The Men of Pike River Mine, Westland, Aotearoa/New Zealand

 

 The Men Of Pike

They came from near and far away
The men of Pike to work that day.
The afternoon shift way down deep
Beneath the mountains oh so steep,
A long way in but further out
The afternoon shift sets about.

A job not flash but hard and trying,
A job that holds the risk of dying.

From seventeen to sixty two
They start their shift to see it through,
For one his first, for all their last
How could they know there’d be a blast?

For all at once no siren whining
Suddenly the worst in mining -
Dust and rubble fill the air,
A loader driver thrown clear,
Just one other finds the light,
The rest are hidden from our sight,

And so we learn as news is spread
The news that mining families dread,
It’s up at Pike there’s an explosion
Faces drop and hearts are frozen
Who, how many, where and why ---
Will they make it ---- will they die?

Fathers, husbands, brothers, sons
Coasters, Kiwis, Aussies, Poms
Mates and friends who we are seeking -

Could robots work where men are mortal
To pierce the dangers of that portal?

But alas, all effort fails
The darkness of the mine prevails
A second blast of rock and thunder -
Hope and prayers are rent asunder.

A nation weeps and Coasters mourn
Pike falls silent, dark, forlorn.

A hole remains within the ground
Devoid of joy, of life, of sound
Another hole within the heart
Of those forever set apart
From those they loved who went to toil
Digging coal beneath the soil
Those who gave their lives that day
To work a shift for honest pay
They wait at rest within their mine
The men of Pike, the Twenty Nine.

Sean Plunket

In remembrance for the twenty-nine men who were killed in the Pike River Mine Disaster. The first explosion happened on the 19th November, 2010 at about 3.44pm. Thirty-one men were inside the mine at that time, two escaped and were treated for moderate injuries. The remaining twenty-nine men were believed to be at least 1,500 metres (4,900 ft) from the mine entrance. This initial explosion damaged the mine's gas drainage line, causing methane gas to begin accumulating in the mine immediately. As there may have been a potential ignition source, it was too dangerous for rescuers to enter the mine and would probably be too dangerous for several days. A second explosion occurred at 2:37pm on the 24th November, 2010. At that point, Police Superintendent Gary Knowles said he believed no one could have survived. The second explosion sent smoke, soot and explosive gases up a mine shaft where a team of rescue staff had been taking samples; the noise of the rising explosion provided them enough warning to escape. They were very lucky I think. Then there was a third explosion which occurred at 3:39pm on the 26th November. A fourth explosion ignited the coal within the mine; the subsequent fire was visible above the ventilation shaft; the steel structure above the shaft was damaged and neighbouring scrub set alight.

A service was held at the Holy Trinity Church in Greymouth, where hundreds of people gathered to mourn the loss of the workers on the 24th of November.

Bloggers Not Beaten by Jack Madrid After All

Read that article here.

Here's the thing. I came online and my friend Lynne had put up a note linking to this online article from the Manila Bulletin Publishing Company. So I made a note with the link too but when people went there they got "The requested page could not be found." I was hoha but then I realised I still had my original tab open with the article still there. So I have copied and pasted. Up you, Jack.

http://www.mb.com.ph/articles/345335/jack-madrid (original link to article)

Jack Madrid

Country Manager, Multiply Philippines

By REGINA ABUYUAN

December 19, 2011, 4:16am

MANILA, Philippines — If you look at my job history, you’ll see I don’t like easy jobs,” says Jack Madrid, country manager of Multiply Philippines.

Energetic and articulate, adept in people management and with vast business experience in diverse fields, Madrid was a shoo-in to establish Multiply’s first headquarters in the Philippines. “There are lots of challenges, lots everyday,” he says of Multiply’s shift from a social networking site to a fully functioning e-commerce platform, “but that’s what keeps me going.”

A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, Madrid has been involved in banking (Citibank N.A., Vice President for the World Communication Group based in Hongkong), conglomerate work (strategic planning and business development for Ayala Corporation, for which he also helped acquire Maynilad and start its dotcoms), media and entertainment (Managing Director for MTV Philippines), BPO (Dell), and country manager for Yahoo! Philippines, where he established local operations and spearheaded its growth as the country’s leading digital news and content provider.

