Learning te reo the first step in journey to roots

Ngahi Bidois, pictured in 2009, shares how he had to learn what it was to be Maori.

So life was good. I had achieved my major goals and the future looked very positive and prosperous ... until it wasn't.

Within a year I found myself unemployed with no savings in the bank, no flash car, no job and learning te reo Maori. So what happened?

How had I gone from having a high-flying career to being unemployed?

How had I gone so quickly from being sick of restaurant food to eating food parcels friends delivered because there was no more money in the bank?

Like other unemployed people, we were now living off the crumbs of the domestic purposes benefit.

The Bible tells the story of a man who came across a treasure in a field and went and sold everything he had so he could buy that piece of land to obtain that treasure. The treasure I discovered was te reo Maori. I gave up everything to learn it.

And so did my beautiful Pakeha wife, who joined me learning Maori on a one-year unemployment Access programme that would shape the rest of our marriage and lives.

So how did this occur? The position I had with the multi-national oil company was at their major distribution plant in Palmerston North, and the company decided to close it. They offered me positions elsewhere in the country, but my wife and I decided to stay put because life was good in Palmy.

We ended up listening to a speaker who said they found it very difficult to find Maori leaders who would help them with the work they were doing as they often ended up with a degree from a university, a high-flying career, all the trappings of success - such as flash cars and flash houses - and many ended up marrying Pakeha women.

As he was speaking he slowly turned his back to us and said, "In the end they turn their back on their own people and culture." He kept turning and as he faced us, he told us his boys called them Mallowpuffs, that chocolate biscuit that is brown on the outside and white on the inside.

While everyone else laughed, I started crying ... and I couldn't stop crying. I wept and wept, because I was that person.

My goals had made me successful, but I had turned my back on my culture and people. Like many Maori in my generation, I had fallen under the powerful, ugly influence of colonisation. I was brown on the outside but white on the inside.

I was such a mess I had to leave the room, and Carolyn followed me as I found a private place to heal my being. My beautiful wife held me and waited, also upset at what I was going through. Eventually my tide of tears ebbed and she asked me if I was okay.

I replied that I wasn't. I slowly sobbed that I did not know who I was. I did not know what it meant to be Maori. The goals I had set had made me successful, but what is the point of being successful when you don't know who you are?

She asked me what I wanted to do, and I remember whispering that I had to learn what it was to be Maori and it had to start with learning the Maori language.

As I write this, we have now been married for 31 years and I will never forget what my beautiful wife Carolyn replied - she hugged me closer and whispered back, "Nga, I have seen you walk successfully in my world, I will now follow you into yours."

- This was the second part of Ngahi's te reo journey. To be continued.

- Ngahihi o te ra Bidois is an international leadership speaker, VIP host, author, leader, husband and father. See www.ngahibidois.com for more of his story.