Single mum painters Changing times have seen women take up painting
VIKA Tokona and Pamela Komai are not only single mums. They are also painters — they paint houses, a trade not typically associated with women but then again, times are changing and according to Ms Tokona, “lately there’s been a lot of female who are now painting”.
The Fiji Times spoke to them during the Women in Construction and Trade (WICAT) Fiji inaugural “lunch and learn” event, held to coincide with the Women In Construction Week celebrated globally to recognise women who are working in the industry.
Ms Tokona, a single mother of four, comes from a family of builders so support from family towards what she does has never been an issue.
Construction, she said, “is in my blood”.
“We have painters, plumbers, carpenters all in one family, my brother’s a painter, my dad is a carpenter, my uncle’s a plumber … there are 15 of them so we are all in the trade. The only thing we don’t have in the family is an electrician and an engineer.”
Currently unemployed, Ms Tokona is helping her family of tradespeople with “some work of mercy for Dilkusha Home, so that’s all of us there doing that. We’re looking for some funds to paint the whole of Dilkusha. We started last week. We’ve managed to paint their dining room.”
Ms Tokona, who loves painting because of the “way you can play with colours or do designs on the wall”, said females were better at picking colours for indoors than males and this was a known fact in the profession.
Fellow painter and decorator Ms Komai agrees.
“Men just do it anyhow but when women do the work, it’s neat and looks very nice,” she said.
To her, painting is an art.
“I compare painting to women. How we women dress up and pamper ourselves is similar to painting. A house newly-built but not painted looks bare. It’s like women. If you wear good clothes and you don’t put lipstick, make up, etc, you wouldn’t look nice. So those things are similar — painting a house and decorating women.”
When she’s not painting houses, Ms Komai — a single mother whose daughter is married with her own family and do not live with her — has her market vending business to run.
“I have my own company called Smart Decorators & Painters, but only when I have painting work then the company goes there. When there’s no work available, I fall back on my market business. I’m a market vendor too,” she said.
The duo are members of WICAT Fiji and were part of 50 participants who turned up at WICAT’s “lunch and learn” at Toorak Central in Suva on Wednesday.
Men just do it anyhow but when women do the work, it’s neat and looks very nice...
– Pamela Komai