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.
9th June
by Kaiya Waerea
by Kaiya Waerea
I woke up feeling even worse than how I did when I fell asleep. I texted S, and he brought me a coffee and a snack bar. Once these had reached my stomach I sat up and composed an email to the students I was supposed to work with today, giving detailed instructions, encouragement, and goals for their progress. After doing that something in me released and I dozed for a while.
I took an apple down to the courtyard. The heat was heavy and thick, easing my joints as it pressed down on me. I took a couple of bites into my apple, folded out a deck chair and lay down, and I could have almost fallen asleep.
H came out and started faffing around with her washing, and asked if I’d like a cold drink. Just as she was about to go inside a contractor appeared from inside the house, here to look at the drain. M, who was also lounging in the courtyard, slipped inside, and H chatted to him as I did up some buttons on my shirt. H went inside and I heard a rapid sloshing begin, punctuated with heavy breathing. Sitting up enough to look over my shoulder, I see the contractor is plunging a large stick in and out of the drain, water and sludge gurgling, and soon enough a pungent burp escaped the grate and I went inside.
I lay down in my room for a while, eventually texting S asking if he had had lunch. A while later he came into my room & said no, & he will make something soon, would I like some. An hour later, after having returned to sunbathing and then gone back inside to see how he is getting on, I find a plate outside my door: saffron rice, pan fried courgette and asparagus, raw tofu, and kimchi. I cover this in chilli oil and soy sauce, and take it back outside to eat. Halfway through I go inside to reapply the condiments, and decide to finish eating in my room out of the heat. Retreating back to my bed lay still, my joints setting and stiffening, unable to roll myself over or find a more comfortable position. Eventually I fell asleep.
*
I woke up at around 7pm in pain and very hungry. I managed to waddle into the kitchen but couldn’t face cooking, and instead tip some strawberries and cover them in sugar. I bought the cheap strawberries and it shows, they are hard and bland little things. I soon decide to order in a burger and chips, and have this with a Rooibos tea with sugar and oat milk that S made me.
Late that evening N came over, after having been at his band’s EP launch which I had meant to go to but for obvious reasons had not made it. He had brought over with him, for his dinner, a falafel wrap and a box of spicy potatoes from Falafel and Shawarma in Camberwell. N goes there several times a week, and has a great rapport with the main man who works there, which this evening has resulted in him giving N all the remaining spicy potatoes they had left before closing, for free. While I lay in bed N pulled my armchair over to sit next to me and we chatted and put on an episode of Merlin, while he took big mouthfuls that he chewed for about a hundred years.