Mana Wahine: He Raina Momo Nui

Women with the hearts of lion.

How to even begin to describe the totally contrasting experience I am having going from the painfully uncomfortable yoga retreat to being embraced whole-heartedly by the Maori of the Rotarua region.

This is why I came to NZ. I arrived exhausted from my time at Still Point, and was picked up by the lovely green-eyed Rachel, the daughter of woman who started the Credit Union that I am here to write a story about.

 I haven’t paid for a single meal, or been left wondering where I am, and felt completely cared for in every way since I arrived last week.

 Now I had been warned by many people that I might spend several days on a Marae (a meeting house very much like the long houses of our first Nations). That I might undergo intense scrutiny, and be forced to spend many days in solemn ritual before I was able to ask any questions. I was told that the Maori were a proud and private people, and to mind my P’s and Q’s, and be careful what I asked and what I said, and that I better have a few songs  to sing ( waiata) at the ceremony or I was in for it.

 So it was with some trepidation that I followed Rachel to her family’s village ( the village with the longest name in the world, most of them can’t pronounce it themselves, suffice to say that the short name is a mouthful that begins with a swear word in English, like many of their words: whakawearaweara ( all Wh is pronounced F) –which kind of makes it hard to be an English prig here anyway- not that ive ever suffered from prudishness…

  The village is itself is astounding. This fana (family) and their hapu ( more extended family) have been living on top of constantly exploding and shifting geothermal gases and activity for at least a hundred years. There are gaping holes in the ground everywhere belching out huge clouds of pungent smelling sulphur gasses and minerals. Each boiling hot water hole has a name, and they are referred to in the first person. The largest “pond” is the cooking pond in the centre of the village, which has brilliant turquoise water that is 500 degrees at the top, and 900 further down (no scientist has ever made it to the bottom, the family members tell me with pride). This is where the villagers come to cook food in muslin baskets, and get hot water for washing. The houses are all built around seeping cracks of heat which keep them warm in the winter ( and relatively unbearable in the summer). There are communal baths for bathing which until the day that I arrived had been where the whole village stripped down to bath together at the end of the day, a practice that still carries on to this day (although Logan – a maori arttist, and sky diver- tells me that even he thinks its strange that he feels perfectly comfortable stripping down in his village for a bath, but would never dream of taking off his clothes in front of his village in any other circumstance). The village is so strongly sulphuric, that by the end of my stay there, I was almost hung over.

 Although it was hard to tell since I was indeed totally hung over after I was invited to the village barbecue within my first five minutes of meeting the family.

Rachel had taken me to the village during its tourist hours to take photos. The whole village is involved in what can only be described as the world’s only reality theatre show. They are open to the public from 9-5 seven days per week, and perform all their daily duties behind fences in their homes and lawns. All day long, tourists ( and yes, lots of aisan tourists) wander around on the other side of those fences watching them! This is how the village sustains itself, and no one I spoke to found it strange in any way. As I was standing behind the fences, trying to get the a picture of the tourists taking pictures of us, I felt at first like I was an animal at the zoo, and then I got the distinct impression that it was actually those on the outside who were the animals.

 It has utterly changed my impression of zoos

 So within my first five minutes, I was invited back to the village barbeque, which Rachel wasn’t up to, so she LEFT ME THERE.

 So here I was, having been primed basically to be prepared to be eaten by the Maori, being introduced to every Aunt and Cousin, and nannie in the village as the Canadian Cousin (which they all laughed uproariously at while taking me in big bear hugs and kissing my cheeks). And then they proceeded to get me drunk, which entailed literally being told to hurry up and finish my drink so they could introduce me to something they wanted to drink instead…many times over.

 Highlights of the evening that I can remember are:

 I did indeed finally sing a song –the Canadian Lullaby- into a broom with a package of cigarettes on the top that we were all pretending was a microphone while everyone went in a circle to give a little speech ( I’m totally introducing this to my own family –without the cigs). Including the three year old.

 Realizing that I had been duped and that only the person before me had sung a song, everyone else had refused.

 Having the surly 13 year old grunt, “ that was good” with admiration after I had finished my song.

 Eating pigs feet: including those little toe thingys, while everyone secretly watched in admiration and I just pretended it was bacon.

 The best food I had eaten in a month ( yum! Seafood, and delicious veggies, and salad, and lot and lots of meat that wasn’t in the shape of a foot)( the foot-food was yummy too, when you closed your eyes)

 Having people randomly yell out “ Canada” like a mini war-cry as we all got completely knakered. ( Me after only 3 drinks as -remember- I just spent a month on a yoga farm)

 Having the nannie try and set me up with the hot older unmarried man, who wasn’t even at the party…by which time I knew two things: we were all family, and if I didn’t leave they would be rolling me down the hill into a car, or I would be passing out on carpet to wake up with a brand new Maori tattoo on my behind.

 Hooray for enlightenment!