October 30, 2006
Kia ora
Today was the last of the "handover" events, seeing our ex-boss Mark go to his new workplace (the pics are from his weekend party with most of my colleagues!). We had a Hare Paniora ritual today, that, I guess, is a form of powhiri. A group of people from Unitec "brought" Mark to his new workplace to show support, clear his "baggage" from the old place and bless the new workplace. As far as I understand, it has to do with the sipritual world, making the spirits/ancestors aquainted (?) + removing the obstacles in the new place. We were taken into a room where TangataWhenua (hosts) were already seated. Our group was seated against them, men in the front row, women behind them. Our "leaders" gave speaches praising Mark and those were followed by songs and prayers. Then Mark was taken by the women from "our" side to the "other" side. The whole ceremony was extremely emotional, most of the people on "our" side nearly cried. I was tearful as well (seeing another good boss going...), on the other hand, I was very immersed in the ritual, - there couldn't have been a better way to make us realise that Mark is leaving us!!! He was seated on the "other" side and then we went on to do hongi with all the "others". Hongi is the famous nose touching greeting that is so fascinating for the tourists and looks something like this.
I had a brewing feeling about this whole NZ, as a place and the revelation just stroke me with amazing clarity today (watching Utu, an epic movie about NZ wars of 1870 helped!). NZ is actually a completely different place from anywhere I've been before and anything that I've experienced before. It is deceivingly similar to European countries and cultures, as it is full of Pakeha (white people of European descent) and everybody speaks English. But what this similarity does to you, it makes it harder to go through all the culture shock issues. Seemingly things are the same as what you know, but they are not. In a way it was easier to deal with it in Singapore, because everything was completely different: the culture, the customs, the smells, the food, the weather, the languages, the clothes, etc. You don't even try to recognise those things, you just keep your eyes open in amazement.
Obviously NZ is geographically very close to the Pacific Islands and therefore there is a lot of mutual political involvement (immigration, development of democracy, etc). What I haven't really realised until today is just how important Maori culture is here. In many ways NZ is quite close to the Pacific Islands, culturally and sipritually too, not only geographically. Its not really another UK. Simple? You'd think... But it took me 2.5 months to realise!
What it may mean for me from now on, is that I will try to "keep my eyes open in amazement" and maybe just stop comparing this to other places that I know of. Obviously things work differently here, because people are different, because its history is different, its cultural norms and religion is different, everything is different! It is not a greaner and cleaner UK. Not at all!!! It is a different country!
Posted by gkligyte at October 30, 2006 07:08 PM