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The last Thursday of November found us in Maketu, a small
town on the coast in the Bay of Plenty.
We ended up out here for our Maori cultural evening; a rather costly
affair which we feared would turn out to be just another overpriced commercialized
tourist performance. Skeptical and
budget-conscious though we were, we signed up for it and hoped for the best.
We arrived in Maketu and were greeted on the bus by Uncle
Boy. Right away I could tell that this
wasn’t going to be at all the experience I was expecting, as Uncle Boy was
friendly, funny and genuine. He named a
chief off our bus and welcomed us to his extended family, which felt very appropriate
given the holiday we were missing. He showed
us inside, offering us a clothesline for our wet caving clothes and a cold
fridge for our food and drinks. He led
us into the dining area, where waiting for us was a buffet of surprisingly
Thanksgiving-esque food (namely potatoes, pumpkin and stuffing). It felt quite a lot like normal
Thanksgiving, in that I ate a lot of potatoes and not much else.
After dinner we took off our shoes and went into the marae,
which was a lifelong dream of Uncle Boy’s and was only completed a year
ago. The building was simple and modern
and decorated with photos, Maori art, and other cultural artifacts. We watched as our chosen chief (our bus’s
clear senior) was challenged by the warrior, who grunted and advanced on us
brandishing a large wooden spear. Uncle
Boy had warned us that this was the only part of the evening that is taken
extremely seriously, and that if our chief made the wrong move here we would be
asked to leave. Luckily, he did the
right thing, and one by one we went down the line and greeted the whole ‘tribe’
with the traditional handshake and nose touch.
We watched a performance of traditional song and dance, and then were
asked to participate in an action song.
Last to be performed was the haka, and then we ladies learnt a poi dance
while the men learned the haka. We had
lots of fun learning (and messing up) the moves of a very simple dance
involving short poi (basically a soft ball on the end of a thick string). The women who taught us were wonderfully kind
and had a great sense of humor, so they were able to tease us about our
performance without hurting our feelings.
After we reconvened and performed for each other, to
everyone’s great amusement, we started to wrap up the festivities and say
goodnight to our hosts. We slept in the
marae that night, so we all pulled mattresses to the floor and set up our beds,
which felt a lot like summer camp. The
night was nothing at all like I was expecting, but was so genuine and
warm-spirited and wonderful that I couldn’t stop smiling the whole night, and well
into the next morning. I think it might
have been the best Thanksgiving I’ve ever had.
