Sonntag, 19. April 2015

The Travelogue, Part XLIV: New Zealand - Aotearoa




When you start writing, whether it be articles, books or humble blogs such as this, you always hope that somehow you will convey some unique experience, some special insight to your readers. Unfortunately, unless you are among the most gifted, imaginative or intrepid of writers, the fulfillment of this desire is actually a rare occurrence. By a stroke of luck and hospitality, however, I feel I can for once actually speak of an experience that is indeed rare and unique.

My awesome guide Adria in front of the Whangara Marae

Most of this adventure I owe to my friend Adria and her family, who kindly invited me to join the family reunion festivities of her native tribe, the Ngati Porou of New Zealand's northeastern-most coast, a location made famous by the film Whale Rider, which gained international acclaim. Occasions like these are normally off limits to most non-Maori, and unless you have close friends or become family, even most New Zealanders will never have this experience. It has challenged a lot of my conceptions about not just Maori or tribal culture, but about my native European cultural traditions as well.


Family



 First of all, contrary to frequent Western belief, being Maori is not tied to ethnicity. The only requirement to be considered Maori is to be able to trace your lineage back to a Maori ancestor. Spouses and children of Maori partners are automatically Maori as they are now connected to the ever-expanding web of Maori ancestry, and are subject to the same benefits and duties any other family member would. And it's quite a sizeable family you got yourself there!

The festivities span four generations, here are the Kaumatua

Maori concepts of family are quite different from Western ones. Including only your close relatives under the 'family' umbrella is positively offensive to Maori sentiments. Every single member of your iwi (tribal nation) is family and treated with the same care and appreciation. To exemplify this, if any number of your tribe rocked up on your doorstep at 4 am you would be expected to give them food and a sleeping place as long as they liked to. These are essentially complete strangers (although a Maori would not see it that way), possibly linked to you only by some great-great-great grandfather you've heard a story about once in your life. While this might seem unsettling to anyone growing up in a northern culture, it creates a massive web of support and mutual assistance that spans the whole globe and has been key to the survival of Maori culture.


Ancestry


Paikea, the founder of the Ngati Porou arrived to NZ on whale

Understandably a culture with such intense ties to its members holds ancestry in high regard. While ancestors are obviously important to most cultures to some degree, Maori culture revolves around it to a measure I have not seen anywhere else. The very first thing that two newly meeting Maori will do is to trace their ancestry line back to a common junction to establish familiarity. As you can imagine, this requires solid knowledge not only of your immediate family, but also lots of distant and sometimes ancient relatives who precede your parents by many generations, all the way up to the mythical gods Tane and Tangaroa. As a consequence, remembering your ancestors is a fundamental part of Maori culture and permeates life both as casual accounts in daily life and hour-long storytelling at the big gatherings on the marae (meeting place).

The inside of the Wharenui communal house

In these accounts, the mundane and the mythical blend into one, and tales of grandfather's farm work are treated with the same sincerity as those of Tawhirimatea who gave Flounders and Hammerheads their shape by hitting them with a paddle. No difference is made between the living and the dead either, and Maori can be seen on the graveyard happily chatting with their dead relatives over a pint of beer. This familial web that transcends both space and time creates a sense of belonging and partnership among the Maori community that is admirable, and probably the only thing that carried it through decades of mistreatment and broken promises by the colonial government.

Carved ancestors protect the walls of the Wharenui



A living culture

 

Part of the initial greetings queue. Yes, you have to greet everyone!



Most New Zealanders and certainly almost all visitors experience Maori culture as entirely ceremonial in nature. Maori cultural performances abound, and Maori culture has entered the public consciousness mostly in the form of tribal tattoos and haka-dancing rugby players. While this surely helped raising awareness to an endangered culture, it belies the fact that Maori culture permeates everyday life of its members in the way they think, act or understand concepts. From the definition of family and the way elders are treated to the role of story, song and dance in the culture, Maoridom is a bona fide different way of thinking about the world, and it is a shame that it is only the most flashy parts ever reach the surface of New Zealand's cultural landscape and identity.

Stories are told throughout the day




Being Maori means subscribing to the familial web, and putting yourself second. It's a concept fundamentally different to Western individualism, and requires a commitment to the common good that most people growing up in western culture would not be willing to muster. Because the web stretches beyond your immediate surroundings and time, maintaining the mana, or prestige, of your family line is an important driver in Maori interactions. If you want stories about yourself be told and  your family integrity upheld, you will need to leave your mark in Maori history. So strong is this system of honour, that many of the Maori I asked said they would choose their iwi's needs over their own, and Maori cultural identity over that of that of a New Zealander. That might sound intense, but you don't become a carved guardian tipuna in your family's wharenui (communal longhouse) by just sitting around. Outstanding individuals can even become legends within their life-time, and such elders are respected and cared for with unquestioning commitment, whereas they are readily signed off and sent to old people's homes in many Western countries.

The centerpiece of Maori culture is the marae, the central meeting place of an individual's ancestral homeland. Your standing among the many tribes, your genealogy and your eternal home is tied irrevocably to this place, and regardless of your deeds and whereabouts cannot be denied to you. Hence Maori society knows no exclusion, and regardless of your failures in life you can always return to your marae and expect to be helped and be taken care off. Mind though that despite that forgiveness, Maori culture is rough, and your return to your hapu (sub-tribe) upon serious behavior failures will not be an easy ride. To say that Maori social interaction is straightforward would probably an understatement - and I'm German!


