Kei te ngenge ahau i te nui o taku mahi… Test tomorrow. Urgh! I’m so tired. Two to four hours a day is a lot of concentration when all the talking is done in a different language… Did I mention that this is usually a full year course, but we're doing it over eight weeks or something crazy? Assessments every week - this first week we've got a one hour test. Week two we have to do translation. Week three it's an essay and a speech... but just before that I have a noho marae with the reo class, and a wananga at Tapu Te Ranga marae with the kapa haka group... Five days of intensive immersion should put me in a good position for the assessments.
Usually our course is taught by Rewarewa (ko Ngaire tona ingoa Pakeha) but today our kaiako was Tipuna, her brother. He’s tall and skinny and completely mad. The overhead projector broke and he sent someone off to find one of the technicians. But while we were waiting, all the course materials were on OHTs, so he got the whole class humming the tune to “My bonnie lies over the ocean…” and singing certain vowel sounds when he pointed to different parts of the room, and swaying from side to side, and waving our arms in the air… so you can imagine how freaked out the technician looked when he arrived and saw us all carrying on like this. But as well as being a clown, Tipuna is also very kind. He spoke to me at the noho marae last year, and his words have continued to tautoko me throughout the year. Rewarewa is really onto it as well. She’s always giving us whakatauki. “He manga wai koia kia kore e whitikia,” she says. “It’s a big river indeed that can’t be crossed. Kaua e give up - don’t ever give up.” My tutor is Dennis Ngawhare Pounamu, who is a very cool dude indeedy, and he’s descended from Te Whiti-o-rongomai, which means I have a connection to him, in a weird, slightly painful kind of way.
So, yeah, I’m really enjoying the class, it’s such a good feeling to be growing in the reo again… but it’s also friggin hard, and exhausting, and… that Rewarewa, he “slave driver” ia.
Me moe au aakuanei…
Zzzzzzzz...
"Ngaire" is a Pakeha name? Damn, colonialism has really gotten out of control.
(The heroine of one of those awful novels I read for my doctorate is called Ngaire...)
Posted by: H. Blackrose at November 20, 2003 03:37 PMYou said:
"… but it’s also friggin hard, and exhausting, and… that Rewarewa, he “slave driver” ia."
Where there's a whip,
K*Pish!
There's a way...