I arrive at Marian’s half an hour late. The house sits about a hundred yards up a gravel (the Kiwis say “metal”) road, and it looks out on a gentle bay surrounded by islands and hills and mountains. There’s a dock within view, where pleasure boats launch and mussel barges unload their harvest. The view is spectacular.
Marian and Lisa are sitting on the deck, waiting for me to share lunch—another spaghetti pizza!
Canned spaghetti was a part of my growing up (and my kids’ as well, I am embarrassed to admit), and I secretly crave that mushy, overcooked, tomato-soup-flavored pasta, devouring whole cans when no one is looking. My open passion for pasta has nothing to do with canned spaghetti; they are different species. It has been probably ten years since I’ve had spaghetti out of a can. I am happy to be in a land where I will not have to hide my bizarre craving.
Marian’s house has pine-board walls, three small bedrooms, a kitchen, and a deck with that fabulous view. It is a house that feels loved: there are interesting paintings on the walls and beautiful pottery on the kitchen shelves.
“It’s wonderful. I definitely want to rent it,” I say within one minute of my arrival. “Tell me about the community. Is it friendly?”
“Well,” says Lisa, “I live around the corner, and Judy, the woman from Servas, lives up the hill. We’re friendly.”
Marian says that she will be around for a couple of weeks while she sorts things out. There’s a small room attached to the garage where she’s planning to sleep. It feels a little weird kicking her out.
“We can share the house until you’re ready to go,” I say.
“It’s no problem,” she says. “The room is there for just these circumstances.”
“OK,” I say, “But let’s have breakfast and dinner together.” She agrees.
I’ve done it. I’m renting a spectacular view and a house that fits me. I already know three people in the neighborhood and I haven’t even tapped into the alternative community that Neville spoke about. All this for four hundred U.S. dollars per month, a lot more than Bali, but a lot less than most of the places I saw in Rotorua and Auckland.
When Lisa leaves, Marian and I have a chance to talk. She’s around my age with a strong, square body that has been tramping (that’s Kiwi for trekking) in the surrounding mountains on a regular basis, even though she has a bad hip. Her dyed red short hair is half grown out, the white roots considerably longer than my white roots. She tells me she’s growing it in; I’m just lazy.
Turns out that both Marian and Lisa were relieved when I stepped out of the car. They’d been afraid that I would arrive, young and svelte in heels and makeup. Instead, I arrived in sweatpants, sandals, and white roots.
For Marian, renting helps with the expenses of running the house. Just that week she had mentioned to Lisa that the place was available if anyone came along. She was thinking weekends or Christmas, but a six-month rental will give her a long visit with her daughter on the South Island, and money for the winter.
During the first week, before Marian takes off for the South Island, I discover that I have rented more than a house. I have rented—for the next six months—Marian’s life.
“The book club meets on the first Monday of every month,” she says. “Here’s the book for next Monday.” She hands me Heart of the Countryby New Zealand author, Fay Weldon.
There is the cat, Blackie, whom I have offered to take care of (Marian is taking Nick, the dog).
There’s the vegetable garden (I plant tomatoes and basil and dill to add to Marian’s New Zealand spinach, silverbeet (Swiss chard), parsley, green onions, rhubarb, and mint.
And the Forest and Bird Society. I have a list of the lectures.
And Judy and Lisa, who are both accustomed to stopping by Marian’s for tea or a chat. They continue to do it, even after Marian is gone.
Only the name, shape, and accent of the occupant have changed.
When I stand on the deck of my house, I can watch the mussel barges en route to their mussel farms. The barges are small, gray boats about fifty feet long; the mussels are the succulent, sweet, juicy greenshell variety that New Zealand exports all over the world. Before I am settled in, I rush off to a little white shack about a mile away with a metal corrugated roof and a big sign: OYSTERS AND MUSSELS.
“Hi,” I say, standing in front of a table stacked with craggy gray oysters. “My name is Rita, and I’ve just rented Marian Williams’s house for the next six months. I can’t wait to taste your mussels and oysters.”
