Last day of term is fill in and slide out. My Year 13's opt for shared food, except they are too suspicious of each other to open their bags of chips, lollies and trust in providence. It's about being fair and if you haven't bought anything you don't get to participate. Except me. I pose with my girls then head to the library to argue with the boys. No blood on the carpet and I'm at my computer marking when the last bell blasts.
I go to a Matariki dance/music performance at the Arts Centre. The pouro is soporific, the rhythm of the dance flowing and I fall asleep. It is a live performance after all. I wake up at Robyn's and dinner with her new man. Gerard Smythe, a film maker, and interested in everything.
On Saturday I do more curtain searching before the Cromwell Morrises of Ollie's Olive Oil fame arrive for lunch. The boys are high octane and we send them outside where Kahu separates them on the lawn. Boys love physicality and play fights. I have a hellishly early start on Sunday to get away to the Māori Teachers' Conference. It's like an out of body experience getting myself into the airport, through check in to the Koru Lounge. I don't think, I do. Now that holidays have officially started and I'm not responsible for anyone else, I can switch off.
The conference is about learning and connecting and I'm among friends. This is my fourth conference and I feel the discussion begin to shift away from the deficit and us and them mindset. Perhaps it's being in Wellington, not Rotorua, or that the dialogue nationwide is changing. We talk now about tāngata Tiriti. The double-hulled waka we're all in together. I've wondered about my place as a New Zealander for long enough. I begin to realise I've had a colonised mindset. But mine centres around the patronising tone of the colonisers. That we in New Zealand, in the colonies, are slightly less important, inferior in some way to the power elite of the mother country. Indeed, almost everyone has less power than these people because they have control over so much resource. But it's a mind game too. How difficult it must be to have the legacy of losing dominion over your own soil, tangata te whenua, losing autonomy, not to mention the ability to determine your own future because the land, the resource which defines your future, is taken away.
So I have great sympathy and admiration for Māori, their tenacity in the face of great odds. And their enduring sense of humour. I'm impressed by politicians who speak: Kelvin Davis, Rawiri Waititi. and Kelvin Judd, mayor of Whanganui, a born again recovered racist. We a loud alcohol-fuelled sing-song in the bar after the banquet. A team building exercise if ever I've been in one.
Tuesday afternoon I'm killing time so cool my heels at Te Papa and the Surrealist exhibition. And dinner meet up with an old friend from gliding on days in the Department of Education in 1983-4. Wow, a lifetime ago.
Back in Christchurch I go back to school to catch up. Don't know how I managed all those holidays down in Alexandra, work wise. Thursday afternoon Kahu and I dig up and move all the Halswell Quarry stone I took over to Lis's about seven years ago. Thought I didn't want it and would never use it. Things you learn building a house and landscaping to finish off.
