hangi & hongi

After Waitomo, we headed to the much-hyped Stray Maori Cultural Experience in Maketu, hosted by a Maori man known as Uncle Boy. We’d heard great things about it from our driver, so everyone on the bus opted for the overnight activity which would include a hangi (traditional earth-oven feast), haka (war dance/chant ) lesson for the guys and poi lessons for the girls (the white ball-on-string things in the picture are poi), and an overnight stay in a ‘marae,’ or Maori meeting place.

Things began alright, with Uncle Boy demonstrating the hongi (‘sharing breath’ nose-touch greeting) and welcoming us to his place. Then it all went downhill. He told us how we weren’t really at a marae, we were just at his money-making tourist accommodation! Uncle Boy shared all sorts of gems throughout the night – how he tries to talk anyone considering any sort of multi-cultural marriage out of it, why he thinks Maoris should stop wasting their time learning their ‘dead’ language and go for Mandarin or Cantonese instead, how he threw out all of his wife’s belongings when she went to Australia on vacation and doesn’t understand why she’s angry, how he evades taxes, and that he makes all the dancers volunteer their time each and every day without providing them any part of the NZ$65 each of us paid.

The scary part was that it seemed like everyone except the four of us thought the whole experience was great and loved Uncle Boy. I’d love to chalk the group’s obliviousness up to translation problems, but since half our group is from the US or UK, I don’t think I can.