Type: article

Jill Hadfield adjusts to life in technicolor in New Zealand.

My daughter’s first impression on arrival here was of entering a technicolor world – more vivid, more intense. Early European artists’ attempts with oils and watercolours fail to do justice to the brilliance of the colours here. It is only with the arrival of acrylics that the New Zealand light explodes onto the canvas. 

Other differences have been harder to recognise. After living in Tibet and Madagascar, we found New Zealand deceptively similar to Britain in many ways. Sometimes I felt I was in a looking-glass world where things were superficially similar but, unsettlingly, slightly different. New Zealand English is one example. Every so often I would bump unexpectedly into the realisation that this was a foreign language! We had entered a world where pavements were footpaths and footpaths were tramping tracks, where sweets were lollies and lollies were ice blocks, where “good morning” was “gidday” and “fine” was “sweet as”.

Misunderstandings could be comic. The waitress who asked us if we wanted paper with our meal; a friend we thought was called Windy till we saw her name written; the announcement on the radio that ‘ear fears’ were going up; the Chinese student  who, during the bird flu scare, got very confused when directed to the Chicken desk at the airport. The following conversations had us puzzled for days until we realised what they meant:

Woman at school gate to small boy: Is that your little sister?
Small boy: Yiss. She sucks.
Are all small boys so casually hostile to their sisters?

Me at a parent-teacher meeting: She’s settled in so well – it’s a really friendly school
Teacher: Yiss. The IKEA policy really works.
The IKEA education policy? Cheap and cheerful? Do it yourself? You always lose the vital bits?
(Answers at the bottom of the page in case you are equally confused!)

Other differences we have enjoyed here, besides the glowing colours and learning a new language, are the relaxed, friendly, upbeat culture; the energy; the outdoor lifestyle; the spectacular scenery; pristine environment; and sense of space. In Auckland, I love the cafe culture and vibrant multicultural society, and the fact it’s possible to live both a 15 minute drive from the centre of a big city and – in the opposite direction – a few minutes walk from a usually deserted shell and white sand beach, with a view of the blue Pacific and a chain of bright green volcanic islands. 

My working experience has been the same combination of surface similarity but with sudden plunges into a totally unfamiliar, brightly-coloured world. We moved here six years ago when Charlie got a job at the University. I started work sometime later at Unitec’s Department of Language Studies and consider myself  fortunate to be in a very creative working environment. My work has involved teaching on an innovative BA in English and Cultural Studies designed for second language users – a first for NZ – and on teacher training courses from initial teacher training to Graduate Diploma, PD courses and tailor made courses for teachers from abroad. As part of my job I have developed courses in World Englishes, Course Design, Group Dynamics and Materials Writing. The NZ twist – the most unusual aspect of my job – was that part of my contract involved helping colleagues to write and publish materials, and last year this bore fruit in Top Tools for Language Teachers.

Another new departure for me was the challenge of working in a hi-tech environment. My last overseas job was in Madagascar, trying to meet the challenge of helping teachers teach with very limited resources. Moving from a world where schools had no books at all and pupils often had slates instead of exercise books to a world of computer labs, data shows in every classroom and online support for all courses, was quite terrifying for someone as technologically challenged as I am!

However the unexpected colour of working here has been finding that Maori culture is such an integral part of everyday working life – ¬not only for Maori but for all Kiwis. I never knew NZ English was a code-mixing variety or how much Maori vocabulary I would need to know until I opened a newspaper and read lines like: ‘the hikoi was organised by the iwi who have mana whenua status’, or ‘thirty-two marae took part in the hui’.It wasn’t just the newspapers. I had trouble understanding my own daughter when she came home from school with stories of her kapa haka group’s performance at a hangi: “it was so embarrassing – in the second waiata my poi got caught in my belt.”  

I teach in Te waka o nga reo – The Canoe of Languages –  and the basis of Unitec teaching philosophy is a bicultural partnership – Te Noho Kotahitanga – which provides for the inclusion of the Maori dimension in all courses taught in the institution, adding an interesting new element to course design. A new marae or Maori meeting house has been built on campus; a wonderful building with dozens of elaborately carved wooden statues. It was opened a few weeks ago with a pre-dawn ceremony to bless the carvings and to return the master carver to his tribe, who bussed up from the Bay of Plenty to collect him, culminating in an official opening with songs and speeches in Maori.

We hold similar traditional powhiri or welcome ceremonies, for new students at the start of the academic year. One was held for all new University staff at the start of our contract here, but the most surprising of all we have attended was one held to welcome kiwi chicks onto a nature reserve on a small Gulf island. The kiwis in wooden crates were carried on shore by the tribe who lived in the area where they had been bred and were welcomed on the beach with songs, prayers and speeches by the iwi, who originally lived on the island. I don’t know what the kiwi thought of it – but for us it was magical.

At my first students’ graduation I was overwhelmed by the cultural mix. Graduation began with a procession preceded by a brass band and a piper in full Scottish dress. The route ran down the main street and on into Auckland’s grand Edwardian town hall, where we were summoned in with a karanga – the haunting Maori song calling manuhiri (visitors) onto the marae. The ceremony then proceeded in Western fashion with speeches and capping, but was enlivened by Pasifika families coming up to place lei round their childrens’ necks. The Maori Studies graduates lined up on one side of the stage, and when the last student had received her degree, she celebrated with a rousing haka!

So for us, NZ has been a mixture of the familiar and the strange, of home and abroad, and the longer we stay, the more we realise how unique it is. We feel privileged to have this opportunity of living life in acrylics instead of watercolours!

The Great NZ Vowel Shift - Answers:
PEPPER, WENDY, AIR FARES, CHECK-IN DESK, SHE’S SIX, THE I CARE POLICY