Here, he talks about the power of the Pinoy in transforming the digital and e-commerce landscape, and why Multiply—though started in the United States and now owned by a South African company—can be considered as truly Filipino.

Business Agenda: Just how big is the Multiply community?

Jack Madrid: We’re growing daily, weekly, monthly. Our latest count is now 95,000 Multiply sites with over a million products for sale. These are the users that are registered as merchants, with over 2,000 new merchants coming online each month. We have almost five million unique users every month.

Obviously more stores are more active than others, but we have the biggest storefronts in all of Asia.

BA: How did it grow this big?

JM: Multiply has been around since 1994; we estimate the first Filipino store started in 2006. That was when Pinoys started using Multiply as an advertising platform for goods for sale. In the beginning it’s funny—we were telling them to stop; it’s against the terms of service and so on. That went on for a couple of years. Even the founders thought it was some sort Pinoy aberration.

But sometime in 2008, the overall traffic of Multiply went down. And they realized it was Holy Week in the Philippines, and they said this is serious. It’s time to take a look at this. They took the Philippines a little bit more seriously. They said, “If they want to sell goods online, we can’t stop them.”

Then, in 2010, when Facebook took over the Internet, they really had to figure out what’s next. So we got on the radar of a company called Naspers. It’s a South African company that became big through traditional media—TV, cable, print. But some years back, they decided to invest seriously in the Internet. So they put up another company, a wholly-owned one called MIH, which invests and operates Internet companies in emerging markets around the world. For example, they bought a company in Poland called Allegro. It’s the biggest e-commerce company in Eastern Europe, a billion-plus dollar company, and because of Allegro, eBay had to leave eastern Europe. We’re trying to replicate that success in emerging markets like Africa and Latin America.

So Multiply is a U.S. company, technically, but its biggest community is in the Philippines. Without the Philippines, we wouldn’t have moved to become an e-commerce company. The only other Multiply office outside the U.S. is in Jakarta, which has the second biggest community.

(Two years ago, Naspers bought another Filipino company, Sulit.com.ph. A few years ago, it announced its purchase of Level Up, another company born in the Philippines that became big in Brazil.)

The business model for Multiply was to transform the company into e-commerce, build an office, hire a country manager, and let him hire a team. So my Jakarta counterpart and I joined the same day, on February 7, 2011. In the Philippines, I’m employee no. 5. Today, we’re 41. It’s very exciting.

So what we’ve been trying to do since then was to migrate the existing stores of Multiply to the new platform, which is called Multiply Commerce. Since May, we’ve been migrating them from photo album (format) to product listing, with additional functionalities to include product information–color, size, how many are available, price.

BA: Why should your vendors want to migrate from the old Multiply to Multiply Commerce?

JM: It gives a better shopping experience for the buyer, and it’s more efficient for the merchant to use Multiply Commerce. Once you’re a product listing, your goods as a merchant can be bought through Multiply. Currently, it’s through a meet up, or (through means where the) buyer takes a risk.

Now you can make use of the payment gateway of Multiply; you have the confidence of paying through Multiply.

The second thing is that we have a shopping cart. The buyer can buy several goods from one store, or one product each from different stores. Then you can check out, with all delivery charges there, and fill out your payment details. Then you’re given a transaction reference number, which you need to know when you’re paying at the bank. And you’re done. Seller gets paid 24 hours later, and you get your product.

BA: What are the current payment options?

JM: You can pay through BDO, BPI, GCash, Paypal, Visa, MasterCard, AMEX and JCB. Soon, you’ll be able to pay through Smart Money, Bancnet, Citi Mobile and Cebuana Lhuillier.

BA: How many are on Multiply Commerce now?

JM: Five thousand merchants have already migrated to the new system, with over 92,000 product listings combined.

BA: What made you want to take on this post?

JM: E-commerce is still in a very nascent stage, and I believe in coming in early. It’s also a unique opportunity for me, because I came from Yahoo!, and I had a little experience in my Ayala days with dotcom start-ups.

