TASHY TRAVELS

Every Sunday, I am going to upload a post about the different countries I have visited and/or lived in since 2002.

I can assure you of some interesting stories.

NEW ZEALAND 4

We spent the beginning of this period in Wellington, the capital of New Zealand. It is not, though, the biggest city. That title belongs to Auckland of whom you will read soon. Wellington is, however, where the government sits. The Parliament building is known as the Bee Hive, for obvious architectural reasons. Wellington is also known as the windy city not, so I am reliably informed, because of the hot air coming out of the Parliament building but because of the climatic conditions. We stayed for a couple of days in a backpacker/guest house and the owner was very interested in earthquakes. He told us that they have about 350 earthquakes in and around Wellington each year. He also said they were waiting for ‘the big one’.

A walk around the city, while leaning into the wind, would mean you would see, as we did, what I call trolley buses. They may have another name elsewhere but we had these in England when I was growing up. I think I need to go away and find out the difference between a tram, which I definitely remember in Leeds when I lived there in the mid fifties (1950’s thank you) and a trolley bus. I assume that both are more environmentally friendly than petrol or diesel guzzling buses but I don’t know. Anyway, it was a nice reminder of my earlier life.

We left Wellington and moved up the north island to a place called Whanganui. I’m not convinced that this paddle steamer that we found moored on the river was totally environmentally friendly but it did look good. While in Whanganui, we met with a couple of really interesting Maori elders. They lived just outside the town and their names, so my notes say, were Olive and Sue. Their house looked a bit spooky from the outside with a garden full of birds. Sue opened the door and let us into the living room with a fire-place and a smell of incense. Photos hung on the walls showing the family, ancestors and indigenous people from other parts of the world. Olive had just come back from an indigenous peoples conference in Australia.

We discovered that Sue was 82 and Olive 76. The reason we had wanted to meet Olive was that she was a traditional spiritual healer. We ended up talking to both ladies for quite a few hours about everything, starting on spiritual healing, the future for Maori and politics. Olive turned out to be a trained nurse but later on decided to use, in her work, the traditional knowledge that she grew up with. A lot of her healing was based on ancient Maori rituals but she also incorporated, in her practice, the knowledge gained from other indigenous people. She explained to us that the Whanganui River was a very sacred river to Maori.

Apparently the most rewarding work she did was with prisoners who are also sometimes her patients. They come with their wardens and Olive does a lot of psychological work on them and what she calls “mind change”. This wasn’t the first time we heard or even witnessed some corrective work being done with prisoners or ex offenders and it seems that New Zealand is quite big on finding ways to not just punish but also try to help people who have problems with the law and to bring them back into society.

Next day we made a trip up the river to a fairly isolated region. To get there we had to drive for 20 km up a narrow dirt road bordered with high cliffs on one side and steep cliffs and the river on the other. It was raining and there were quite a few landslips and we were wondering if we will be able to make it or will we be stuck somewhere on the way. Just a note here about pronunciation in New Zealand. It would appear that wh can be pronounced either to rhyme with fun or as a simple w. Hence Whanganui is pronounced Wanganui while the river is known as the Funganui (phonetically) River. I hope I got that right.

At this particular point, I remember having to get out of the van and manhandle (well I class me as a man) a tree out of the way. As you can see we had just crossed a very narrow bridge and the water level underneath was really high. It took about thirty minutes to move the tree and the grass bank at the side was actually slipping down when I trod on it so I didn’t fancy putting a wheel there. It was also a very remote journey as we hardly saw any other vehicles.

The place we were going to was called Pipriki and I remember it was quite dark when we got there. We were supposed to meet, so my notes say, a lady called Josephine, one of the owners of River Adventures who normally, in weather better than this, operate jet boats for tourists. She invited us in for a chat and I showed her our website although I think the connection speed, and reliability, were variable. She gave us hot tea and home-made fried bread, very popular amongst Maori people and continued our talk. Josephine told us she is only now learning her Whakapapa, her ancestry. Most of the people from the river seemed to be related and she told us, “Once my two daughters got a bit older, I sent them off to school, to get a good education but also because I didn’t want them to end up marrying their cousins. That’s why knowing my family tree is also very important”.

