fartopolis

“I will jump off the bridge if you give me a coin,” a little Maori kid promises. The bridge is about as high as the one in Mostar, but the water is filled with Maori boys, so I presume they know what they are doing. I give him a NZ dollar, and he puts in his mouth, climbs over the bridge railing and jumps off, to the cheers of his mates.

We are in the area of Rotorua, which in addition to claiming the best weather in NZ, also has one of the highest Maori populations, with about 35% of the population claiming Maori origins and tribal rights….however apparently to do that you only need to demonstrate 1/32^nd Maori descendancy, so I am not sure exactly what all these numbers actually indicate. However, I did hear the (amazing) language spoken frequently about on the streets, and many of the people did appear to be plausibly of Maori origin. In any case, the town is undeniably anxious to show off this aspect of its heritage, as there are signs and tributes to Maori culture all over.

Rotorua is a resort town built on top of an active volcanic region, called fartopolis by some due to the small, and has thus been turned into a sort of natural theme park. Supposedly the Arawa tribe settled in the area in the 8^th century and believed the mysteriously bubbling ground to be somehow connected to the divine, which is understandable as the whole thing is seemingly to weird to have any other explanation.

We spent several hours walking around Whakarewarewa, where large clouds of sulphur smelling steam strangely just rise up from the ground, and Geysers erupt regularly. In some areas, there are piles of mud that appear to be moving about, and it seems like a mud monster could rise out of them at any minute. As a result, the Maori quickly established a system for cooking and bathing using the thermal heat, and they continue to do so to some degree today. I munched on corn which had been cooked in a pond and my dinner was pulled out of what appeared to be a hole in the ground. The White New Zealanders I meet have insisted (a bit, I thought, patronizingly) that the Maori are just happy-go-lucky people content with their lot and their traditions, and much was certainly made of those traditions at the haka we attended. However, I was never entirely sure how much was being put on for some cash and how much was rooted in actual reality. National statistics indicate Maoris make up more than there share of the prison population and the unemployed. The locals I questioned insisted this is because people come over visa-free from places like the Cook Islands and Fiji and pretend to be Maori, and that they are the ones that cause trouble. Wandering around town, I caught glimpses of hugely obese teenage Maori mothers, and kids wandering around without shoes, and wondered if things might be a bit more complicated.