This was an unusual start-up situation. No. 1, it was really a start-up, the office was empty, but Multiply is a brand that needed no introduction. Everyone knew about Multiply. They even knew it was about shopping, not about social networking. No. 2, our community in the Philippines already decided what they wanted us to be. Normally you have to explain what you’re doing. In this case, it was the opposite—they told us. So that’s a very unique thing. No. 3, unlike other start-ups, we were funded. Naspers gave us money to put up a decent office and hire people…I’ve been in start-ups before when we were always raising money. Half of the time you’re raising money. And no. 4—which convinced me to join—where can you find an Internet company where the biggest market is the Philippines? Now Yahoo! is very big, much bigger than Multiply. But even if I increased Yahoo’s business 20 times, it will still not be the biggest. (Then-Yahoo President and CEO) Carol Bartz would have still not have known me. And that’s why I joined.

BA: You named those four reasons for joining Multiply, and you make it sound too good to be true…

JM: I’m good at that (laughs).

BA: …so what challenges do you have, if any?

JM: E-commerce is the most complicated (business). Anything can go wrong, anytime. We’re not in control of the payments, delivery, logistics—they’re all external. I don’t even know what happens after between buyer and seller…there are some sellers who can do funny things. So that’s one operational challenge.
Internally, managing a company of 40 people is not easy either. Especially when you have to hire them in three months. People management is an art and a science and there’s no formula, but there’s a way to do it. If you do it too fast, you can suffer from people indigestion.

BA: What do you uniquely bring to Multiply?

JM: People management, I would say. My business experience. My knowledge of start-ups. And I think building the right team. Because at the end of the day, regardless of the business, what matters is hiring the right people. And that’s not enough. You’ve got to get them to do what needs to be done in an aligned fashion, and to make this fun and fulfilling as possible. To me all work is the same if you follow those principles.

One of the things I do for Multiply, and I can say this about digital as a whole, is evangelizing and educating what digital is. This is one thing I learned in Yahoo—even agencies—they think of digital as a separate piece of marketing. When you talk to someone in the agency, they’ll say they’ll need a “digital person.” “Look for someone for me who’s good in tech.” No, it’s not tech at all. I’m not a techie, believe me. It’s really about—to me—how to reach younger people. That’s all digital marketing is. It’s no different from traditional marketing. Don’t think of digital as separate. Think of it as part, an integral part of your overall marketing campaign.

In my presentations, I show a scene. A typical scene today—a guy watching TV, with a cellphone in his hand, and his computer on. This happens in every room. You’ve got three screens in one room. Twenty years ago, everyone would be glued to just one screen in one room.

If you’re a brand, your marketing strategy has to change, right? you can’t throw 95 percent of your budget to TV and 5 percent to digital. Digital has to be part of your overall campaign. Which is why I’m excited about e-commerce, because more and more of our lives are spent online. And shopping is going to come next. It has to, especially when we fix the payment system, when more Pinoys have credit cards, when our delivery systems is in place, when there are more e-commerce sites, it will all come together.
BA: So why don’t people just go to Facebook or Sulit.com?

JM: To me it’s all one big ecosystem. A lot of our merchants use Facebook to drive clients to their site. We spend money on Facebook, just to draw awareness. Everyone’s there so you can’t not be there, but just because you have a page or many fans doesn’t mean you’re going to sell.

Let me explain why Sulit is different from Multiply. Sulit is like classifieds. If you were selling a watch or a car, or two phones, you would list it on Sulit. But if you want to go into a business, like if you had a collection of cars or watches, then you go to Multiply.

BA: Anything goes with your merchants, correct?

JM: Yes. Half of our goods are probably apparel. Tech gadgets, cameras, cellphones, accessories are the second biggest. Next would be baby-related items.

BA: Aside from the shopping cart and payment systems, what sort of protection do you give merchants?
JM: We have a product called Trusted Merchant. It’s a work in progress, but it exists. We verify the accuracy of a seller’s information. We want to know who he or she is, where they live, what their phone number is, we get copies of their business registration—it’s our way of telling the shoppers we know this merchant. If it’s a trusted merchant, we allow them to put a “trusted badge” on their site. There are a couple of hundred of them now; there’s a cost to the processing, but these are the merchants we can say we know.

BA: Can you give us a profile of your usual merchant?

JM: There’s no one profile. The majority are women. Maybe 25 years and up. We invited 50 or 60 merchants one day, I don’t know if that was representative but 80 percent were women. But almost all are working, and this is an important part, but not their only source, of their income.

