Shilo Kino on the struggles of learning in a year-long te reo Māori immersion course when the world is suspended high and dry
Have you ever seen a grown man cry? I watched my dad cry while singing him a waiata in te reo Māori. A waiata I wrote for him to the tune of his favourite song, The Doobie Brothers Listen to the music.
Ehara koe i te tangata, he momo koe. You are no ordinary person, I sang to him in my terrible, flat singing voice. I don’t think I’ve ever seen my dad cry before. He usually just grunts and mumbles something under his breath. But the world is changing now and so is my dad. He couldn’t understand what I was singing but there he was, wiping his eyes, and saying ‘cha neat alright’ as if I was six years old again and not a grown adult in the middle of a pandemic.
We are in the middle of a pandemic. People are dying, the world is on fire, the Islands are sinking, the vaccinated and the unvaccinated are at each other's throats and here I am amongst all of it, still trying to learn te reo Māori, the language of my ancestors. Except now I’m learning on Zoom.
It wasn’t supposed to happen this way. All I know is that one day I was at Glassons looking for black tights to wear to the Māori King's coronation celebrations and then my phone buzzed and it was a notification about a Covid case in Auckland. The thought of lockdown dawned on me but I bought the black tights anyway because, apparently, it was going to be cold in Waikato which is where my dad is from. It was going to be my first time going to the week-long coronation ceremony and I was excited to go ‘home’ - whatever that means.
Our trip to Kingitanga was cancelled within an hour of getting the notification on my phone and Aucklanders were told we were going into lockdown the same night. We were to adjust to the new normal again. Except it’s not the new normal anymore. It’s just normal now. That was almost three months ago and here we still are. The languishing of eternal lockdown hangs over us like a dark cloud and most of us studying at Te Wānanga Takiura have accepted that we will probably finish the year out on Zoom.
Which is hard because full immersion rumaki reo isn't really full immersion when you're learning at home on your laptop. For one, the sound is delayed so when everyone is trying to sing the morning waiata, it sounds like when the next door neighbour's cats are fighting. Everyone is out of sync and delayed. Now only one person sings the waiata while the rest of us are on mute, which is nicer for all of us. Then there are the mums and dads in the class who are juggling the reo while homeschooling their kids. I’m barely juggling my mental health, I can only imagine how hard it would be to have to homeschool kids as well.
What I really miss though is what I call the ‘in between moments’ at kura. It’s the mornings before the whanau hui, the conversations in between learning. Like the time I bumped into ex-Warriors player and coach Tony Kemp on the way to the Wharepaku and we had a kōrero about his journey of learning the reo and his battle with depression. It was the serendipitous conversations that would fill my cup, enrich my soul and remind me of my purpose.
I miss eating Whaea Barb’s homemade banana muffins. You could taste the love in those muffins because Whaea Barbs, a kuia in her 60s, would wake at 4 am and spend her morning baking for us. Now we don’t get to have our weekly and sometimes daily shared kai. Food in te ao Māori is so much more than kai. It represents manaakitanga.
I miss Rosa drowning me in hugs every morning, Greta asking, ‘kei te pai koe?’ with concerned eyes, having a tangi with Antoinette on our lunch break after a hard session of learning and then Astley and Maraenui making us all laugh during the times I wanted to cry. I miss the whānau hui every morning where over a hundred of us gather and waiata. These are the special moments that no amount of video calls and break out rooms could ever replace.
On top of learning te reo Māori, there is the kaupapa. Everything we learn at kura seems to be a new topic that digs away at some undisclosed trauma I didn’t know was there, and it gets dug out, like someone shovelling a hangi pit and I have no choice but to get into the hole and inspect it.
Like learning about the guiding principles of Te Aho Matua for Kura Kaupapa Māori. We learnt about Te Aho Matua during lockdown. The principles can be summarised by these whakatauki.
Ahakoa iti, He iti mapihi pounamu. Despite being small you are of great value.
He kakano i ruia mai i Rangiätea, E kore ia e ngaro. I shall never be lost, I am a seed sown from Rangiātea
Both whakatauki celebrate the whakapapa of a child, a seed from Rangiätea, of the supreme deity, Io-matua. Our tamariki know who they are from a young age, reciting their maunga, their awa, their iwi as soon as they can talk. This kind of nourishment is crucial to a child’s development as Māori - something that mainstream school doesn’t have, and something that I am learning only now. As Māori, we will never be lost.
My mum reminded me that I used to speak te reo Māori when I was a preschooler, except I don't remember. Mum said I was fluent and that the words would flow out of my mouth freely and without whakamā. But then I lost it when I was five and we moved to Waipu, the most Pākehā town in the north, second to the Bay of Islands - and I went to a mainstream school.
I remember being so whakamā that when my teacher called my name for the roll, I couldn't even answer ’yes.’ It was like I lost my ability to speak. I used to think I was just shy, but the reality is the environment wasn't an āhuru mōwai, a safe space, for me. I was a Māori child trying to thrive in a Pākehā world. Not only that, I was one of the only Māori in my mainstream class.
I often think about how different my life would be if I went to a Kura Kaupapa school. I spend my spare time now watching Ngā Manu Kōrero on You Tube, peeling my jaw off the ground at our rangatahi who speak the most beautiful and affluent reo. I watch my friends' kids who are barely toddlers, stand up and recite their pepeha more confidently than I do now as an adult. The world has changed, te reo Māori is in demand and look at how blessed Kura kaupapa kids are now. Well, we call them lucky now. I can only imagine how hard it was back in the day. I can only imagine the racism.
Lockdown has been hard for me and I understand others have it far worse. But sometimes I just want to curl up in a ball and zoom scroll until the sun sets and the day is gone. Those are the days when I feel my own mental health depleting when it is hard for me to get out of bed, to go on my daily walk, to even lift open my laptop and click the zoom link. Because staring at a pixelated screen just isn't the same as staring into someone's eyes and having the type of connection only real life can give.
But through all of this, it is te reo Māori that keeps me going. And maybe it is what my tīpuna had always envisioned. No matter what circumstances, it is my language that keeps me connected, that keeps me thriving and that keeps me feeling alive. It is the rongoa, the medicine, for my soul, ahakoa he aha. No matter what. Even in lockdown and during a pandemic.
A big mihi to Papa Tawhiri, Nanny Kaa, to all of our kaiako and my fellow tauira at Te Wānanga Takiura who have kept me going throughout lockdown. He toka tū moana he ākinga nā ngā tai. Your strength is like the rock that stands in raging waters. E mihi ana aroha ki a koutou.
