Kaiya Waerea (she/her)
@kaiyawaerea | kaiyawaerea.com
Kaiya Waerea (she/her, Ngāti Kahungunu) is a chronically ill writer and designer from Aotearoa, now living in London UK. Her research is concerned with knowledge produced through marginalisation, particularly as it is produced through moving through this world in a disabled and indigenous body. Kaiya is gluten-intolerant, (mostly) vegetarian, and prefers to eat with others.
Her writing has been featured in Counter Signals 5: Systems and their Discontents (forthcoming), Errant Journal: Learning from our Ancestors, AIGA Eye on Design, Ache Magazine, Sick Magazine, DreamsTimesFree and others. Kaiya co-runs feminist press Sticky Fingers Publishing and teaches on the Graphic Design programme at Camberwell University of the Arts London.
5th June
by Kaiya Waerea
by Kaiya Waerea
I hit snooze on the alarm on my phone from 9:10am until about half 10am. My arms, my joints thudding. I was already running late to get into the studio for 11, and we had a lot to do today.
Waddling across the landing to the kitchen, two things greeted me. First, I had forgotten that I had bought some free-from corn flakes in my shop yesterday, so I could have them for breakfast. I tipped some into a small white silver rimmed bowl, and shook sugar over it, my trembling hand accidentally tossing it all over the work surface. The second was that there was a pot of coffee on.
It might not be an exaggeration to say that as a household our relationships largely orbit around this coffee pot. We have an industrial filter coffee machine which came from V’s fathers corner shop in Streatham when he didn’t want it any more. It is a 12 cup machine, with two jugs and a spare hot plate so you can keep both jugs hot at any time, although we rarely use the second one. I should also clarify when I say 12 cups I mean it in the way coffee jugs mean it, which is actually more like 6 mugs of coffee. There are six of us, so in theory that should be enough for everyone, except we are all extremely greedy and will easily have 2-3 cups each. Sometimes another jug will be put on once the first has been drunk, although S increasingly prefers a stovetop percolator, and sometimes R and M make a cafetiere to take to their room. I personally prefer the filter coffee to these other methods, and if the big jug has already been finished and I can’t face cleaning it to put it on again, or is a strange time of day, or no-one else is home, then I will use my V60. Every morning, my day is decided by the coffee situation when I go into the kitchen. If there is a full pot of hot coffee on then it is going to be a good day, so today was off to a good start.
I bunked the train one stop to Catford, and as I was getting off I spotted S getting off further down the carriage. I called out and we walked to the studio together, stopping at a cafe on the way called Expresso Cartel for two oat flat whites to take away, please.
We both always try to bring our own packed lunch with us on studio days. S is more organised about it then I am, but I have done well today: two sandwiches, both containing a slice of Gouda cheese, cucumber, mixed leaves, salt, pepper and mayonnaise. I don’t particularly like Gouda, but it makes me feel like I am on holiday. I also pack a punnet of blackberries, an oat bar, an apple and a bag of Wotsits.
Other than the sandwiches, all but the blackberries go uneaten. Sophie and I shared these with a cafetiere of coffee she made, carefully in between handling prints, folding paper. They aren’t the most flavoursome of blackberries but they are amusingly phallic, and that makes us both laugh. It's the first time I have tried this bag of coffee and I find it far too fruity, I think they sold me the wrong one. We are also experimenting with powdered oat milk, which I was pressured into buying through my instagram algorithm. It is called Mighty Oat, and it is actually fine – you put a couple of heaped teaspoons straight in your cup of coffee.
In the evening I had a massage booked at 6pm. I get these to help manage my chronic pain, although I haven't been in over a month. Bunking the train back to Ladywell, I dropped my backpack at home but put the apple and snack bar in a smaller bag to take with me, had a quick shower, and then got an Uber to New Cross Therapy Centre. C is in a chatty mood, but we both quieten down into the massage. My tummy starts rumbling audibly not long into the session, and a while later I think I hear hers too. Afterwards I slowly sit up, and groggily drink the glass of water she has put out for me in one. Good, I’ll get you another she says. I got another Uber home, my body aching, in a good way. We also did some CST which makes me very emotional, and so when I got home before I even went into my room I put a pot of boiling water on, and threw a packet of free-from tortellini in it.
While this boiled I took out the small single-egg size frying pan, and heated up a knob of butter, chilli oil, salt, pepper and three cloves of sliced garlic. Once the garlic was browned I poured this into the bowl I would be eating from, then chucked the cooked tortellini in after it, tossing it through with more salt and pepper on top. I take it to bed, change into my pyjamas and eat it watching Merlin, the one where his home village is being threatened by bandits and he, Gwen, Morgana and Arthur all go to fight them.
I have been gluten free for about a year and a half now. I first cut it out on the advice of a gynaecologist, who thought it might help with some of the pain in my torso. I honestly just thought everyone experienced stabs to the gut whenever they drank beer, and that everyone just tolerated it. Although it helped with a lot of the pain I was experiencing it didn’t make much change to my then severe period cramps, although the gynaecologist thought that even this improvement was reason enough to take me off the waiting list for a laparoscopy. I thought he had done, until six months later when I got a call saying I had an operation in two weeks. I almost told them that I had meant to be taken off the list but decided not to mention it, and during the surgery they found endometriosis across my pelvic floor.
In the ward after the operation, the worst pain, even worse than what was going on in my abdomen, was the pain in my shoulders. Apparently the gas they use to expand your stomach somehow causes this. Throughout the day as I came to I stood rocking myself slightly back and forth holding onto the bed frame, then lying down again when this became too much. I was desperately hungry, not having eaten 12 hrs before the surgery or since, but the ward didn’t have any food that was gluten free, and my mum wasn’t allowed in to bring me anything. Hours later, when it was clear I was going to have to stay in longer than they expected, the nurse disappeared, returning with a gluten free salad box. It wouldn’t surprise me if she had bought this with her own money.