MAORI MEMORIES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 16 October 1939, Page 2

MAORI MEMORIES

OUR SILENT GUIDE, (Recorded by J.H.S. for “Times-Age.”) Having so little knowledge of the Maori language we miss altogether the proofs of his marvellous memory, by means of which he can repeat verbatim and in sequence the deeds and words of a long day’s journey by canoe, on foot, or in the saddle. All day long he’ is silent and apparently bored or sleepy, answering questions with brief indifference, “Aua” (I don’t know). The rest of the company must perforce relieve the weariness by reciting their own oft-told tales and their pretended knowledge of the tribes and the country through which they are passing, perhaps for the first time. Unable to read our newspapers and books, and missing our jokes in a language of which he knows so little, every villager where we stay for a meal or a night is keen to hear the latest gossip or jokes. After a square meal in little green flax baskets, steamed, juicy and tender, with hiakai me kinaki (hunger and relish), we sat around the glowing embers of the central fire in the big whare moe (sleeping house), each on his own moenga of soft fern covered with warm, finely-woven dressed flax. Then our hitherto silent, indifferent young Maori guide was transformed. All day long he was absorbing every word uttered by the party of seven. From dusk to midnight we sat on our couches surrounded by all the men and women of the little village, twentyseven of them, listening intently to his alternate Maori humour, pathos and poetry, all based upon our commonplace remarks of that long day.