Culture Vulture - Week 78

Can you believe we've been away for 18 months now. In some ways it seems so much longer.. we feel really settled and have established networks of friends, routines and slowly getting the house into a home. Yet in other ways, 18 months seems like a sharp intake of breath since we caught NZ1 and arrived out here.

Anyhow, this week I was lucky enough to be a participant in a traditional Maori welcome - a powhiri (pronounced po-fur-ee) for our clinical director at the hospital (and I like to think me too). It was a big wigs day - the chief exec, chair of the board, chief surgeon etc - and little lowly me (although I'm the biggest big wig I've ever been - hence the invite).

I was a little worried as we had recieved the invite the week before the event and in true disorganised manner was completely unprepared for the day itself. I'd had some insider information so I knew roughly what to expect - only trouble was no one else did.


The way things should work is that we're greeted onto the Marae, have to think about all the ancestors we bring on with us, greive a little, continue in and then all the men sit at the front and all the women at the back. The hosts then greet us by singing a song (in Maori) and then we respond by singing a song (in Maori). I was told that we did this individually so was all prepared - only to find out on the day that we did it as a group - except no one had organised us enouoghto arrange for us to know what to do - what they had done was arrange for one of the hosts to seitch sides and do a solo in response. Not very culturally sensitive - but got me out of the Maori version of Come by ah.

Then we have a formal welcome speech by the chief, and after that all stand up and say a little about ourselves, where we're from, where our ancestors are from, what our mountain is, what our river is and then we all go around and greet one another with a Hongi (as above) and then have a bit of kai (food)

It was a fantastic experience, very humbling and at the same time enriching. I have to say I got a bit teary with the bringing the ancestors on. We tend to forget the ones we've lost and Maori culture is one where our ancestors are celebrated and remembered on a daily basis. It has certainly changed the way I've thought about things in the last week.

Work as always has been pretty crazy. we are having a bit of an OT crisis at the minute. Not so much with my team (we've just employed a very experienced one for the 0.6 vacancy we had (hurrah!!)) - however the main hospital is haemorraghing them pretty rapidly. So I have been in recruitment overdrive this week and hopefully - with a couple of calls over the weekend should have them pretty much back to full staffing. Loads of work to do to ensure they have appropriate inductions and have support to stay around so fingers crossed for me.

We went out after work today. I took a 2 hour early home time (based on the fact I've done about 30 hours extra in the last 3 weeks) and went shopping. At last found some trousers and some running shoes so keep fit starts big this weekend. We met some friends of ours at St' Johns bar http://www.stjohnsbar.co.nz/ who were off to see Holly Smith - a big new zealand singer http://www.holliesmith.co.nz/ . It was nice to do something different on a Friday. The weather (I know - such a Brit, I'llbe talking about tea next) has been pretty good all week. Can't believe how after last winter, this one has been pretty much wind free (only the odd 140kph day). Of course being the weekend it will be raining tomorrow.

We're trading houses in a couple of weeks. Andy and I will be in Oriental Bay for 6 weeks (the POSHEST part of wellington there is) - house and cat sittig. Hopefully at the same time we will rent ours out to one of the Brit OTs I'm hiring which will pay for our holiday in November.

Well that's all for this week. Stay tuned

Steve