Thanks for your smiles, but they’re not enough

There is never as naked a face as when someone is confused. Anger can be passed off as heartburn, happiness can be hidden behind pursed lips, but the absence of understanding is unmistakable. This year my face has blanked-out more than any other time in my adult life. Likewise, I have witnessed more blank faces than the ushers at a David Lynch film festival. I have confused more people and been confused by more people than even the most embarrassing misunderstandings of my childhood.

Which is saying something. I mean, one time I asked Dad what the word homosexual meant, after hearing it on the telly. He said it was when a man loves another man. I’d learned at Bible class that God wanted us to love our fellow man, thus I reasoned ‘‘homosexual’’ was a synonym for a good, righteous person.

The next day the principal of my West Auckland school told us that vandals had grafittied the front gates. I stood up and said emphatically, with the pained, disappointed look of the 7-year-old suck-up, that, man, those vandals were ‘‘definitely not homosexuals’’. God wants us all to be as homosexual as possible.

On 1970s-principal’s face was my earliest recollection of blank confusion. (And when I think about it, here’s the twist to this story. It turns out I was right all those years ago about the meaning of the word homosexual. Yeah! Go for it, idiot-child me!)

Anyway, I started learning te reo Ma¯ ori fulltime this year. We speak only te reo during class at Te Wa¯ nanga o Raukawa so there has been a glut of blank faces – mine included. But all of this year’s confusion was just an entree for when things got really tough. This month I joined the nationwide Mahuru Ma¯ ori challenge, where I speak te reo everywhere, all the time, for the entire month. (This is run by Te Wa¯ nanga o Aotearoa.)

I’ve mentioned Mahuru Ma¯ ori previously, but here’s how it’s worked out so far. Let me start by saying that it has been awesome. Speaking nothing but Ma¯ ori is fantastic, and using it in the wider world fills me with pride. I never thought I could reach this point.

But there have been some challenges, too. Every day I get up in the morning and stretch and brush my teeth and have a shower and try desperately to remember to stop myself blurting some song – flat, hoarse and, worst of all, in

Pa¯ keha¯ . This is the easiest time for slipups. I haven’t had coffee.

After my shower I head out into the world. I’d like to say the last thing I expected was to feel like a tourist in my own country. But that’s exactly what I expected, and that’s exactly what happened. It’s a te reo Ma¯ ori desert out there.

Three weeks in and I’m feeling exhausted at the thought of going anywhere without an interpreter. Most of the time that job has fallen to my poor daughter. I drag her along to places and speak to her in Ma¯ ori, then get her to ask for things.

At the start of the month, when the full significance of my vow-of-Pa¯ keha¯ -silence dawned on us (well, dawned on me – she hadn’t had a chance to mull it over because she only found out when I stopped speaking Pa¯ keha¯ on the first day), she asked why the hell I didn’t discuss my decision with her first. She was more disappointed than angry.

Anyway, when she’s not around, I can point and say a single proper name of a thing and raise the appropriate number of fingers. Other times I just cut loose in Ma¯ ori and hand over one of the cards we got sent out that explains the situation.

Even the kindest thoughts can’t keep a language breathing. We need solutions to stop te reo Ma¯ ori becoming a museum piece.

This is usually what happens when staff strike up a friendly conversation. Nobody on my side of the ideological divide wants to be seen as a jerk, even if we are one. Especially if we are one. So when the woman in the coffee cart asks how my day is going, I have a conundrum. I’m not rude. Even Don Brash chats to his pedicurist, I’m sure.

So I can speak at people like the woman for a while, to their increasingly blank faces. Or I can ignore them, which is just rude. Or hand over the card, ko¯ rero at them, and wait to see what happens.

On the occasions when I’ve used my card, the responses have reassured me about the goodwill of everyday people. They have been delighted or interested or have simply smiled. This is heartening.

But goodwill aside, the lesson I’ve learned in Mahuru Ma¯ ori is that even the kindest thoughts can’t keep a language breathing. We need solutions to stop te reo Ma¯ ori becoming a museum piece.

The saddest thing about museums is that everything under glass is dead, and eternity is a long time.