DUDE my induction into the Turoa ski school today was so cool!!! Because Mt. Ruapehu is super important to the local Maori iwi (tribe), the whole thing started off with a Maori welcoming ceremony called a powhiri to teach the whole staff about the spiritual and cultural significance of the area. I had zero idea what this would be like, except that there would be food.
Soon after dawn, three employee shuttles came to take us from the bus stop to the marae where the ceremony would be. A marae, I learned afterwards, is basically the heart of an iwi’s community. We got off the shuttles, feeling like kids on a school trip where you don’t know really what’s going on. A guy from our group gave us a quick layout of what would go down, telling us that the women would walk into the marae first and at one point of the ceremony we would touch noses with our Maori hosts.
“It’s not a kiss, just a nose press,” he said, and I laughed along with everyone else, but was also kind of relieved that he recognized that some of us might be a bit nervous about nose pressing strangers XD I don’t know how it began, I just saw some movement ahead of me out of the corner of my eye, and then we started walking in our giant huddle. All the staff made a blobby line with the women in front, led by a woman in our group who knew what was going on. A Maori woman from inside was making a call, a karanga, they said, and we walked towards it, through the wooden gates into a large grassy area. There were eight or so Maori women standing outside of one building, covered in ornate red designs, and three or so Maori men standing in front of another. After a motion from the woman on the far left with a cane and tattoos on her chin, we sat down on wooden benches facing them, this time the men in front.
I have no idea what he said, but an older man with full facial tattoos in lines down his scalp, cheeks and chin walked forwards and gave a speech in Maori. Then someone motioned again, and we lined up to touch noses with our hosts. I was watching everyone to see exactly which hand you shake and what you do with your other arm, but everyone did it differently, so I had no choice but to wing it when it came my turn. I kinda just closed my eyes and bumped my nose against theirs—easy. But when I got to the women, they started changing it up and doing cheek kisses instead, and I ACCIDENTALLY KISSED THE LAST WOMAN ON THE MOUTH!!!!! I didn’t turn my head as much as I should’ve, so I kinda just missed her cheek in my swoop!! I walked away in a daze like how did that just happen, was that real, I have to apologize immediately if I see her again. I haven’t yet, but maybe if she reads this she will laugh.
When everyone had finished the nose pressing, we went inside where they fed us breakfast of meat pies and pastries and coffee. I think this would have been the end of a normal powhiri, but we got to stay until noon. We took off our shoes and padded into the main building, which was filled with more intricate red designs and pictures of our hosts’ deceased relatives—dads, uncles, grandmothers. One of the men tapped the wall a few times with his cane, and this awesome, round-cheeked, spiky-haired lady named Korty explained that in places like this, they believe that all the knowledge from all the people who have ever been here collects in the central beam of the roof, kind of like the spine of the room, and that tapping the wall shakes it up and re-awakens it. We all sat down, some (like me) on the floor like small school children, and learned a song:
“Te ahora (means love)
Te whakapono (means faith)
Me te Rangimarie (means peace)
Tatau tatau ee” (means order)
It was SO COOL!! I was surprised by how easily we all learned the tune and actually sounded like we had sung this before. There’s something about singing with a big group where you can hear your own voice but anything you sing also mixes in with what everyone else is singing too and kind of blurs out any dissonance. Maybe everyone else hated it but I wish people sang together more often.
THEN Korty had literally the whole room introduce themselves!! Do it in your own language, she said, because your language is important to us. That was striking. So different from what you hear all the time in my country—“You’re in America now, speak English!” This woman had no fear in her heart, just recognition and respect and love. So we all grouped up by country and said our names and job and sometimes added our mountains and rivers back home. I couldn’t believe that they took the time to have all 230 of us introduced--every single one got to stand up with their group and be recognized by the whole. Every second was worthwhile to me, even though my legs were restless from lack of stretching space on the floor.
Next, Korty told us the Maori story of New Zealand and how all the land came to be there and what all the mountains are known for—
Ruapehu, Matua te Mana
Tongariro, Matua te Toa
Taranaki, Matua te Tapu
Ngauruhoe, Matua te Pononga
Pihanga, Matua te Hire
I wish I could remember more, but all I remember is that Tongariro is the warrior one because it’s not afraid to blow its top off if it needs to, and that Pihanga is the only female mountain. Korty also told us how to pronounce local names, and how those names came to be. She told us that the lake at the top of Mt. Ruapehu is sacred to their iwi, and they only used to go up there to pray, which made me think differently about hiking up there just for the thrill of skiing down.
Last, we learned another song that one of Korty’s relatives had composed, and as we were all preparing to leave, Korty was like, “Let’s end on a high note,” and we all sang the first one again. I’d had to pee for like an hour but I was still sooo down for another song. Then, right when we thought we were dismissed again, Korty’s cousin with the facial tattoos invited us to come back to the marae anytime we were feeling homesick—to share in any event they were doing at the time, any meal they were having, or to visit their chapel if we needed some space from everything else.
Wow. That unconditional generosity really did make me want to go back. Korty was hilarious and something about her makes me love her already. She was the first of the women in the nose pressing line that morning, and before giving me a kiss on the cheek, she asked exuberantly, “Where are you from, darling?” and her genuine excitement set the tone for my whole morning. I said I was from Texas, and she was like “Oh, lovely!!!” as if that was the best thing she’d ever heard XD Maybe that’s why I accidentally kissed the last lady (who was actually Korty’s auntie) on the mouth; I wasn’t really paying attention to the details anymore, just grinning ear to ear with gratitude that I felt from that one exchange.
I walked away from the whole experience with such a good feeling. “WOW, I loved this morning,” I said to a stranger inside the freezing bathroom. It made me so excited to be there, work there, become a part of the mountain ecosystem. If honoring the mountains is important to Korty, it’s important to me now too.