BA: Do you have any anecdotes or success stories about your merchants?

JM: We’ve a few merchants who have become very big. In the category of gadgets, there’s Kimstore and her competitor called Bbgadgets. There is no cheaper place to buy a camera or cellphone than Kimstore. She’s a Go Negosyo awardee and is only 22 years old.

We also have this group called Multiply Millionaires. We talk to them. They say their dream is to have a real store. It’s funny. If you’re online, size does not matter, you can talk to anyone. Then we also talk to the big brands. So these brands tell us: their dream is to have an online store. So I think we’re coming in this (industry) at a right time.

But we have a long way to go. Every week we’re experimenting and adding new things. But what I like about our owners is that we’re not going to take any shortcuts for success. We’re here for the long term. And to show you how committed we are, we’ve decided to waive our transaction fee until early next year. We have a transaction fee of 3.9 percent; we net out the proceeds from the buyers, but because we really want Multiply to be the marketplace of choice online, we decided to waive that till next year.

BA: Do you have other revenue streams?

JM: We have an advertising sales team and I think the advertising solutions we bring are quite unique. I think what makes e-commerce interesting is that the people who go to Multiply have a different mindset. If you go to for example, Yahoo!, you’re there to check your mail, and maybe you’ll read one or two headlines before you check your mail. But if you’re going to Multiply, you’re there to windowshop or you’re curious about something. So we think that is more interesting to some brands for advertising because there is already an intent to buy.

BA: So with you setting up Multiply here in the Philippines, staffing it with Filipnos, can you say this business model is uniquely Filipino?

JM: I would argue that Multiply is a Philippine company. Because we wouldn’t have changed to e-commerce if not for the Philippines. And I’m proud of that, whenever I give a talk, I tell them that story—traffic went down, it was Holy Week in the Philippines…people love that stuff.

Ripples on the Lake - Dawn Rotarangi

I first reviewed this rather ghoulish novel (if you like a bit of blood and guts, you'll probably like this one) anyway, I reviewed it on Multiply in 2008. For people who don't know the (soon to be defunct) Multiply site, there is a special slot for book reviews and you can award yellow stars out of five for what you think of the book. I gave this one four stars -it's a first novel and I was leaving room for improvement for her next novels (I hoped there would be many).

So I was rather startled when I came online the next evening to discover I'd had a cheeky visitor (dawnr) commenting on my post.

She wrote, "Hey Iri - I'd give it 5 stars, of course, but then I'm biased! So glad you enjoyed it. I guess first borns are always special but this story is very dear to me. There's a little bit of my heart in there. Anyway, glad you liked it. Regards Dawn

The Original Multiply Book Review

This is a first novel by Dawn Rotarangi. It was published in 2007.

The novel is set in and around Lake Taupo, which is in the North Island of Aotearoa/New Zealand, and explores the shadows between two worlds — the living and the dead, past and present, Maori and Pakeha, and what might happen, nay what does happen when some unthinking fool breaks a tapu.

When Billy Delaney (the unthinking fool) steals coins from a rock pool to buy a burger, he has no idea what he is about to unleash. But Billy has always been in trouble, and when his sister Saffron steps in to try and sort him out, trouble quickly overwhelms the Delaney family.

First Saffron’s niece suffers an horrific accident, leaving her balanced precariously between life and death. And then the Delaneys begin to die one by one. It’s left to a disbelieving Saffron helped by her unlikely ally Nick, a burnt-out war photographer to try to appease the wrath of long deceased Tama Ariki whose quest for utu echoes down the centuries.

This was the kind of story which kept me reading just to see what the heck was going to happen next. I really enjoyed it.

L E Scott. Respect.

Broomstick

there are still those
who carry stones in their pockets
believing
all witches are not dead

L E Scott
from Speaking in Tongues

L E Scott is a Wellington-based jazz poet, performer, prose writer and reviewer. He was born in Cordele, Georgia, in 1947. While still a teenager, he moved with his family to Trenton, New Jersey, which is where he attended high school. After graduating, he was drafted into the United States Army and spent a year in Vietnam as an infantryman (1967-68). After discharge, he attended Trenton State College, then left the United States to travel in Europe, West Africa and Australia. He came to New Zealand in 1976.

