when all the women and men in the village remarked on his unusual unmanly ways.

Men on Tanna did not cook. They did not wash clothes. They spent most of their waking time, if not in the garden tending to their yams or feeding the pigs at Nipang Lawahtani, sitting in the imaiim (nakamal) talking about the village’s business with other men – a sanctity that women were not permitted to intrude on.

Tabi was different. In the mornings he comes outside to empty out pots he used to cook his dinner furiously scrubbing the fire-blackened pots clean with ash, coconut husks and water. During weekends he spent lots of time methodically washing and hanging out his weeks’ worth of clothes to dry on the line by his house.

This was completely unheard of according to the men. In fact, it rated as scandalous according to the women in the village.

Too often is the remark about food being unclean if cooked by men. Men touched their penises. Any food they touched cannot be eaten. Just like when women see the moon’s sick, that they are not to handle food.

Tata, being the man that he was, decided to take matters into his own hands - to make a man out of Tabi. For a start he invited Tabi to the imaiim for kava.

From that time Tata spoke in earnest to Iakangim about Tabi.

Iakangim had a good job as a nurse. She was better educated than many of the village girls. She was raised very much on her own. That is until the twins came along. Iakangim was her father’s princess.

But there was only one thing that darkened all of this. Iakangim was a single mother of a little boy. The baby’s father and his family did not want anything to do with Iakangim and the boy, denying the boy, throwing their belongings out of their house, and telling them to leave.

No man in the village would be able to take care of her and her son like Tabi could, Tata said. From the beginning, Iakangim felt fated to be with Tabi. She often wondered if Tabi felt the same way.

Due to Tata’s promptings, Iakangim finally worked up the courage to speak with Tabi. She begun to get to know this soft spoken and gentle man. A man who did not think it was women’s work to cook or wash clothes. But a man, nonetheless.

Iakangim and Tabi decided to get married.

When Tabi came home to get permission from Tata to ask Iakangim to marry him, Tata spoke at length of Iakangim’s status as his princess and her place in the village. He talked about Tanna kastom. That there would not be any bride price like the foreign kastoms in the north.

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