The Expat's Road to Kia Ora
How you going?
This summer in Colorado I met an Australian somewhere above 13,000 feet (4,000 meters, more or less). My brother-in-law and I were nearly to the top of West Spanish Peak, hustling to make the summit before the weather closed in. At first I thought the figure coming towards us down the talus moonscape might be Kiwi: the black windbreaker, the wide-brimmed sun hat, that long Anglo face I share. Then he flashed a grin and gave us the Antipodean salute I’d missed all summer: How you going?
Stopped me in my tracks: Where are you from?
Australia, he said. Of course—those flat vowels, the lifeguard zinc on his nose, the sheer odds against meeting the team of five million on the other side of the world.
Cool! I live in New Zealand!
He’d heard of it. We chatted a bit. He told us we were almost there, as one does on a mountain, then we went our separate ways.
If he’d been a Kiwi, maybe he’d have given me a Kia ora. Maybe, high on a mountain in America, I’d have returned my own.
But I don’t know? In four years here this tauiwi has struggled to say those lovely words. To my ear, they ring with a claim on these islands I’ve not felt ready to make. At a job interview earlier this year, in fact, the boss asked where I was on my te Reo journey. The very beginning, I said. I gotta do the mahi. (That one I own. Americans understand work.) I can’t even drag myself to the easy chill of How you going. I’m a gringo dad still hanging out down at How you doing, true to myself or stuck in the mud.
So! In the spirit of Te Wiki o te Reo Māori (Māori Language Week), NZ American brings you a pocket survey of the three greetings circling my expat head.
How you doing?
How you doing implies an actor, a discrete task, and a performance review. You can go through life; you do a PhD. This is our American intimacy: To greet you I inquire, from the heart, about your success rate in pushing that boulder up your personal hill. This can invite a healthy, honest confession—‘Today fucking sucks’—but it maps our lives as separate from each other (I am doing this, you are doing that) while casting the universe as a mere backdrop.
For the vibes here, check this recent Washington Post clickbait: Fall is sweeping into the Lower 48 states. Here are 4 things to know. In America, it seems, even the seasons are action items you can fail. Leaf peeping? Get the app: “This year, the foliage website Explore Fall has developed a map that shows where trees are least and most stressed.” This, then, is the great American doing: we optimize our fall road trips by constantly refreshing a “cutting-edge, in-house fall foliage model” to “minimize potential errors and quantify fall color.” How you doing? I’m out here dodging stressed-out trees whose leaves ain’t good enough for the ‘gram.
How you going?
Go is broader, requiring motion but no vector or endpoint. How you going places both speakers within the endless churn of the universe. We are all of us going, you and I, the rocks, the trees, the tuis; how’s the flow of time in your stretch of the cosmic ocean? There is much wisdom here, though considerably less room for baring the soul. If we’re all going together, the asker already knows the answer. Your safest bet is to talk about the weather.
As it happens, a polar vortex whipped through New Zealand this week. Nothing catastrophic: dodgy gusts on an Auckland bridge, grumpy farmers, confused lambs. On Stuff, which upgrades to Puna for Te Wiki o te Reo Māori (‘a spring, or ‘to flow’)—they ran a live chat for readers as the storm rolled through. There was nothing to do here, no pleas for shelter or sandbags, no news you can use. There was only the quiet ping as two islands talked to themselves about the sky. I have my limits with Kiwi weather chat, but stripped to its essence, it rings of Bashō.
Kia ora!
Literally, ‘Be well.’ Kia ora is a greeting, not an inquiry, and so avoids the performance review of How you doing or the flow-rate confirmation of How you going. Occasionally it’ll pop up as a mid-conversation affirmation in place of a cheers or thanks, but to my newbie ears it’s got a pleasant grace note of formality that seems to demand eye contact: I see you.
The savvy folks at 100% Pure New Zealand made an adorable video of beautiful Kiwis saying Kia ora directly to you, Youtube lurker, and inviting you to “have a go.” It’s an acknowledgement of the person you’re greeting, explains Arekatera Maihi, a Māori artist who grew up in Tāmaki Makaurau (Auckland). “Where they come from, who they come from—and that’s a big one, who they come from.”
That’s a big one, indeed. By Maihi’s reckoning Kia ora lies somewhere between How you doing’s individualism and How you going’s zen: I see you, haloed by your whakapapa (your genealogy.) You are not alone, but you are not universal. Your people end there, and mine begin here—but y’all come on in. It’s a bit like the tomokanga, or carved gateway, that welcomes international arrivals to the Auckland airport or patients and families to our local hospital.
Between Kiwis already inside the door, as it were, Kia ora can function as something of a national shibboleth. English feels like one endless global mall—but te Reo, this is us. I’ve heard friends here talk of the delight in hearing a compatriot’s Kia ora when traveling overseas. On a mountain, even! The comments below that Youtube video are full of typed echoes from fans around the world (“Kia ora desde Colombia,” “Kia Ora from Kazakhstan!!!!”) But out loud, in person, I always had a notion that I wasn’t Aotearoa enough to say it myself.
We came down off West Spanish Peak, drove across Nebraska, then flew home to NZ. A few days later I took my son to football practice. As he changed his shoes in the car I stood alone in the parking lot. The distance leaves you peeled. It was August, cold, a pause in the wind. I steadied myself for the sideline. There would be weather talk.
Then our coach pulled up across the lot. He’s a tall, cheerful Pākehā bloke with a booming voice and a going patience for the doings of eight-year-olds. His kid, too, was sorting his boots. Coach raised a hand and fired one off at game-time volume: KIA ORA!
Well, hell. I felt seen. I filled my lungs and gave it a go.
Nice work, insightful!
I’m thinking of other greeting questions. There’s “What’sup?”, sort of a cultural descendant of “What’s happening?” Both seem to ask neither what you are doing or your motion toward a goal, but what is going on around you.
And perhaps most probing is “How are you?” No vector, no action, no interest in what’s going on around you, but in inquiry into your mental and/or physical state. I think that it is precisely because the question is potentially invasive that most people don’t expect, wait for or care about a response. I usually do care, but “How’re you?” is mostly not treated as a question at all, but just the equivalent of a nod or a “hi”.
I really enjoyed reading this. Is your long term ambition to have a full conversation in Māori? Are there people who speak only Māori to eachother, or is it more normal to just pepper it into English conversations, or proper code switching (not sure I am using the term correctly, but I hope you see what I am trying to ask?)