The American, the Concentrated Yeast Extract, and the Other

When my homestay mother picked me up, she was surprised to learn I had already been here a month.  "Well then," she laughed, "you're practically a local."

In the words of my Māori professor, "Yeeeah right."

Pinning down what makes a local a local here is a slippery task.  A New Zealander is a lot like an American, but with higher vowels and lower body fat.  Given that I apparently exhibit the Northern Cities vowel shift, I'm just about there, right?  Already I navigate downtown Auckland without a map, unconsciously call bell peppers capsicum, and--in a shameful state of affairs--know more Māori than most Māori.  Auē!

But I get caught.  Skin color is no matter, as most New Zealanders are of European descent, and there are Pacific Islanders and Asians of all types here as well.  It's the voice that does it.  So, theoretically, my outsiderness remains invisible until I speak.

As in our first lecture with Professor Ngaha.  During some downtime in this class of seventy-odd students, she looked right at me and asked, "How many of you Dartmouth students are there?"  How did she know I was one of them, I wondered in awe for a few seconds.  Then I realized she would have overheard us chatting in American accents, which are of course atypical here.  And then there was my first exchange with my host dad, where, to his bafflement, I told him I had "zonked out for a couple hours" on my bed.  At least neither of these rivals an experience of our anthropology students.  After one of them spoke up in tutorial, someone else raised their hand to say, "As a Kiwi, I find it very annoying when Americans say 'like' all the time.  Could you just stop doing that?"  Well bitch, maybe you should pronounce your r's.  Like in real English.

Derhoticization aside, New Zealand identity is often summed up in "Kiwiana."  This term encompasses, in my opinion, less a way a life and more a collection of New Zealand-specific icons: kiwi birds, silver ferns, sheep, the All Blacks, manuka honey, Hokey Pokey, pavlova, Tip Top ice cream, abalone shells, kauri wood, and greenstone.  The people here are simultaneously proud of their country's unique items and drolly aware of New Zealand's less-than-prominence on the international stage.  Soda brand L&P boasts: "World Famous in New Zealand."  The souvenir shops, though, take iconicity to dizzyingly fetishistic levels.  No kidding, I saw a key rack with a map of New Zealand on an abalone-shell background in the shape of a kiwi bird atop a silver fern.

Unknowingly, a bird wandering the beach climbs upon a leaf and creates the quintessential New Zealand moment.

All of these symbols, however, while beloved in New Zealand, are palatable worldwide.  The real test of Kiwihood should be something only enjoyed in New Zealand and weird to everyone else.  I call to the stand Marmite, a spread more technically known as "concentrated yeast extract."  A by-product of beer making, it tastes like salted salt, with a briny kick.  New Zealanders love the stuff on toast, though due to the Christchurch earthquakes affecting production, people are relying on the Australian-made counterpart, Vegemite.  Marmite aficionados can apparently taste a difference.  When I first tried Vegemite, I hated it, as most non-Oceanians do.

Tasting a national food and wanting to wipe the aftertaste from my tongue, I found myself viscerally confronting my otherness.  You can fake an accent, gather local knowledge, and stay to the left side of the walkway, but the proof is in the pavlova: your body has just not lived here very long.

Not that I believe tastes in food represent a whole culture very meaningfully.  More permanent aspects of being belong to an invisible culture which requires prolonged and often serendipitous searching to uncover.  A feeling of connection to the environment--in Māori cosmology, how people arise from the land--and perhaps in modern mundane life through the virtual lack of paper towels here.  The way neighbors stop by to say hello, or friends and family come in the open front door without knocking.  And of course, an enduring system of subtle racism and cross-ethnic suspicion.

As an American, it is difficult for me to pinpoint New Zealand culture, because I see everyday life here as fairly "normal," which I guess means "like in America."  For goodness sake, the even have Ice Road Truckers.  Each day, though, there are cognitive disconnects that keep me from rounding New Zealand up to "like home, but with lamb burgers."  To my shock, I learned that my host family could not stomach the Pop Tarts one of them brought back from the States.  Just as, to my equivalent shock, I woke up this morning craving Vegemite.  And I ate that concentrated yeast extract and I wanted more.  My body is accepting even what my mind could not.  Maybe I've become more of a local than I realized.