All the land of the village is owned by an Incorporation. It’s tribal land and Maori who live there have shares in it. Only the ones who have the shares can make any decisions about the land. Josephine did not have any shares, they would come to her only when her parents passed away. There are Pakeha (non-Maori) people living here too, Josephine’s husband was one, but they had mostly intermarried with local people. We talked for 5 or so hours and Josephine was upset she didn’t know more about us before we arrived because she could have cooked a proper meal, like a roast of wild pork that her husband had hunted. She almost rang her father, very late at night, to see if he could quickly make Rowena bread, a special Maori bread made with potato flour. She told us that her dad or uncles would always be out hunting so they always had food. When we left she decided we shouldn’t be hungry either as she decided to give us half of a wild pig she had in her freezer. She was most apologetic about the fact that we will have to cook it ourselves.

A little bit up the river was another community but access to them was only through the river, there were no roads. This was where part of Josephine’s family lived, anything they needed had to be transported by river. They lived in harsh conditions and had to cope with them. Many, like Josephine’s father, never left the river. This was, she told us, where the River Queen movie was filmed with help from the local tribe. The tribe, or iwi in the Maori language, partly sponsored the movie, a romantic story, the background to which was the river’s history and Maori wars. The local elders made sure that the crew got their facts right and that they didn’t film in locations which were sacred, or tapu, to the local people, like burial grounds. She told us of the saying of the river people,; “I am the river, the river is me”.

After this experience with Maori people, I wrote a little piece for our website trying to explain to our older readers about indigenous people. I have included it below for your perusal and delectation, accompanied by some more pictures from our journey alongside the Wanganui River. Anyone remember Leonard Sachs? Oh, the good old days. This will also replace your daily dining out as, apart from half a wild boar, no pictures, it would appear we didn’t eat out this week.

This week we have spent quite a lot of time with indigenous people. For those of you that don’t know, the indigenous people of any country are those that were there first. In the case of New Zealand, this is the Maori people, who first arrived here over a thousand years ago. Every country in the world will have indigenous people although, in many cases, they may have disappeared. In olden days very few people travelled around their own countries let alone the world. It was left to explorers, traders and, maybe, some very wealthy people to venture into different lands but there was no such thing as tourism. This of course meant that ordinary people didn’t really know too much about other countries and in turn remote countries, and New Zealand was one of the best examples of this, were able to keep their own culture, their way of life, because no-one visited them.

What I thought I would do this week is make up a little story about a country and how the indigenous people can be affected in so many ways by outsiders arriving to live there. This is not the story of any one specific country but many of the things I will mention have happened in various parts of the world. So here we are, some hundreds of years ago, with Mr and Mrs Indigi, as we will call them, and their family, living in their isolated country, with others in their tribe and living as they have done for hundreds of years. The way they have developed will not have been affected by any outside influences and the lack of contact with others will mean new ideas, developed elsewhere, will not be known to them. One day, a very large ship, far larger than anything they have seen, arrives off their shore. The people on this ship are quite different, have different clothes, speak a different language and have strange customs. Nevertheless you greet them in your own way and they reply. This is Mr Explorer on his way around the world either looking for new lands or, and this would be very bad news for Mr and Mrs Indigi, looking for precious metals like gold. Let’s say in this case there is no gold but Mr Explorer manages to trade some goods in return for his pieces of cloth or beads or something similar.

The explorers stay a while and then they set off home. When they get home, they tell the story of what they have found. Mr Merchant, a trader, who thinks he can make some money out of the things found on this land, overhears this. At the same time Mr Believer decides that he should go and convert these people to his religion. And then Mr and Mrs Settler, who may be unhappy about things in their land, decide to set off and try and make a fresh life in this new land. Suddenly there is, by comparison, a large number of people arriving in this new land. Things begin to change quite rapidly for Mr and Mrs Indigi. The problems begin because Mr Trader starts to take away all the products on the island and leaves behind pretty worthless gifts. Then, apart from Mr Trader who probably just wants to pop in, buy or trade and then leave, the others begin to look for somewhere to live. They need land.

