Kapa Haka

 February 18, 2011

Senne's Summary: We drove to Gisborne and stayed at a Marae. The next day we watched Sheree’s team perform in the Kapa Haka Festival.

This morning we headed out to Gisborne so we could watch Sheree perform in the Kapa Haka Festival tomorrow. (The Kapa Haka is a cultural competition where large groups of Maori people perform dances, songs and hakas.) The drive was quite beautiful… the parts that I remember anyway... There was a gorgeous wild beach (nature wild, not people wild) we passed on the drive… then we drove through a beautiful gorge.

I slept through a large part of most of our drives because of the motion sickness tablets…. These are the windiest roads!!! I still enjoyed the views though!

When we arrived in Gisborne, Fran saw a sign that said "Hangi and Steam Pudding", and then we were off on the search for this elusive thing. Steve and I had no idea what it was, but Fran was pretty insistent that we must find it! We did eventually find it at someone’s house after following many signs. Hangi is a traditional New Zealand Māori method of cooking food using heated rocks buried in a pit oven. We didn’t get to see the pit, but bought 3 servings and went to eat it in the park. (I was actually kind of amazed… there was a LONG line up of people who had also followed these signs.) Basically it was chicken, pork, stuffing, potatoes and sweet potatoes. It was very tasty. The steam pudding was some kind of ginger cake with custard. Also good. While we were eating in the park a dog showed up… I believe he was hoping we would share. But, no such luck for him… we all finished our food😀

After eating we met Sheree and then started driving out to the Marae, where we were going to stay for the night. The Marae was about 90 km out of Gisborne on another windy road… oh how I long for the road from Calgary to Winnipeg… but lets move that road somewhere interesting... I digress… just before we approached the Marae we could see the full moon over the ocean. It really was quite beautiful!

A Marae is a Maori meeting place. It usually has a sleeping hall, and an eating and meeting area. Maori people often use them to celebrate special events or sometimes spend weekends there learning more about their culture. Sheree had arranged for us to stay in the Marae for the evening. We really had no idea what to expect 😀 It was quite interesting. Everybody brought their own pillows and blankets and we slept on a foam mattress on the floor in a giant room with a lot of other people. I can’t really estimate how many, but definitely more than 100 people. It was an interesting experience for us, but definitely not what we were used to! Steve spent the night mostly awake listening to the symphony of snores with Manaia’s foot firmly entrenched on his back; and I spent the night sandwiched between Steve and some other little girl who had spread herself over on to our mattress and was cuddled up to me. Let’s just say I’m glad we experienced it (there’s nothing like learning about something first hand), but I don’t need to do it again. 

This is where we slept!

Saturday Feb 19

So guess what time we woke up this morning??? (Well Steve was awake most of the night, so you can’t really call it waking up.) 4 AM. I kid you not. The lights were turned on at 4 AM!!!! Now, granted it was the big day when Sheree’s team was performing… but we are not used to 4 AM!

Anyway… once we got up Steve and I headed over to the Marae where Sheree and her teammates were preparing.

Here's Sheree getting ready!

(There were two Maraes. One for the team and one for the families of the team.) It is a lot of work to get ready and draw on all of their Moko (tattoos). I was surprised that they drew them on with a sharpie!

We didn’t want to stay too long and get in the way, but got the general idea of what goes on to prepare for competition.

We drove back into Gisborne. The scenery looks different at 6:00 in the morning… who knew? 😉 You know… the morning crispness and all that mumbo jumbo…but the morning fog over the hills and ocean looked pretty amazing.

When we arrived at the Kapa Haka, we found a place to sit on the grass and started watching. There were 14 groups scheduled to perform today, and each one performed about 25 minutes. Their set included an entrance, choral, action song, poi (swinging balls attached to cords) and a haka (challenge ). Haka is our favourite part. It’s very intense. We were lucky enough to see the group that went on to win the whole competition. They were extraordinarily good!

Hawaiki taking a very rare rest!

Even Hawaiki (2 years old) stopped his racing around to do his own little Haka while he watched them! Apparently there were 20, 000 spectators that day. So you can see that it’s a big event! When Sheree’s group came on we moved up closer to the stage so we could see better. Her group did a terrific job, of course!

Steve keeping Manaia amused by creating some sort of complicated handshake

...and also amusing Hawaiki by kicking the ball around in the parking lot

We watched a few more groups and then headed out, beginning the drive back to Maria and Selwyn’s for the night.

Sunday was a pretty quiet day. We watched some of the groups perform in the finals on TV; the group that won it all was “Te Matarae o Rehu” from Rotorua.  After breakfast (although it was really well into the afternoon)  we started the drive back to Auckland.