‘There is a saying in …  in my country’.  He hesitated to describe ‘his’ country in this way; as his, as ‘mine’, as if he owned it, possessed it. It was so commonplace he knew to use such words; no one thought twice about it, or so it seemed. It seemed like he was the only one who choked on these little words. Nevertheless he continued.

‘What is important? It is the people, only the people, always the people.’ He looked around, as if sad, as if elsewhere. ‘I never really understood what it meant until now. Now I know.  All that is important, all that remains, all that makes something what it is; whatever it is, are the people. There is nothing else.’

‘Your country? Adam jumped in excitedly, thinking that there was a chance to find out more about this stranger. ‘Where exactly is your country?’

He looked at Adam squarely, the ubiquitous half-smile on his face. ‘I don’t have a country. There is no place that belongs to me, there is no land, no place that is mine.  So there is no ‘my country’. Its a possessive adjective, that’s what it is. It denotes how something belongs to someone’.

Oh no, not another English lesson!

No, just a personal idiosyncracy. There are a bunch of English words that I don’t particularly like using. Well, most actually, but there are some in particular that stick in my throat. ‘Have’ and ‘have got’, and ‘have to’ for that matter.

‘And should’ I added helpfully.

‘And ‘but’, although I do seem to be using that one a bit more lately. Not too sure why that is.

Because you have been away from us my friend.

This is true. I have, and now I’m back. We are back together.

‘But…’ I paused to make sure he was aware of the word, ‘for how long?’

The half-smile remained on his face as he answered, ‘I don’t know. I never know’.

x bhavatu sabbe mangalum x

Before I launch into this, here’s some rational justification, if any’s needed. I’m a sociologist; a qualified, certified sociologist. I’ve got the paperwork, and I’ve lived the role long enough to be able to identify, if I wish, as a sociologist. Anyway, I’m getting sidetracked.

I’ve been observing my environment quite closely for the last 3 1/2 years, and for some, as yet unknown reason, now is the time to make some of my observations more widely known. Ten in fact. A bit below I rave on about 10 things that I have discovered about the Brits. 

And while I may be a sociologist, I am also a lot of other things, too many to list. So these 10 observations are mine, and mine alone.  Much of the essence of them comes from comparing my life for the last 3 1/2 years with that which preceded it. In that comparison, and in the 10 thoughts that follow, two terms emerge that I firstly want to explain.

Brit: For me this refers to an ethnicity. For me a Brit is not defined through their national identity. ‘Britain’ as a nation has been replaced with ‘the UK’. The red and white of the national flag are the colours of ‘England’. Nationally then people with a passport are English. Being a ‘Brit’ is about your culture, the things you feel, intuite, know and do almost without thinking.

Pakeha:  Another ethnic term that refers to a specific cultural group. A Pakeha is a person who embodies and displays the Pakeha culture: the language, the terminology and symbols, the dress and attitude.

Enough of all that, here we go.

1. Brits are grounded. History surrounds you, literally. It is there, everywhere. You walk in the footsteps of you ancestors.
2. Brits have a fierceness about them. I recently watched the movie ‘The Eagle’, and as accurate or inaccurate it may have been, the images I most recall are those of the clans behind Hadrian’s Wall. Their faces tattooed like those of a Maori tribal warrior.
3. Maybe because of this, Brits do not respect the middle classes. Many Brits I think still do not wish to be identified as middle class. For this reason many of the images that dominate are those of the working class. Brits, as a group, seem to valourise this class.
4. Yet you have also this ridiculous fascination with … I’m not sure what to call them … rich people? They are difficult, perhaps impossible to define in class terms, they seem to be connected as a group, simply be the amount of money they ‘earn’. Although it is beyond my comprehension how anyone, and I mean anyone, can actually earn over a million pound a year. So it is an eclectic group that includes bankers, footballers, business leaders, TV personalities and others.
5. Any many of these people have become the gods of the Brits. Wayne Rooney, Jonathan Ross, Katie Price… Yet these are fallen gods, or so it is often reported. Their dark sides are often revealed to, and revelled in, by their worshippers. Where is the voice of the good? These rich gods do not speak as one. They do not preach or provide guidance. Wisdom is at best a whisper.
6. Often those that do speak, and act as guides, lead their followers into a world of competition. A world of combat.
7. Food. I love British food. Sausages, mash and onions. Yorkshire pudding. Jacket potatoes. Gravy. And you take it so seriously.
8. Curry chips. What better symbol of the generousity, the open-heartedness of the Brits that curry chips. This is, no question, a uniquely British delicacy, and yet in its creation and design, it combines and integrates equally, the flavours of British and Indian cultures. Brits take people to heart. They have a capacity to embrace, accept, and show respect for, those who wish to learn their values, their ways, mores, language and behaviours.
9. So how do you know if you’re a Brit? I don’t know but I think one of the questions that should be on the identity form is this:

If you were given sufficient money to design and build your own home would you make if from brick, wood, straw or clay?