Song and Dance

 


 As most of their tradition revolves around ancestors and tribal integrity, Maori art and culture mainly seems to serve the purpose of recounting the life and deeds of its ancestors. As a result, Maori culture fosters showmanship and storytelling which makes family reunions a lot more fun. I was positively impressed by the amount of creative horsepower that was put into the remembrance of those gone before you. Songs are sung, ancient lives acted out in performances, and the many carved tipuna ancestor statues are explained. Haka, by many people perceived purely as war dances, are also a popular expression form chosen for such occasions.


In fact, Maori culture centers heavily around singing, which is used to welcome guests, express support for public speakers (if after you speak the singers are silent, you have a problem) or praise the singer's ancestral home. Each marae has its own song, extolling the beauty of its surroundings and the mana of its tribe. Considering that Maori culture is traditionally associated with cannibalism and ceaseless warfare, that's a lot of happy singing and dancing.





A difficult future

 

Maori food for special occasions is cooked in a Hangi, a impromptu earth oven

It is only due to the unyielding dedication of a few individuals and the support of their tribe that Maori culture still lives on today, and in fact experiences some kind of revival. Maori language is taught in schools, and the extensive history of the people preserved outside the oral tradition. Maori are still a far cry from being accepted as part of New Zealand's culture on an equal basis, but inroads are clearly made. My personal impression is, however, that not New Zealand's pakeha (white New Zealander) government but rather the demands of a globalized society are the biggest threat to the existence of Maori culture. As it is very much tied to the land, Maori tribes and marae cannot be formed outside the traditional locations on the New Zealand land mass. Tribe members, however, are scattered across the globe and rarely have the opportunity to visit their far-flung homeland. Many of them are already so disconnected from their identity that they cannot even trace their ancestry back to New Zealand. The Tikanga (tribal laws) are thankfully very fluid, and maybe they will allow future generations of Maori to connect with their identity outside of Ao Tearoa, so that its beauty will not be lost.


I'm genuinely grateful that I got to experience an actual live tribal culture from the inside. Maori culture is engaging (if potentially socially taxing) and succinctly different enough from Western ways of life to have given me a new perspective on a variety of ideas I considered a given. I sincerely hope it thrives, and becomes a strong part of New Zealand's cultural identity on par with that of its pakeha newcomers.

I would like to thank Adria's family, the Ngati Konohi Hapu for their hospitality, their helpful explanations and their patience with my inquisitiveness.



Media

 


To anyone interested in Maori culture, here are some bits to get you started.

Whale Rider - the story of a young girl who wants to become chief of her tribe
Trailer

Once were Warriors - a drama about the struggles of impoverished Maori
Trailer

The Dead Lands - a pre-colonial Maori war movie, fresh from this year (2015)
Trailer

Freitag, 10. April 2015

The Travelogue, Part XLIII: Fiji - Namu Levu!





 With its main islands named Viti Levu and Vanua Levu, the unassuming obsever might assume that Namu Levu is just one of the many Fijian islands, one that struck me with its particular beauty or remoteness. It might conjure up images of lone coconut palms softly swinging in the soft breeze across a turquoise-coloured bay. It is, however, in fact Fijian for 'lots of mosquitos'. For some reason Fiji's resident vampiric insect population took such a liking to me that the Indonesian jungle seemed like the perfect place to have a naked dusk snooze in hindsight.


Now that that's out of the way, what's to say about Fiji? Originally In wasn't meant to travel here, merely to sit on the veranda of my Fijian friend's newly built house and drink copious amounts of Kava while I watch the tide carry the surfers out and the coconuts home. Unfortunately said friend had to leave for New Zealand, and I was left with no plans. From a travel perspective, Fiji is a resort destination. If you just want to lounge for two weeks on a proprietory beach and have burgers and beer, Fiji will embrace you with open arms. If you are looking to travel and experience all the beauty it has to offer, however, without plans you will struggle. Because falling into the resort trek is so easy here, it's hard to get both information and determination to venture into the less accessible areas of the country.


If you consider coming to Fiji for anything but just chilling out in a heavily curated package holiday experience, I suggest you either a) go and live there for a while or b) have pretty solid plans of what you want to see and how to get there on time and budget. While that sounds like pretty general travel advice, I found it particularly hard to get to the (non-beach) sweet spots in Fiji.


Fijians are fishing experts, finding marine life even in 5 inches of water

Having said that, a lot of the attraction lies in its bountiful marine life, which offers amazing fauna both to divers and simple tidal walkers. If you have never done the latter, I encourage you do venture out to the reef when the tide is low - chances are you will see just as much if not more interesting animal life in the tidal pools than in a dive.

Sea snakes can be seen as close as as few meters from the beach.

Mosquitos aside, it's easy to imagine to retire here, and many do. This is made partially possible by Fijian labour being incredibly cheap, with an average builder earning a meager 3 FJD (1£) an hour. When one is bunkered up in a orchid-studded white sand beach resort it's easy to forget that Fiji is a third-world country with high income inequality and its fair share of social problems.
Fijian Breakfast is flour balls cooked in coconut milk

Fijians, like most Polynesians tend to be strong-framed


All in all, Fiji is a wonderful place. Its slow pace, stunning nature and lack of hassle makes it one of the most relaxing places I have ever been to. It is, however, so relaxing and easy that doing anything else becomes a lot harder, and if you don't want to spend all your time in a pretty but plastic Bula resort I suggest you do solid research.