Raviv – Part 1
“I’ve worked for corrections for 14 years and so far, 220,080 trees in the ground.
You know, a guy goes through the park. He sees one guy digging holes and one covering it.
‘What are you doing?’
‘The guy that puts the plant in is off sick today!’
That’s a little Russian joke.
I’m from Israel, but I worked in the Ukraine. My wife and I were running 13 youth clubs for Jewish children. We went back to Israel so my wife could start her bachelor degree. And when she finished her honors we looked for a PhD here.
The reason I actually started to learn Te Reo was, we offer a weekend tikanga course for the guys. I had a guy telling me after that program, I will stop selling drugs. It was amazing! I started to support that program,I was supporting it for three or four years, six or seven times a year.
It’s a powhiri on Thursday and a powhiri on Sunday. One day, the guy that was doing the whaikōrero on the corrections side, he’s there, and all of a sudden he disappears. He doesn’t say anything to nobody, he just left. There is the kaikaranga. We go into the marae and the whaikōrero finishes and they wait for us to stand. Now I’m with 10 Māori next to me, and all of them looking at me and looking at the skies! So I stood up and spoke in Hebrew.
I spoke to the lady who managed the marae and she said well at least you kept the tikanga protocol. The guy, two years later, he moved back to Whangarei, so I took it on to do it in Hebrew. I started learning Te reo, then after two years, I stood up and did it in a very broken Māori. She’s like, great, finally!
I’m not perfect, and because I have ADHD, it’s funny, my thoughts run faster than my words, and then I tangle on it and fall apart. I have dyslexia too so I keep saying, now I can be completely misunderstood in four different languages, Hebrew, English, Russian, and Te Reo!
Other people who graduated from that program are now helping others to find Te Ao Māori, and their own way out of corrections. I have seen people learning and understanding and trying another way. For me, I like those guys; I don’t want to see them here. I’m supporting that through learning Te Reo.”