I think that most Brits would choose brick. Me, I’d choose wood every time, I’m a Pakeha and we tend to design, build and live in wood. Wood, for us, is good. I have not yet embodied, as many Brits seem to have, the sense that brick is best. I am reminded though of the three pigs, and that leads me to my last observation.

10.  Brits are not great risk-takers. They admire this trait in others, but view it with suspicion when it appears within their own ranks. Perhaps this has something to do with my first observation. Brits are surrounded by, they grow up amongst, their past. They admire those they can identify with who have somehow escaped from the cloisters of the past. Australians. It’s a love-hate relationship.

x bhavatu sabbe mangalum x

today I missed volcanos
north head and mt victoria
absent from my view

from top of richmond hill,
looking out the eye could see
a far away view

beautiful and empty
of disruptions and volcanos
settled my mind

on being away from home
on things left behind
and the things I carry with me

that make me different
                       that make me pakeha
                                        that make me proud

Made me think of what I could see from home, I could see bumps and lumps, north head, rangitoto, bastion pt, mt victoria, further afield, albert and eden.  I had previously scoffed at the naming of these as mountains – hardly I thought.  Yet from the top of Richmond Hill (and it is a hill rather than a mountain of any sort) I could see so far, unobstructed – no mountains, no volcanos.  No wonder the London Eye is so popular – there is no natural vantage point from which to view the city.

Missing the volcanos reminded me one of the things I was looking forward to on coming to the UK.  I wanted to notice my difference more – my cultural difference,  wanted to have my pakeha-ness made more apparent by being amongst people and things, rules and rituals that were different to those of my own culture. 

And I mean ‘pakeha’ rather than ‘kiwi’, although proud to be a kiwi, that denotes my nationality not my culture.  Being a kiwi means that I am a New Zealand citizen, and as it is, there are many cultures within New Zealand.  There are Japanese and Chinese kiwis, Samoan and Tongan kiwis, South African and English kiwis, and Maori kiwis.  There are also Pakeha kiwis – and one of the main things that denotes a Pakeha kiwi is that we have no other homeland. There is no land from which we have come – we are born and raised in Aotearoa, it is in our blood and our being. It is in the way we speak and the way we think.  There were no “Maori” before Pakeha, and there is no Pakeha without Maori.  I am Pakeha only in relation to Maori.

So what does being pakeha mean? How is it displayed?  Well, maybe I can best describe it in the things I am missing., like:

• Volcanos – we are born and raised in a land riddled with volcanos – and not just volcanos, but ones with names such as Rangitoto, Taranaki, Tongariro, Ruapehu.  
• Maori language – I miss the sounds of those words, Rangitito, Ruapehu, Mangere, Whangamomona, Whangamata. Kuia, kaumatua, mokopuna. And I miss ‘kia ora’.
• Polynesians – Where are the big men and woman, with the big smiles and crazy laughs? Where are the ‘bros’ and ‘cuz’. Dare I say it – where are the patches, the Black Power and the Mob. Where are the Samoans, Tongans, Nuieans, the lavalavas, the colour and the noise.
• Music – Katchafire, The Dudes, Rhombus, Fat Freddy’s Drop, Che Fu, Midge Marsden, Rick Bryant – music, words, melodies infused with something…..pacific
• The Pacific Ocean – Ok I love the Thames, and maybe I will now have a greater appreciation for Hamilton and Palmerston North (hmmm….maybe), but where is the smell, the sound, the feel of the sea, sand underfoot. We know we live on a island, even those of us who live in places such as Hamilton and Palmerston North, yet here in London, it is not so easy to escape to the beach
• Gidday – The friendly smile and gentle ‘gidday’ or ‘good morning’ or ‘kia ora’ with which we often greet each other out in the suburbs or in the towns.
• Wood – the first thing I noticed when I arrived here in London was all the brick. Bricks everywhere. I miss the wood – wooden buildings, houses, shops – and with the wood comes the colours.
• Birds and birdsong – tui and morepork, and cicadas

So those are just some of the things that I miss, in this moment – and yet this does not fill mw with a sense of loss, it is more a sense of pride – a pride that comes from knowing.  Knowing what it is that has shaped me, knowing the things, the sights, sounds, smells – the sensations that have helped to form who I am and how I percieve, understand and create my world around me.

And all this contemplation on pakehahood made me think of all the Brits around me, and of their ethnic identities.  Is there one, or many?  Is it something along the lines of being Saxon, or Norman? And there is a fundamental difference between their ethnicity and mine – for they are tangata whenua, they are the people of this land. What is their story?

x bhavatu sabbe mangalum x