Deep calls to Deep
We waited expectantly at the gate entrance to Haranui Marae. We must wait until the call of the karanga is heard (this is the ceremonial call of welcome performed only by the women). Hearing the karanga indicates to us that we are free to approach our hosts across the marae atea (sacred space directly in front of the meeting house).
The lamenting calls of the karanga clear a spiritual pathway between us, the manuhiri (visitors) and the tangata whenua (people of the land). It also makes a spiritual pathway for the ancestors of our family and our hosts to meet and partake in the ceremonial uniqueness of the powhiri, this welcoming ceremony. The call of the women acknowledges the ancestral spirits of the visitors before them. The women acknowledge who we are and why we have come, and invite us to stop and shed tears for those who have passed on.
The lament-like chant of the karanga pierced the heavens, evoking in me a deep sense of being in the right place at the right time. It is said that the depth of this call represents the bottomless source of ancestral tears, otherwise known as puna roimata. As we walked toward the wharenui (literally long house) my cousin Keriana making our own family karanga response to the tangata whenua women, a soft rain begins to fall. It seemed like our Nanny Moewaka was happy to see us too, joy.
During a powhiri, the tangata whenua and we manuhiri often say karakia (prayers). This unites everyone present in body and spirit, and blesses the occasion. We are led my the kaumatua (male Elders) and kuia (usually refers to a woman after she has completed her child-bearing years) between two rows of wooden forms (foam mattresses piled like pancakes behind them) to the front of the wharenui where we view photographs of Nama, our great grandmother Moewaka Jane, her son Tamati Waruhau (Tommy or Arka as he was called).
She’s elegant my great grandmother with warm eyes that looked back at us, their silent hullo heard by each of us that passed her, a Mona Lisa-like smile captured by the photographer. Her bearing is upright but open. I hear myself whisper in my head, “hullo Nama, I’m your mokopuna (grand-child)”