“Welcome, Rita,” says the young man in jeans and white, rubber “gum-boots.” “My wife and I stayed in a caravan on Marian’s property when we first got here. I’m Greg. Where are you from?”
He is being polite by asking. Three words are more than enough to tell anyone that I’m a Yankee. Greg gets his oysters from his own oyster farm just a few hundred meters around the bay. I buy a big bag of mussels and two dozen oysters.
“But I don’t know how to open the oysters,” I say.
“Then why don’t you take a tube?” He holds up a plastic container about the size of an olive jar.
I watch him insert the knife, twist it, and pop the oysters into the tube. Rushing home with a bag of mussels and a tube of oysters, I ecstatically devour them all, cooking the mussels in about a quarter inch of water, some white wine, garlic, and a sprinkle of herbs. Even if the people weren’t terrific, even if the geography weren’t spectacular, even if the town weren’t so charming, I could live forever in Coromandel, ecstatically consuming its seafood.
The next time I buy oysters and mussels, about five days later, Barbara and Ray are with me. They’ve come over on the ferry from Auckland for the weekend. I suspect they want to be sure that this foreigner they have taken under their wing is settling in OK. We pull up to Greg’s shack and get out of the car. Ray is driving, happy to be renewing his relationship with Old Blue; it is obvious that he still has an emotional attachment to her. We walk inside.
“Hi, Rita, how are you?” says Greg.
Barbara and Ray smile like proud parents when they hear him greet me by name.
That night, Judy, Arn (Judy’s husband), and Marian (she hasn’t left yet) join us for dinner. I feel as though I’ve been here forever. When English is the spoken language, things move more quickly, especially when everyone is as warm and welcoming as these Kiwis.
Over dinner, I mention that while I’m in New Zealand, I’d like to visit some schools and talk to kids about writing, words, my life. I’m thinking that I will visit a different school each week.
“Why different schools?” says Ray. “Why not develop a relationship with one school. You could sort of adopt them.”
“Is there a predominately Maori school in the area?” I ask.
“There’s a Maori community just over the hill in Manaia,” says Judy. “It’s ten minutes away. The principal of the school is a friend of mine.”
The school is a complex of white buildings with bright red roofs, sitting in the middle of bright green fields (called paddocks). There are sixty kids, ages six to thirteen, three teachers, and a pile of parents and paraprofessionals. I visit all three of the classrooms. The kids are beautiful, natural and relaxed, even in front of a strange-accented foreigner. Most of them have dark hair, bronze skin, and big curious eyes.
I talk about where I’m from and where I’ve been, and I pass around a pile of my books, which I leave with Vicki, the principal. I tell the kids that I will be coming in once a week. I’ll talk about writing, play games with words, fool around with poetry, and I’ll tell some interesting stories about the places I’ve been.
“You can ask me anything you want,” I say. “And I also want to learn about you.”
Before I leave each classroom, I share with them the fact that I’ve only been here for a little more than a week and I don’t have very many friends.
“One of the reasons I visit schools is to make friends. So I’m hoping that whenever you see me in town, you’ll shout, ‘
Hi, Rita,’ even if you’re across the street. Can you do that now?” Everyone shouts out my name.
“I feel less lonely already. See you next week.”
I live in Coromandel, on and off, for twelve months; and nearly every time I go into town (ten minutes from my house) some little voice shouts at me from somewhere, “Hi, Rita.”
I make as many inroads into the community as I can. My plan while I’m here is to write a book proposal, but I don’t intend to be compulsive about it. I also want to become as much of a local as I can. I get a library card and I chat with the librarian; I subscribe to the New Zealand Herald and introduce myself to Jan, the mail and paper delivery person (who also will deliver stamps, milk, or emergency shopping items). Whenever I go into a store (the small supermarket, the butcher, the pharmacy, the stationery store, the craft stores, even the post office), I introduce myself and try to remember the faces and names of the people who take care of me. And I go religiously to the book club meetings and the Forest and Bird lectures.
