Chapter 3

Today I have a pōwhiri, an official Māori welcome to the University. It takes place at the Marae in the University, which is based on one of the temporary buildings but with a pair of red painted carved wooden panels joining at a peak making an impressive entrance. There is a paved area in front with two sets of wooden benches facing each other, which is the welcoming area. Aroha and some Māori staff join with me along a path to the marae and then a woman who is part of the host group, including the Vice-Chancellor, assembled on the other side of the marae, calls out in a kind of plaintive wail that soars and dips in an eerie way. Aroha answers that call and we progress to the benches on our side. On our front bench is an old Māori man (a kaumātua, Aroha explains) with a heavily tattooed face, plus Vinnie and a couple of others. There is an exchange of speeches in Māori from the two sides starting with the hosts. The kaumātua speaks first from our side. Then the Vice-Chancellor, who is Australian, speaks in English. While the protocol on the typical marae is that women don’t speak, Aroha explained to me previously that I would be expected to speak. She had taught me a Māori greeting: “Tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou katoa”. I add a sentence of greeting in Finnish and then express in English that I am honoured to be welcomed in this way and hope to learn of the ways of the tangata whenua. I also say that I feel a bond with New Zealand as the myths utilized inThe Lord of the Ringsoriginated in my country. As Aroha had told me, a speech is typically followed by a song, I sing a Finnish folk song that I hope has an elvish quality. The song is visibly appreciated by some of the Māori members.

At the end of the ceremony, the manuhiri, the visitors, basically me, but with the others in support, are greeted individually by the tangata whenua, mainly with a hongi, a pressing of noses, though an alternative appeared to be a little kiss on the cheek. After that we go to another building, the whare kai, containing tables full of a wide variety of food. Aroha encourages me to try the kina and the marinated green-lipped mussels. It is early for lunch but it certainly makes a good lunch for me. Back to my office and some emails. That includes a carefully worded one to Maria plus a few cheery lines to some former colleagues. I open the electronic proof of an article of mine that is to be published, “Pathways to re-narrating gender roles in traditional societies”. It looks in pretty good shape, but I will have another look tomorrow. I am not really concentrating and I don’t want to miss anything.

I decide to walk to the cafe I had seen on Saint George Street,Grounds for Enlightenment. It isn’t too busy. A large polynesian woman in front of me orders something from the counter, and I wait and order a white coffee. I sit at a small table near the front of the cafe facing towards the back. I begin to feel out of place. Essentially everyone here is brown and I am not only very white but clearly the most flat-chested person in the room, and that includes the big guy at the espresso machine. I get out my phone, which I had fitted with a local sim card at the airport, and try to look occupied. An attractive young waitress arrives with a coffee. “Are you the flat white?”

“I beg your pardon.”

“Did you order a white coffee?”

“Oh yes, thank you.”

She gives me a little amused look, but I am too flustered to say anything. After a while, as more people came in, I begin to feel more comfortable.

I head back to the motel. In the afternoon, Vinnie - what a useful helper - is going to show me a house for rent that Aroha had found for me. Vinnie says there aren’t currently apartments for rent nearby and this is within walking distance of the university, not far from the motel. I had never driven on the left before and so did not plan to get a car anytime soon. The place turns out to be an old weatherboard single story house, with a tile roof, while a number in the area have corrugated iron roofs. Vinne tells me it is an ex-state house, one of many built in the post second world war years. Some of these are still owned by the state and rented to families in need, but quite a few had been purchased by tenants and then later sold on to owner occupiers or to landlords. It is rather a plain house, but solid with two bedrooms, a good sized living room, a kitchen with room for a table, a bathroom with a new shower over the bath and a laundry. A galvanized iron rotary washing line is in the backyard. It is a huge contrast to the well equipped modern apartment I shared with Maria in Hartford, Connecticut. It is unfurnished but Vinnie says he knows a good second hand furniture store and there is also good stuff to be had at the ‘Sallies’, which turns out to mean the Salvation Army thrift store, or as he says, ‘op shop’. He says he also could take me into the Manukau Mall, close to the university in a different direction, where I can purchase things I would prefer to be new. So they do have shopping malls! Alright, I will take the house and get settled.

I need to start a new life. The Hartford apartment was situated close to downtown, with easy access to restaurants and cafes and other facilities, and was a mere ten minute walk from my place of work, Ambrosia University. It was very comfortable but it will forever be associated with those rows with Maria. She just did not acknowledge the position she had put me in. Up until that moment our shared political vision had been a cornerstone of our relationship. The fissure in our relationship revealed the fragile nature of that connecting thread.

Two days later Inka has another official meeting, this time with the Chancellor of the University. The Chancellor chairs the University Council, the body that oversees the governance of the university. It is the Council that employs the Vice-Chancellor, who is the administrative head, and chief executive officer. The Chancellor presides over graduation ceremonies and thus has a kind of ceremonial function but also can be influential at certain moments, particularly in the appointment of a Vice-Chancellor. The Chancellor, Sione Latu, is a Tongan gentleman of about 75 who had been educated in Auckland before winning a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford. He had worked in some civil service roles in London for several years. As a distinguished, though now elderly, administrator and scholar, his appointment had a symbolic significance in that South Auckland has the largest concentration of Pacific Island peoples in New Zealand. He is slightly blind, and more than a little deaf. His personal assistant, Beryl, constantly fusses over him. She had brought him some stewed plums, sourced from her garden, and he is trying some when Aroha McLean and the heads of Human Resources and Community Education bring Inka in to meet the Chancellor briefly.

The Chancellor is charming and proceeds to describe, at great length, a visit to Helsinki in the late 60s. He recalls different dishes he had eaten and speaks highly of bilberry pie. He asks me if I had been to Oxford and, fortunately, I am able to say that I had been part of a small Gender Studies conference there in the early 2000s. He doesn’t ask me about my American experience and seems little interested in Gender Studies.

After Aroha and Inka leave, Beryl asks the Chancellor how he finds the plums. The Head of Human Resources asks him what he thinks of Inka, but he doesn’t seem to hear and is more interested in the plums.