His first collection, The Coming of Lewis E. Scott (1972) was published in the USA. This Bitter Earth (1978) was his first New Zealand-published book. In addition to his thirteen books of poetry, Scott has published two collections of fiction, Songs for My Father (1983) and Black Family Letters from Boston (1994).

L E Scott has also edited three anthologies: Each Other's Dreams - Contemporary Black American Writing (1982); King's Cross Pub Poets (1985); and Wiimpatjai Bulku Pipinja - Black Fella's Message - Aborigine Writers (1986).

His work appears in numerous anthologies and journals in the USA, Australia and New Zealand, including all of New Zealand's major literary magazines. He is also extensively published in New Zealand and abroad as a book reviewer.

I reprint the piece of writing below because I think it follows so well from my previous post.

From Earth Colours by L E Scott

South Africa Election Day
                                     For those who have died
Truly, Black people must be God's first-born, for we are asked to forgive a multitude of white sins visited upon us and at the same time carry on the belief that humankind's humanity somehow rests in the act of our forgiveness. So many Black people on the face of this earth have died for no other reason than that they were not white.

Truly, Black people must be God's first-born, for in the midst of so much hate and deprivation, not only have we been asked to strive but to forgive as we have buried so many Steve Bikos and Dr. Kings. What a wondrous gift and burden God has bestowed upon us, that in our hands so much responsibility rests while those who have claimed this very position have boot-marched over it.

Truly, Black people must be God's first-born, for we have been asked to toil and plant the seeds and yet have been denied a full taste of the harvest. And as we have brought this food to the tables of others, we have been asked to do so with a subservient and humble smile. We have been asked to breastfeed the very ones who for so long carried on the mantle of our oppression. Even as we have been murdered we have been charged with being the beasts among humanity.

Truly, Black people must be God's first-born, for we have been through the fires of Sharpeville, Mississippi, Soweto, Robin Island and Alabama and now the jailers of those places are asking those who have been so unfairly jailed not to seek revenge or retribution.

Truly, Black people must be God's first-born, for having survived with a belief far transcending the fear of God, and against all the odds, the burden of forgiveness has now been added to the weight we have carried. Let this be the warning to the second-born. Let this be the last time.

Truly, Black people must be God's first-born and as James Baldwin said, speaking of the second-born: "It is not permissible that the authors of devastation should also be innocent ..."

Truly.

A Very Large Blot On Our Landscape

I am reading Nelson Mandela's book, Long Walk To Freedom. Many of you may have already read it. It has been out for a few years now. For those who haven't, Nelson Mandela wrote an autobiography which details what it was like to grow up and live through racist South Africa and the apartheid regime, and about his part in trying to bring about change. In the book I am up to the year 1962. Nelson has just arrived at Robben Island.

While I read and think about these issues though, this book brings up other memories and images about related things that happened here, in Aotearoa/New Zealand. I'd like to share some of that with you.

The issue of Apartheid in South Africa was a huge political issue in New Zealand. It became especially important to us here, (apart from the obvious humanitarian concerns), because of our strong rugby-playing links with South Africa. Back then, rugby was THE game here in New Zealand, and the ongoing joke was always that rugby was in fact the NZ Religion, and of course you don't mix Religion and Politics. Neither do you mix Politics into Rugby, that was the view of many rugby supporters and the various NZ governments too. Rugby was sacrosanct, rugby was above all that.

There was no professional sport in New Zealand back then. Even the wonderful rugby was played by 'amateurs' who worked full time jobs. It was clearly necessary to have nice rugby-friendly employers who would let their male employees off work for the months that the players might be away playing test matches overseas in Australia, or Britain, or South Africa. It was a big thing back then to be chosen to be an All Black and represent our country in other parts of the world.

But all through the sixties, seventies and into the eighties, the South African Springboks rugby team was always made up of only South African 'whites'. When they were challenged about this I remember they defended themselves by stating that the teams were chosen on merit and the 'Black' indigenous South Africans were not good enough to make the team. These statements may have had some truth in them because, after all, if people never get the opportunity to play, how do they became good enough to make the team.

