Visiting Auntie Fran on the North Island

 February 12, 2011

On February 10 we left Wellington to fly to KeriKeri. We were flying with Air New Zealand, which has a very easy check-in and bag drop off procedure for domestic flights. The only thing that I thought was VERY strange, was that you never have to show ID to get on a plane. No one checks your ID when you check in, when you drop off your bags, when you go through security or when you board the plane. (It was the same when we left Queenstown last week.) I guess they don't care who gets on the domestic flights…

We had a connection in Auckland, which had us both worried because we arrived in Auckland at 4:00 and our next flight departed Auckland at 4:20. Yep, a 20 minute connection! When we arrived in Auckland at 3:57 we waited patiently (after all, we are Canadian) to get off the plane (of course we were in the second last row), ran up the ramp and quickly tried to figure out which gate we should go to. It was not close! As we were reading the monitor to figure out where our gate was we heard the announcement that they were boarding our flight. So we ran! (Steve ran quite a bit faster than I… I figured he could tell them to wait for me 😉) No worries though, we weren’t even the last ones to get on the plane. We left about 10 minutes late… I guess they just wait for people who have connections!

Our next little flight was to KeriKeri. What a gorgeous view we had as we were flying in!! The northern part of the North Island is sooo green! We also saw the Bay of Islands (with two cruise ships anchored in the bay) as we were flying in.

I was a bit worried that we wouldn’t recognize Fran when we got off the plane (I’ve only met her once, I think!) But I needn’t have worried… as soon as we walked through the door I recognized her right away… Fran and Ryan look so much alike!

Fran got us to the car and took us on a nice scenic drive to her place in Kaikohe. When we arrived we visited for a bit and then Fran cooked us a delicious home cooked meal. It tasted so good! We’ve barely had any home cooked food in the last 8 months. My favourite part of the meal was the butternut squash cooked with garlic. I’m definitely going to try cooking that one when I return home!

Over the next few days we really enjoyed ourselves getting to know a bit about Fran’s family and friends, getting to know a bit about Maori culture and seeing a bit of the northern part of the island. We both really liked how close-knit the community and families are. Everyone is welcome at any time… and everyone seems to be related or at least know each other.

I’ll tell you a few of the highlights below.

One morning Fran’s friend Rosanna popped in for a visit. It was hilarious and fascinating to listen to the two of them sharing stories about their lives. There was a lot of laughing that morning!

Another one of the highlights was all the home cooked food we got to eat. Auntie Fran is a great cook and we enjoyed home cooked meals every day!

Fran’s brother Boydie lives at the house with her. He had the best sense of humour… very dry and with excellent timing. He always kept us laughing ☺

On Saturday we met some more relatives in the morning and then headed out in the afternoon to see a reenactment of the signing of the Waitangi treaty in Horeke. A few days after the treaty was signed in Waitangi between the settlers and the Maori, it was signed again at Horeke.

When we arrived, the reenactment was just starting. There were groups of Maori people up on the hill waiting to welcome the visitors. We were told to join the group of officials who were acting the part of the guests. We joined at the back of the group when three Maori men came down to "greet" the visitors. For me, it was quite frightening actually…Steve loved every minute of it 😀 They were in traditional dress, tattooed and yelling in Maori. I can imagine it must have been quite frightening for the settlers when it actually happened 171 years ago!

They had some people blowing on traditional horns and then the large groups of people started chanting and singing.

The men were using their paddles to do part of the actions to the chants. I can’t really begin to describe what it looked like. I just can’t seem to find the exact words… it was pretty powerful though!

After this, the visitor group (us included) walked up and sat in the tent across from the Maori officials, the singers and the warriors. Then, a Maori official stood up and did a welcome speech (in Maori… luckily we had Auntie Fran to translate for us!) and then the group did a song. The songs were in support of the speaker and what he just said. This continued on for quite a while and alternated between the visiting officials and the Maori officials speaking.

We got to hear from a few of the Members of Parliament including what we keep hearing in the news is the “Renegade Maori Party Member”. This so called renegade was the last speaker and all the warriors got up to do a Haka at the end to support him and what he just said. Now I’ve seen Ryan and Martin do Hakas before… and I’ve seen them on TV… but there is nothing quite like seeing about 30 people do a Haka right in front of you. They were so close to us Auntie Fran actually had to pull aside the chair in front of me because they were running into it. If you have never seen a Haka you can’t understand the intensity of it. (Look it up on the Internet!) Even young boys as little as 7 or 8 were participating in the Haka and had already developed the strength and intensity needed to perform a Haka.

After the Haka, people started spreading out to visit and eat food. Steve and I had our photo with the “renegade”. Whenever possible hang out with the renegades… that’s what I always say 😉

As we were waiting for the next part Auntie Fran introduced us to many relatives and friends who also happened to be there that afternoon. I got my baby fix playing with somebody’s very cute little 8 month old baby (it was somehow related to Fran… so really somehow related to me...).I can’t wait to get home and play with the eight babies that will have been born while we were gone! (Can you believe that 8 of our friends had, or will have, babies while we were away?!?!)

Next, started a little political “forum”. Which got quite heated and really quite interesting. Similar to treaty problems in Canada, the Maori are also experiencing problems in New Zealand. You can imagine how different people have different perceptions of what is happening and why, so the conversations were extremely fascinating.

Although we didn’t understand fair bits of it because they would switch in and out of Maori, I did learn a new word, which has become my favourite Maori word! The word is Whakahihi (pronounced Fuckaheehee). This word means “the act of showing off”. This word was being bandied about quite a bit in what became a fairly heated political “discussion”.

After the debate the local school kids came up and did a reenactment of the treaty signing and then we waited for the Maori war canoes (called Waka). They were rowing over from the other side of the river. Soon after we first saw them on the other side of the wide river it just started pouring rain! It continued for about 20 minutes or half an hour and the poor paddlers were out there the whole time. When they got closer to the dock we could hear them chanting and calling out in Maori. It was pretty cool.

After this we decided to head back home. We had seen and experienced a lot that afternoon!