Black Eye on a Beautiful Green Country

One of the neatest, but strangest things about living in New Zealand is the fact that the entire country has about 4.5 million people in it. Now, I looked on Wikipedia, and my former residences of NYC has 8.27 million people and Bangkok has 8.1 million people. So now, I'm living in an entire country that has half that population. It's weird.

What makes that really cool is that you kind of feel like you live in a small town. Something that happens, well, anywhere, is "local news." A murder, a missing child, even robberies that happen as "far away" as the south island (we live on the eastern side of the north island) seems to touch you a if they were in the next town. You learn all the details and names involved. Kind of like when George Carlin once joked that if you hear of a massive earthquake that killed 80,000 people, you're much more likely to give a shit the closer the catastrophe is to your front door.

Beau and I started noticing something strange on the news. Child abuse. There is a LOT of child abuse. First, there was a hugely sensational case about some poor 3-year old girl who was basically beaten and tortured over a long period of time by nearly every single person who ever was supposed to "care" and "protect" her. Heartbreaking stuff.

Then, after people were convicted and things died down a bit, the next day on the news there was another case. And the next day, another. And each day thereafter. We were perplexed. Was it just the media focusing on these scattered cases after the one big one that had taken up so much airtime and was now gone? These stories became so regular, we knew it couldn't be too much of a media obsession. It had to be a national problem. A national shame.

Obviously, there is domestic abuse everywhere, in every country whether it has 4 million people or 400 million. I guess what I'm thinking is ... there are issues...thousands of issues, and they never get totally solved, but the point is ... they need to be tackled. There have to be TV campaigns and school education and NGO and government intervention (your party directs to which degree), and resource centers or shelters. And there needs to be a conscious effort by parents and women and teachers and officials to battle the issue and raise awareness, strengthen self-image, and empower the weak. Despite the fact that I do believe all this makes a big difference, it never erases the problem. It just improves things.

Domestic abuse seems to be a dirty little secret, and accepted here as a kind of...tradition. I feel like it's the black eye (figuratively and literally) on the poor. Not that the rich don't beat their wives and kids, but there's something about the link between domestic abuse and poverty. The link between abuse and alcohol and drug abuse, the stress over finances, the acceptance of one's shitty situation since "getting out" just isn't conceivable. As someone who grew up in a house with domestic abuse, I know that as a kid, you just can't even wrap your mind around the fact that there's a way out before you turn 18. Though maybe now, it's different. I hope it is.

If I'm going to go just by what the media we're fed, the abuse problem is more pronounced in the Maori community. Since Maori are much more likely to be in the poverty range, that makes some sense to me, though I admit, every time I see the newscaster announce another case, I close my eyes and go, "Please don't be Maori, please don't be Maori." We live among the Maori and adore the majority of the people in the community.

But I've believed for a very long time that things are really more about class than race. If we would focus on class issues rather than the color of people's skin, the focus would be much better spent. If you've ever seen the movie, "Once Were Warriors" about the problems faced by an urban Maori family, you would have been completely horrified by the domestic abuse and the character's acceptance of the situation. The main female character had been severely beaten by her husband the night before. The next morning as she and a friend were having a beer together, the friend joked on a common Maori saying, "Keep your mouth shut and your legs open."

Even more shocking to me was something Beau told me. When we were discussing the issue, he told me about a female teacher up at the school. This was a very prominent teacher of advanced age -- one who kids did not fuck with. This woman had been discussing to Beau and a few others about her daughter's mouthy ways. This woman said to the group, "So, I said to her, 'Girl, you better learn to control your mouth if you don't want to end up with a lot of black eyes!'"

I was pretty astonished when I heard this, especially from who it had come from. It also kind of scared me. When stuff like that comes from the mouth of a woman is when I think it is the most dangerous. When your own mother thinks you deserve a black eye, how do you ever convince yourself you don't? A mother is your teacher and your protector.

Sadly, despite the case of the 3-year old above, I haven't heard any news of domestic/child abuse awareness come from it. Usually you do after a tragedy hits. In fact, another issue we've also noticed is water safety, though the response seems more encouraging. This is a very aquatic culture, which makes sense since if you're not living seconds from the ocean like we are, you're never more than 3 hours from it, no matter WHERE you live in the country. Pretty amazing. Not to mention that there are also tons of beautiful lakes and rivers as well. It's summer now and also Christmas vacation, so there's a huge rush to the water, and we've noticed that people who seem to be butt-poor and have tiny houses still seem to have boats! And they're packed on the water now.

But the sad outcome is drownings and accidents. Today on the news I heard of 4 seperate aquatic accidents that led to twice as many deaths. The most tragic is a local sports star who jumped in the water to save someone else in trouble and he was immediately swept out to sea. They still haven't found his body.

Unlike domestic abuse though, there does seem to be some kind of response. Incredulously, many Kiwis cannot swim -- this is still something that perplexes us, and naturally, the reason for many drownings since the wearing of life jackets is not really done here with much consistency. I have seen some commercials recently begging people to learn how to swim. And on the news today, after the deaths relating to the four accidents, including a waterskiing girl who was run over by another boat (and killed) or a jet ski that collided with a boat (several deaths), someone said, "Well, maybe now we can start talking about this. There are too many boats on the water and no one is wearing their life jackets." I hope so!

It's interesting what must make one issue come out and be dealt with while others are not. For instance, one thing that I think is really fantastic, is that EVERY SINGLE motorcycle rider I have ever seen in New Zealand has been wearing a helmet. Every one! I used to fume and spit in the car back in Montana because it was a rare rider who could be bothered enough to protect his idiot head and I just couldn't fathom such stupidity. Or back in Missouri when rural men in trucks thought wearing a seatbelt was...what? Not macho? Who knows...but they don't do it, to this DAY, and the many deaths caused by not wearing a seatbelt, again, just seemed ridiculous.

Is it Darwin's Law or just a lack of community focus? I'd like to think the latter, with a few stupid people who think they're invincible thrown in.