Verhalen

I sit here, on a ordinary thursday evening in an ordinary Dutch living room, in front of this man.  This man with impressive, undecodable tatoes on his arms. His hair black and shiny, with two bones sticking out. I can’t keep my eyes of of him. It would be misplaced to say that this man has charisma. I would rather call it almost divine primal strength.

It’s not just another ordinary day that I meet a Maori chief called ‘Hone’ at my brother’s house. Hone grabs me when he starts narrating about Aotearoa, the Moari name for New Zealand. He tells about the Dutch seafarer and mercant Abel Tasman apparoaching the island and how he saw his men been killed by Maori’s, because waving means war to them. He instantly wipes his upwelling tears away when my dad asks him why his children don’t speak Maori anymore. To him it’s a tragedy, but ‘a Maori never forgets his language, it’s lies underneath his tongue’. He laughs as he analyses that Western people think they have a monopoly on the real truth, ‘science is your religion.’ ‘Our religion is that god is the sky, the mountain, the wind and the sea. ‘ I feel touched, a wave of wonderment, sadness, and humbleness comes to me.

As a ceremony of goodbye, Hone presses his forhead firmly to mine. Nose to nose, we both breath in deeply. ‘The breath of life. This is what connects all living beings.’ That probably the most true thing to say on an ordinary thursday.