Hifiulu and hukiteliga for Malaki and Ligipati Kamupala

Emma recounts her childrens’ experiences with their ceremonies.

Emma: It started off as just a hifiulu for the eldest son of the family. It’s a celebration for the mateniu and mateniu means eldest son for the family. So it’s like a family way of introducing their child, their son, to the village and saying that he is the one that will carry on the family. But then as time progresses it changes from just the eldest son, to all … if a family have more than more than one son, they’ll do it for all the sons instead rather than just the eldest one.

And then from there, the hukiteliga, which is the ear piercing is a more modern, introduced because some families who don’t have sons but still want to do the tradition celebrations so they use their daughters and have a hukiteliga instead. It’s a time for sharing with family and just to show our love and appreciation not just for our kids but how how blessed we are with our family togetherness. I always find this is the best time we have all of us together and just enjoy family time. It's more about spending family time together than the actual ceremony itself.

Both of them was very excited. Malaki was a bit sad though when they start cutting his hair, because the whole experience was foreign to him. We try to explain in a way that doesn’t confuse him on the culture. And then as he grew he kept asking, hassling us, when am I cutting my hair? When am I cutting my hair? And then we told him, it's part of our tradition that a boy will keep his hair long and then we’ll have a big hair cut for him.

Trying to tell him the story is not the same as him actually being a part of it. So when we try explaining to him why we have to keep his hair long, I don’t think he really understands the meaning of it until the day we had the function and it was a bit overwhelming for him! He realised that the people were actually taking his hair from him and he saw the gifts that people are giving him so he was happy, he was crying, he was feeling sad for his hair, that people are taking his hair.

The sister on the other hand, she was just excited that she’s having her ears pierced, until they actually pierced her ears and goes ‘oh, that’s sore,’ and we said to her, at least we got you the ear piercing machine because in Niue, its different. They use the thorn from a lime tree and the little young green coconut. So that little green coconut will go behind your ear, and they get the lime thorn and they smack it through the ear.