Islands & Epidemics
Written by Esme Yokooji In Miyako, during ancient times an epidemic swept across our land. After much prayer, my people were met with the Paantu Punaha who came from far-off shores to relieve us of our suffering. There was UyaPaantu, Nnaka- Paantu, and FfaPaantu, all three donning imposing masks and covered in mud and foliage. They brought an end to the sickness in the mud, which they painted onto the bodies of our people. We received the mud gratefully and jubilantly and still do. I receive the mud in any way that I can in Hawaiʻi, when I find myself sat in a loʻi shaded by the growing Kalo surrounded by women who have wrapped me in sisterhood it feels medicinal. It feels ancient and sacred to hold space as we hold the land and as the land holds us back. In the mud, I feel the dirt and grime of the past year slowly wash away.
Diseases of epidemic proportions are nothing new to these islands or the islands of my ancestors. In the memoir Hawaiʻiʻs Story by Hawaiʻiʻs Queen, Queen Liliʻuokalani recounts a smallpox outbreak in 1881. In response to the virulence of the disease, the then Princess swiftly and decisively closed down the ports and instituted a mandatory quarantine for those afflicted (much to the displeasure of sugar growers and foreign merchants). I read the Queen’s story as the islands began to swell with chaos and the epidemic began to situate itself on our shores. The ʻōlelo noʻeau “ ka wā ma mua, ka wā ma hope, “ situates the future as the ʻtime in backʻ and the past as the ʻtime in front,ʻ it is a common ideological thread across Oceania. In Aotearoa the whakataukī is Kia whakatōmuri te 8
