Okay so I have just finished staying with the second Servas couple. I have been having a great time!!! They live in Whakatane which honestly, I could move here! It is a cute active town on the water with great art, music, and cheap hostels (which I am staying in presently...Servas allows you to stay with guest only a few nights) So they stay right near town and he is Maori and she is Pakeh (I don't know if thay is the correct spelling but it basically means European, and from what I can tell it is not offensive, but I could be wrong ..oopps faux pas if that is the case) Anyway, they are retired and really lovely people. Very interesting. It seems that many of the folks I stay with are teachers. Roselind was also a teacher, and her husband was an economist. He also is a chairperson of various groups and Maori trusts. They drove me around and showed me various sights. I went swimming in the ocean a couple times, to their more rural house about 30 min away, and to a Marae, he has introduced me to so many people, I just ran into a girl that wished she knew I was still in town so I could have gone with her to a reggae show the other night...shoot I wish I ran into her sooner because I would have gone!. Anyway he invited me to attend a community meeting in a small community nearby, so tomorrow I offered to assist them in planning a hui (community gathering). Sounds interesting. And, since he is affiliated with the dolphin swimming company we went out on the boat but the seas were too rough so we did not get to swim with them. ( I even had a dolphin dream the night before...a weird dream where the dolphins had grey mohawks and actually semi attacked me---so maybe it is a good thing that I didn't get to swim with them yet...and what is up with the mohawks:)). Well Waaka (my very gracious host) is am amazing story teller; I hope he writes a book. I heard wonderful stories about eels, ghosts, you name it, he had a tale. He told me a fascinating one about a African man that showed up on the beach walking out of the water nearby Whakatane, he said that maybe over 100 years ago a strong handsome African man walked out of the ocean, local Maori men saw him and brought him to their chief. The chief asked the man who he was and where he was from. The man said that he did not know his name and that he was a slave from America that had escaped to Canada and boarded a boat in the town of Duncan, he was due to work on this boat but the conditions were so bad and they treated him so horribly that he jumped ship when he saw land and swam to shore. He ended up in Teteko. The chief liked the man and also noticed his muscles and strength. The chief prompty gave the man a wife. The man was called Duncan and his photo hangs in a Marae here (we didnt have the key to get in so I could take a photo), Duncan was to be the father of a future chief. Waaka told many good stories and all of them true. Anyway I am having a really special time here. And really it is also so moving how the people here also share in the joy of a "Black man" being president. It is really moving how proud and supportive they are of President Obama. It seems like all of NZ is behind him. When I said that to a man that Waaka introduced me to, he replied "the world is behind him". So far in my experiences here, I feel that there is a social cohesivness that I can't really explain, maybe we all need a marae to gather at and share ideas? till next time
pakeha is also used here in hawai'i, more than likely due to the different micronesian/melanesian cultures that have immigrated here. really interesting...so, i geeked out and wikipediad the term. :)
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P%C4%81keh%C4%81_M%C4%81ori
sounds like it is more highly revered than haole in hawaiian but it would be interesting to get the maori perspective, not wikis.
anyway, love you, love to be in dialogue even at this distance. :)