Alan Duff: Kiwi at heart but shaped by big OE

Rugby and its heroes, such as Richie McCaw, play a large part in New Zealand's relationship with France. Picture / Getty Images

Opinion

Living overseas changes New Zealanders culturally and intellectually but there are some things we hold on to

Over the years several hundred thousand Kiwis have been "lost" to other countries permanently.

Of whom those at home will say, "Oh, him/her? Been gone for years. Lives in France." Or wherever. Naturally, you don't count when you've left your country for good. Yet expat Kiwis continue to fly our flag proudly.

Virtually every expat I've met is in a small business and has done all right. Most I know came to the Biarritz region to play rugby and are either still playing or retired. Almost all have French wives and children who consider themselves French and are fluent in the language themselves. We are where we are raised. And we become, in part, where we take up residence.

Not many want to go home, not after 20, 30 years, even if as seemingly Kiwi as ever. Yet they've changed and know they have. It's a funny thing becoming something of a stranger to the culture you were brought up in. Once you've had a taste of something different you can never be the same. Living in another country changes your "shape", culturally, mostly. But intellectually, too.

I know a rough-as-guts expat Kiwi builder here who has yet totally adopted the French culture of adoring his wife and children. You sometimes claim you've not changed - in moments of patriotism or denial. But you have. There's another Kiwi builder, tall and rugged who is one of the best builder/designers in this region. You'd never pick him out at, say, watching a rugby game.

I have always considered myself a Rotorua boy and a Whaka penny diver. Yet in a way I'm not because you can't be both. And hardly a boy, even if we all stay part-child till we die. I won't be surprised if I revert completely in my gibbering last. So the dreams connected to and about my childhood will go full circle. Perhaps if my life had been less troubling ... ? Who knows?

The other day I found myself playing a 70s song on YouTube, a big soppy ballad by Solomon King. Memories came back of us singing it in our Whaka rugby clubrooms. And even in this century I took a French journalist into the changing rooms after a reunion golden oldies match at Whaka and what did we sing: She Wears My Ring. A song with soaring higher notes which now can't quite be reached. Just the emotion is the same: of being with mates, a community, sharing something special. Expressing who and what we are. I wonder if I could still do the same now?

At a farewell function for departing ex-All Black Troy Flavell, after four years here showing the French why he wore that coveted silver fern 22 times, there was what the French call une bonne ambiance. Of mostly New Zealanders happy to be together.

And when another ex-All Black, Mike Clamp, leads his ancestor Te Rauparaha's Ka Mate, Ka Mate haka, accompanied by three strapping Maoris and the above-mentioned Pakeha builder, you feel singularly Kiwi.

The haka, like Richie, belongs to all of us. It's Kiwis claiming ownership, same as we did of Tana Umaga, Buck and Pinetree, currently Dan, Julian, Izzy and SBW again. Kiri, Lorde and Eleanor while we're at it.

One thing we'll never lose is Kiwi men talking ad nauseam about rugby. Like at a lunch recently, with new French friends I'd met at a book festival, with three other Kiwis. What did we talk about? Certainly not literature, which the French love. Rather partial to it myself.

But we talked rugby and more rugby, till my wife whispered that women might like to talk about something else. So that's definitely not changed.

We have a daughter in London and another coming to live in Europe. Virtually all of their early to mid-20s friends live overseas. Young people travel a lot more; it's one of their early adulthood plans.

They go into the wider world and some will come back with new ideas, new ways of doing things, another way of looking at the world. Some won't come back other than to visit relatives. As the years pass some friendships will feel strained, unnatural, forced. That's the reshaping taking place. You belong elsewhere.

You gain by living overseas for a reasonable period. Yet you do lose something from the reshaping of your outlook and your changed habits. I reckon we play a more credible Kiwi role here playing the version we've become.

Our hosts don't know do they?