Problems arose when our mixed race All Blacks team went to South Africa. The Maori members of the team had to be made "honorary whites" so that they could use the same facilities and stay in the same hotels as the Pakeha/NZ European players rather than being made to use the sub-standard facilities provided for South Africa's indigenous African people.

I remember this issue being hotly debated in our Social Studies classroom in my third form year (1971) in high school. That year a spokeswoman from HART (Halt All Racist Tours) came to speak to the whole school about the appalling conditions in South Africa for the indigenous people, with pictures of their living conditions etc, and why we should support HART's protests against rugby tours to and from South Africa.

There was a kind of impromptu feel to the thing really; my class arriving for our double period in the science lab had been told, leave your bags and go to the hall, so we had done just that. When we returned we were faced with an agitated science teacher, (he had been standing at the back of the hall), who happened to be a 'white' South African. He said, "I am not allowed to speak politics to you but that was not the whole truth, it's not balanced, it is not just as she says". That moment has become one of those annoying little things that sticks in my mind for years, coming back to me out of the blue, such as when I am reading this book by Nelson Mandela, for example. I have often wondered what my science teacher would have said back then. Would he have tried to justify The Apartheid Regime and if so, how? How could anyone defend such an immoral and indefensible position?

By 1973, feelings about the Apartheid issue and rugby were running so high that the then Labour Prime Minister, Norman Kirk, worried about the potential violence and the divisiveness, cancelled a planned Springbok tour to this country.

The 1977 Commonwealth Gleneagles agreement which finally banned all sporting contact with South Africa intensified the divisions here, with stubborn diehards who still attempted to make a 'politics should be kept out of sport' stand, looking more and more out of touch with the reality that the rest of us lived in.

1977 was also the year Steve Biko died in a Pretoria prison cell. He had been detained and interrogated four times between August of 1975 and September of 1977 under the Apartheid era anti-terrorism legislation. On the 7th of September, "Biko sustained a head injury during interrogation, after which he acted strangely and was uncooperative. The doctors who examined him (naked, lying on a mat, and manacled to a metal grille) initially disregarded overt signs of neurological injury." But by the 11th of September Biko had slipped into a continual semi-conscious state and the police physician recommended that he be transferred to hospital. Instead Biko was transported 1,200km to Pretoria, a 12 hour journey which he made while lying naked in the back of a Land Rover. A few hours later, on the 12th of September, alone and still naked, and lying on the floor of his cell in the Pretoria Central Prison, Biko died from brain damage. The brutality of the circumstances surrounding Biko's death caused a worldwide outcry. Biko became a Martyr and Symbol of Black Resistance to the Oppressive Apartheid Regime. Anybody who hadn't noticed the dysfunction by now was truly an Ostrich.

We seemed to have a lot of Ostriches in New Zealand back then.

Despite all of that, the New Zealand Rugby Football Union, (NZRFU, a flock of Ostriches if ever you saw them), under the apparent benevolent gaze of the Prime Minister Robert Muldoon, (yet another Ostrich), and his right-wing National government, went right ahead with planning a Springbok Rugby Tour for 1981. Jock Phillips later wrote that Rob Muldoon was apparently of the 'old guard' who thought that New Zealand should stand staunchly side by side with [white] South Africa because both countries had fought side by side as allies in the 2nd World War.

Which is an interesting thought when you remember that those who were running the Apartheid regime had actually voted against fighting with the Allies in the 2nd World War. In fact they thought that Hitler and his fascist Nazi party's Aryan views were completely the right idea.

1981 was the year that Diana married Charles, Prince of Wales. I watched that wedding on a Christchurch Women's Hospital telly with my one-day-old daughter in my arms.

But from May until September, (the winter months of 1981), the New Zealand nightly news and our newspapers were filled with images of police and protesters fighting on the streets, images of our police dressed in riot gear and carrying long batons, images of battered and bleeding protesters. Despite the fact that the Springboks had actually brought along a 'token' Black this time, (too little too late), the first game to be played in Gisborne in May had to be cancelled when protesters (some had bought tickets, others stormed the fences), mobbed onto the field and the pilot of a light plane circling overhead threatened to fly it into the main stadium killing the spectators. (The twin tower thing in New York wasn't an original idea, just bigger).