Forest and Bird is a national organization devoted to protecting the delicate ecosystem of New Zealand. Introduced plants and animals are the enemy. Up to twenty thousand kiwi chicks are eaten by predators each year. Rats, mice, stoats, all introduced animals, are decimating the native birds. It has been estimated that seven out of nine hatchlings are killed by stoats (a kind of weasel).
The possum is another introduced animal that is causing trouble. The first ones arrived from Australia a century ago. Today there are 70 million of the pests eating twenty thousand tons of foliage every night. There are so many of these nocturnal creatures that “possum trapper” is a respectable occupation.
Every Friday morning I make an appearance at the Bizarre, formerly called the Bazaar, a secondhand store (“op shop”) that benefits the community. It’s run by a group of women who are nearly all past seventy. They sell plants and vegetables, clothes and knick-knacks. The locals show up before nine, which is when I run into my Forest and Bird friends, fellow book clubbers, and neighbors.
Coromandel is a real community. I like the people and the size and the mix. I have met descendants of old pioneering families and newly retired city folk, fishermen and marine farmers, businesspeople and weekenders, sheep farmers and orchid growers, ministers and yachties. And the Maori community of Manaia.
I still haven’t met the “alternative” segment of Coromandel, the artists and writers and potters that drew me here in the beginning. But I’m just going to live. It’ll happen.
And it does. I’m having trouble with my computer. Not too long ago I saw an ad for “Cyberplace” in the local newsletter. It’s time for a visit.
Early one morning Old Blue and I drive into town, past hills dotted with cows and sheep (there are more than 47 million sheep and around 3½ million people in New Zealand). We drive between fields filled with white daisies, yellow thorny gorse (the curse of farmers), and Queen Anne’s lace. I stop for a family of pukeko, big black birds with long red legs, that are ambling across the road. En route I count four dead possums, flattened by tires while on their nocturnal eating frenzies. And in the water on the left, just beyond the mangrove trees, are hundreds of sticks coming out of the water . . . Greg’s oyster farm. At low tide, you can walk out and see the oysters clinging to the wooden frames, waiting to be harvested.
When I park Old Blue outside the post office, a woman is getting into the car in front of me. There is a big CYBERPLACE sign on the side window.
Christine and I talk on the street for the next twenty minutes. She’s a writer and a computer whiz. We make an appointment for the next morning. When our conversation is over, she says, “Come to my birthday party tomorrow night.”
I do, and another part of the Coromandel world opens up to me. Christine and her partner, Henry, are building an earth house, brick by clay brick. The party is on a dirt-floor living room with a roof but only one wall. There is singing by a bonfire (several of the guests play guitar) and a potluck dinner. And writers and artists and actors and potters and musicians.
Gradually I slip into a rhythm, writing, teaching, going to meetings. One Wednesday, after I spend the morning talking with the three classes in Manaia School about Borneo, orangutans, and books, Vicki, the principal, invites me to come to “Pit Day” on Friday. I have no idea what “Pit Day” is, but I tell her I’ll be there. I am fairly certain it must be what the Maori call a “hangi,” where they dig a pit and cook meat and vegetables over hot rocks. I’ve been wanting to try a hangi meal ever since I heard about them.
On Friday, I arrive to discover a playground filled with calves, lambs, dogs, horses, birds, rabbits, and even a spider in a cage; not a pit in sight. “Pit Day” turns out to be “Pet Day.” The short Kiwi e is pronounced like the American short i. Pet is pit. Seven is sivin. Kevin is Kivin. The next week I tell the kids my mistake and we discuss the different ways languages and pronunciation develop.
There are “heaps of” Kiwi words and expressions that we don’t have in the U.S. “Good on ya” instead of “Good for you.” “Buggered” means exhausted. “Chuffed” means pleased, and “dodgy” means bad, unreliable, spoiled. “Bickies” are biscuits. “Rellies” are relatives. “Presies” are presents. And a “bach” is a weekend/holiday home.
A “cobber” is a close friend. A “chook” is a chicken. You buy a “punnet” of strawberries at the market. “In the nick” means naked, but “in good nick” means in good shape. “Shit ay” means fancy that, bit of bad luck, reckon. And a “fly cemetery” is a sliced cake filled with raisins.
