This morning I took a leisurely drive across to Rotorua - taking my time to get there as I didn't have anything to do until this evening when I was booked in for a Mitai Maori authentic village experience. According to the blurb, we were going to witness a genuine Maori welcome, war dance, entertainment....eat genuine Maori food and have a night-time bush walk. All truly authentic with not a smidgen of commercialism about it. Yeah, right ;-)
Everyone who had booked was collected from their accommodation. I was rather worryingly on bus #13, and I swear it was the wobbliest, squeakiest bus I have ever been on. But it got us there in one piece, eventually. We were then herded into a traditional Maori canvas marquee with trestle tables, chairs, wine glasses etc etc, and serenaded by an elderly maori gentleman alternating between saxaphone and vocals playing what I assume were traditional maori songs.
Once all the bus groups had arrived, our compere welcomed us and introduced the evening. Firstly, he had to figure out which tribe we were. That is to say, how many different nationalities we had in the group. It turns out, we were the tribe of 17 countries. I hang my head in shame - we should have been the tribe of 18 countries, but I kept quiet. Because what the compere was doing was getting people to call out their nationalities, and then he would welcome them in their local language. He did impressively well - managing all the different scandinavian languages, several eastern & western european as well as asian and arabic. But I failed to admit to being welsh. Not because I couldn't cope with "croeso", "sut mae" and "iawn diolch". But I'd been paying attention to the phrases he had learned in all the other languages. And I realised, I don't know the welsh for "chocolate cake"!
Anyway....once we had got through that part of the evening, we went outside and watched them open up the oven. essentially, they heat stones and then put the food over the stones and cover it with damp sacking to bake. This is the covered hangi:
And this is the food. All Sue-friendly - meat x 2 and potato x 2! And as you may be able to tell, the meat was the traditional chicken and lamb. Both native animals of New Zealand and obviously always staple parts of the Maori diet...?!?!?
However, before we ate we had the entertainment. Firstly, a genuine Maori paddle-past in a war canoe. Then a Maori welcome, haka, songs & demonstrations of Maori games and fighting skills. I was amused to see that a lot of the games were essentially juggling passing patterns with sticks rather than clubs. And the women did a lot of poi swinging, including their most complicated pattern of cross and follow!
Please excuse the sarcasm and cynicism. I'm sure what we saw was genuinely of Maori origin. It was interesting and entertaining. But non-commercial? Maybe not. I did have a sneaking sympathy for the look of boredom on some of the faces during the performance. There's a certain point of view that deplores the fact that this performance is what Maori tribes have had to embrace in order to survive in today's world.
After the entertainment we went back to eat, and my goodness but the food was good. I could happily eat there every day for the next year. It's not very often I can go down a buffet table, take something from every bowl, and then clear my plate with enjoyment. Maybe I was a Maori in a previous life, who knows!
So, another interesting way to spend an evening. I am now back in my van and have realised that I have already become accustomed to the smell of
cacen siocled ???
ReplyDeletePossibly. Although the other group we met up with at one point did have a welsh person in it, and she gave a different answer that I absolutely did not recognise!
ReplyDeleteteisen siocled??
ReplyDelete