This surely wasn't New Zealand, not the way we knew it.

All of this was televised live in New Zealand and in South Africa. To this day I have no idea what the South Africans made of it.

Of course the law had to be upheld, insisted the government. It was the youngest, fittest policemen, some hardly out of basic training who were put onto the frontline. Large numbers of police were flown from city to city wherever the latest game was being held. In the end the government upholding the rights of rugby supporters to watch rugby whatever the cost and therefore supplying our policeman as security and enforcers cost us tax payers more than fifteen million NZ dollars.

My father was a policeman. Because he was a middle aged man he wasn't out there on the streets in front of protesters. Instead the older policemen worked long hours into the night filling in the gaps of the policing that the younger cops would normally have been doing. We hardly saw my dad that winter. When the Springboks played down here in Christchurch my father was right there at Lancaster Park but he didn't see the game. A long blue line of police encircled the field but their eyes were not on the game. The whole time they watched the spectators, they were watching for signs of trouble, in case protesters had bought tickets and tried to rush onto the field. My father said the tension there was so heavy you could have cut the air with a knife.

My soul was with the protesters. If it wasn't for my tiny child I would have been out there on the streets too. I still have a residual guilt about not being there.

This tour should never have been allowed to happen, my father said.

The World The RIGHT Way Up or The Downunder Folk Are Revolting

Behold here is a map of the world as I reckon it should look! Totally perfect! I reckon it looks great. Aotearoa/New Zealand is now on top of the world where it belongs.

I am not alone in thinking this way either. The map above was actually created by one young Stuart McArthur of Melbourne, Australia. When he actually drew his first "right side up" map at the age of twelve years old his geography teacher told him to redraw his assignment the "correct" way up if he wanted to pass the subject. Years later while attending Melbourne University,  he produced the world's first modern "south up" map, and launched it on Australia Day in 1979.

Here's the thing. There is no particular reason why the Northern hemisphere should be perceived as being "up" or "on top" of the planet nor is this perspective necessarily "correct". Equally there is no reason why the South should be seen as "below" or "downunder" as it is often described as being. This is a convention that has taken place over a few centuries now, when northern hemisphere navigators started using the North Star and Magnetic compass.

Before that, the top of the map was to the East which is where the word orientation comes from. The perception therefore of North as "above" is a eurocentric idea, and because most of us in this modern westernised world grow up in cultures where this view is familiar, we "believe" unquestioningly that it is the only view.

So in Biblical Times the evidence from the Torah showed  that east was at the top of all maps. (At least this is how it was told to me, I am no biblical scholar myself). In Genesis when Abraham's nephew, Lot, is captured in war and carried away and Abraham races to the rescue, when he and his men catch up with Lot's captors and set him free, this happens in "Chovah which is to the left of Damascus." (Gen. 14:15). Chovah is north of Damascus. In Psalms 89:13 it says, "The north and the right, You created them". This implies that right is synonymous with south, so you are facing east when you read the map.

People in Ancient Arabia placed south at the top. This is because when you wake up (in Arabia) and face the sun, south is on the right. Because of positive associations with the right as opposed to left, they put that on top. Yemen is so named because it is on the "yamin" right of Arabia. And of course, with the sea to the south of them there was nothing "on top" of the country, so they preferred it that way.

The Ancient Chinese were the first to invent the compass, which they always thought of as pointing south. To them, South was a sacred direction, and in ceremonies, the king would always face south. (Living in the southern part of our world, in the South Island of Aotearoa/New Zealand even, I'm inclined to like this idea).

In Medieval Europe cartographers always drew Jerusalem on top of their maps because that was the Holy Land. This meant that east was more or less at the top. Again.

And in Aotearoa/New Zealand, the area where New Zealand's capital city Wellington now stands was known to our first nations people (tangatawhenua) as Te Upoku O Te Ika (the Head of the Fish). This fish - as we all know from the Maui legend - is the North Island of New Zealand. But when we look at the now "normalised" modern map of our world it shows the head of the fish facing "down" towards Antarctica; the tail of the fish is on the northern end of the fish body. The problem here is that in the Maori view of the sacred and profane (tapu and noa), the head can never below the tail. One does not, for example, place your bum on a pillow where your head may later lie. In Maori cosmology, therefore, the head of the fish has to be on the "above" and southern end of the North Island. South is pointing upwards and now the Antarctic is on the "top of the world", as shown in the McArthur map.