If you’re invited for a “cuppa,” it’s usually tea in the afternoon. But if you’re invited for “tea,” it could be dinner.
There are also a heap of Maori words that have crept into people’s everyday speech. Newscasters and telephone operators say hello with “Kia ora” and good-bye with “Haere ra.” Your mokopuna are your grandchildren, your whanau (wh is pronounced like an f ) is your extended family group. Your whakapapa is your family geneology. A waiata is a song. A paua is an abalone; a pipi is a kind of clam.
And then there are the “blokes,” as in, “He’s a good bloke.” The Oxford New Zealand Dictionary, quoting Review of 1959, says a bloke is a “practical, unimaginative, adaptable, prejudiced, smug, kindly, resilent, casual, slangy, independent, open-hearted she’ll be right New Zealander.”
One week I ask everyone I meet what defines a “bloke.” Some of the answers are: Blokes drink beer, not wine. They wear black wool singlets (sleeveless shirts) and dark green shirt-jackets, gum boots, and rugby jerseys with sleeves cut off. They eat stews made with carrots and onions and potatoes and dumplings. At a “barbie” they favor the grilled sausages over the salads. They’ll eat cold mutton sandwiches for lunch and maybe fried eggs, sausages, and bacon. Meat pies. Fish and chips. Things like asparagus, cauliflower, peppers (called “capsicums”) are suspicious. So are foreign foods, like quiche and even pasta. If you can hunt it, like wild duck or rabbit or pigs; catch it, like fish; or pick it, like watercress, it’s OK.
I have fun playing with the differences in our languages. And I am shamelessly stopping people in midsentence with “What was that word? What does it mean?”
As a word-person, I love listening to and discovering the differences in our speech. I find myself saying “Good on ya,” and “tomahto.” And asking whether the “chooks are laying.”
I’m feeling very much like a local when I get an e-mail from the kids. Mitch, Jan, and Melissa are coming in February. I can’t wait to see them. We’ve been e-mailing practically every day since I got here three months ago. I feel as though they’re very much a part of my life. Also, calls between New Zealand and the United States are easy and not that expensive, so we talk often. But even daily e-mail contact isn’t the same as face to face.
The kids begin their visit in Auckland with lunch at Barbara and Ray’s house and a drive around the city. I feel as though I am introducing family to family. They are all fascinating individ
uals in their own right. Mitch, and Melissa are hyphenates: each is a journalist-writer-editor. Jan is an executive producer for a new media company, having recently shifted from the editorial to the business side. They are all teaming with technical crews to break new ground in an industry that changes by the minute. I find it incredibly exciting to talk to them about their on-line jobs, where there is no past and a limitless future.
Ray and Barbara are fascinating as well; they have been an integral part of the literary history of New Zealand, guiding, encouraging, and discovering literary talents. My greatest pleasure for the past months has been reading the novels and stories of New Zealand authors, many of whom Ray has represented or published.
While the kids are in Coromandel, Mitch plays golf on a course that is built over old gold mines where, today, hundreds of sheep graze on the greens; and Jan goes scuba diving and comes home with forty scallops for dinner, doubling the twenty-scallop limit when her dive partner contributes his catch to us. I sauté the scallops, both the white part and the succulent sweet pink roe, in butter with a little garlic, a touch of parsley, chopped green onion from the garden, and a few squirts of lemon from our neighbor’s tree. We begin the meal, of course, with mussels and oysters (which I can now open by myself).
One afternoon I have a chance to relax with Melissa, which is always great; she’s so easy to talk to. There’s something about my daughter-in-law that is so much more than just a single addition to a family. She adds a depth and a dimension that makes everyone bigger and better and more relaxed.
After a week, we take off for the South Island in Old Blue. En route we soak in the sulfur baths of Rotorua and bike along the Marlborough Sounds. In the magnificent Abel Tasman National Park, we tramp, swim, and go kayaking. What a beautiful country.