The country in which they are looking for land is unlike their own. If you look at the pictures in this blog, the first four show land around the Whanganui River in the south of the North Island. It hasn’t changed that much from 200 years ago and you can see how wild it is and how covered in forest the land is. It is in places like this that some of the settlers will try to make a home. But, unlike the indigenous people, they will not be used to such conditions. It will be a hard and isolated life. Some may stick to it. Others go back to easier conditions on flatter land. But you have to remember that this land belongs to Mr and Mrs Indigi and their families. They have lived here and now they are having to live alongside these newcomers, who appear to have more material possessions and are able to use things they have never seen. The settlers have guns, they have metal tools, they bring animals Mr and Mrs Indigi have never seen. At first this will impress the native people. They may even find a use for the tools or the guns.

But, after a time, things begin to go wrong. Mr and Mrs Indigi and their friends and neighbours realise they are losing out. Their land is disappearing and these new owners won’t share it. They put up fences and say it’s theirs. They take over the land in several ways, most of which are, shall we say, a little dubious. They can just steal it, overpower the natives and build their settlements there. They can offer goods for land but these native people may have no idea about the value of their land or the goods they are being given. If Mr Believer has been successful in converting some of the people, he may play upon this and tell the natives he needs some land to build a church or whatever. Some companies may become involved, buy a large amount of land and then sell it to people like Mr and Mrs Settler. Mr and Mrs Settler decide to open a store and offer goods to Mr and Mrs Indigi, who are still living on their land next door. But the natives don’t have money so Mr and Mrs Settler say don’t worry you can pay when you do. Then when Mr and Mrs Indigi have big debts, Mr and Mrs Settler offer to write off the debts in return for some more land.

At this point Mr and Mrs Indigi have a choice. They can fight, and probably get beaten and be eliminated; they can flee inland, only useful in a big country where there is somewhere to flee or they can stay and try to live with their new neighbours. Even if they take the last way there are still problems. These new settlers are bringing diseases that are killing off the natives, so their numbers become less. Some of the natives marry the settlers and their children were part indigenous, part European. They then tended to live in a more European, than indigenous, way. The new settlers then set up a government to govern this new land, in many cases claiming it for their own. Even if the takeover was done with a treaty, this could be misunderstood. The new government set up laws, which went against the custom of the native people. They couldn’t do things in their old traditional way, it wasn’t allowed.

In many cases around the world, the indigenous people and their culture simply disappeared. The settlers, the invaders, call them what you want, took over the country, and ran it their way. In some cases the settlers got bored, left and the people returned to a semblance of their old ways. Now, as I said, this was just an example of what happened all over the world at the time when some countries, mainly European ones, began to explore and look for other lands and the riches they might find. Sometimes much worse things happened to the indigenous people. It wasn’t unknown for them to be slaughtered by the invaders. But, here, in New Zealand, although many of the above things happened, the Maori are still a very strong culture. Yes, many died from disease in the early days; most lost their lands, despite there being a treaty that said they shouldn’t, but they didn’t run.

After a while they stopped fighting and now their culture is a significant part of New Zealand life and, in many ways, becoming stronger. It is a good example of the strength of these people. It also shows the difficulty of two cultures trying to live together. What it needs is understanding and tolerance. Taking into account other peoples way of life and trying to fit around. Maybe in New Zealand that is happening a little more now but when the first settlers arrived that was not the case.

We then drove up north some more and despite heading toward the equator managed to experience a couple of seasons in a few hours. The roads were once again treacherous although not from falling trees or landslips but because of snow. Some were not as experienced as I or maybe a little more reckless. Next week you will see what I mean.

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