Hone Tuwhare (1922 - 2008)

Yesterday, (16th January, 2008), Hone Tuwhare, one of New Zealand's most distinguished Maori poets, playwright, and writer of short fiction died in his sleep. He was 85 years old.

Hone Tuwhare was born in Kaikohe in 1922, into the Nga Puhi tribe (hapu Ngati Korokoro, Ngati Tautahi, Te Popoto, Uri-o-hau). His first published collection, No Ordinary Sun, appeared in 1964 to widespread acclaim and was reprinted ten times during the next thirty years—one of the most widely read individual collections of poems in New Zealand history. Throughout his lifetime, he was actively involved in Maori cultural and political initiatives.

His work has been described thus:

"When Tuwhare’s poems first began to appear in the late 1950s and early 1960s they were recognised as a new departure in New Zealand poetry, cutting across the debates and divisions between the 1930s and post-war generations. Much of their originality came from the Maori perspective. This was not simply a question of the subject matter of some poems (‘Lament’, a reworking of an older *waiata tangi, ‘Tangi’ and ‘Mauri’), but of their direct lyrical response to landscape and seascape, their vivid evocation of Maori myths and images (‘A burnt offering to your greenstone eyes, Tangaroa’), and their capacity for angry protest at the dispossession of Maori land and culture (‘The mana of my house has fled, / the marae is but a paddock of thistle’). The poems were also marked by their tonal variety, the naturalness with which they could move between formal and informal registers, between humour and pathos, intimacy and controlled anger (as in the anti-nuclear theme of the title-poem of the first volume, ‘No Ordinary Sun’) and, especially, in their assumption of easy vernacular familiarity with New Zealand readers."

Below, are two of his poems:


Toroa ~ Albatross

Day and night endlessly you have flown effortless of wing
over chest-expanding oceans far from land.
Do you switch on an automatic pilot, close your eyes
in sleep, Toroa?

On your way to your homeground at Otakou Heads
you tried to rest briefly on the Wai-te-mata
but were shot at by ignorant people. Crippled.
You found a resting place at Whanga-nui-a-Tara;
found space at last to recompose yourself.

Now, without skin and flesh to hold you together
the division of your aerodynamic parts lies whitening,
licked clean by sun and air and water. Children will
discover narrow corridors of airiness between,
the suddenness of bulk. Naked, laugh in the gush
and ripple — the play of light on water.

You are not alone, Toroa. A taniwha once tried
to break out of the harbour for the open sea. He failed.
He is lonely. From the top of the mountain nearby he
calls to you: Haeremai, haeremai, welcome home, traveller.

Your head tilts, your eyes open to the world.

To a Mäori figure cast in bronze outside the Chief Post Office, Auckland

I hate being stuck up here, glaciated, hard all over
and with my guts removed: my old lady is not going
to like it

I’ve seen more efficient scarecrows in seedbed
nurseries. Hell, I can’t even shoo the pigeons off

Me: all hollow inside with longing for the marae on
the cliff at Kohimarama, where you can watch the ships
come in curling their white moustaches

Why didn’t they stick me next to Mickey Savage?
‘Now then,’ he was a good bloke
Maybe it was a Tory City Council that put me here

They never consulted me about naming the square
It’s a wonder they never called it: Hori-in-gorge-atbottom-
of-hill. Because it is like that: a gorge,
with the sun blocked out, the wind whistling around
your balls (your balls mate) And at night, how I
feel for the beatle-girls with their long-haired
boyfriends licking their frozen finger-chippy lips
hopefully. And me again beetling

my tent eyebrows forever, like a brass monkey with
real worries: I mean, how the hell can you welcome
the Overseas Dollar, if you can’t open your mouth
to poke your tongue out, eh?

If I could only move from this bloody pedestal I’d
show the long-hairs how to knock out a tune on the
souped-up guitar, my mere quivering, my taiaha held
at the high port. And I’d fix the ripe kotiro too
with their mini-piupiu-ed bums twinkling: yeah!

 Somebody give me a drink: I can’t stand it