The Swim Back

Thursday 8th April 2010, 8pm, Pipi Patch Dorms - Paihia

I've moved a long way up the country since I last wrote. From the mid North Island town of Rotorua I went 3 hours with the big green bus up to Auckland where I spent one night on Tuesday. Then yesterday morning I dozily fidgeted around in bed and lent towards the window to get some light on my watch to see that it was 7 minutes past 7, the bus I had to catch at quarter past 7 that morning was already waiting for me on the pavement below. My alarm had made it's own decisions and obviously wanted to see me rush. It will be some indication as to the time I spend on my appearance and general grooming habits these days to tell you that at 16 minutes past the hour, I was sat on that bus, reading a book and eating an orange, backpack and hand luggage packed, locked, and stowed, pillowcase and key having been handed in at reception. Sure, I ain't pretty, but I'm punctual.

That nearly-missed bus brought me to where I now write to you from, Paihia, the Bay of Islands, New Zealand's Northern most tourist haven and beautiful beach town. I caught up with Ella here as she was one day ahead of me out of Rotorua, not wanting to spend the extra day white water rafting. The two of us along with two new friends (both called Emma) went on a day trip today to the tip of the North Island, Cape Reinga. It wouldn't be an excursion I'd recommend to anyone who may suffer from motion sickness. I am usually a thoroughly sturdy traveller who can read and write and eat and look out the window without so much as a single butterfly flapping around my stomach. Not today however. Sat up the back of the coach, because it's like, you know, the law for the cool kids to sit there (there were also no other seats available), and heaving on every bend that we span through during the 6 hour round trip, I officially experienced my first taste of car sickness. Thankfully no actual vomiting occurred, but I did feel so nauseous that I imagined a whole army of winged creatures fluttering about my digestive system.

By the time we arrived at the Cape, I practically rolled down the coach steps and inhaled that fresh sea air like I'd been underwater for 3 hours. Despite the misery of travel ills I am pleased I got to see New Zealand's last piece of land. This is the only place in the North Island which I feel truly rivals the South Island in scale, drama and rugged naturalness. I know I've used this word a lot to describe the landscape here, but when I'm floundering for ways to tell you about it, this is the one that my brain keeps repeating, it's the only word that satisfactorily encapsulates a view such as the one I have seen today; it is EPIC. A force of opposing elements in battle with each other for centre stage, a strip of craggy rock that stretches out into inky water where two oceans meet, the Pacific and the Tasmen Sea, colliding at the tip of this country, creating vast and swirling whirlpools where their currents clash, their waves travelling from half a world's distance to meet each other here at this agreed reunion spot. Sky and sea stretch uninterrupted for so many miles that it's hard to make out the horizon's separating line between them. This is the kind of view that would have made people of centuries past believe that the world was flat, and that you could fall off the end of it.

The black piece of rock that stretches out in to the sea has a single gnarled tree clinging to it. It's hard to determine proportion from where you view it on the cape, but it looks to be as tall as an adult Oak, as spindly as a Silver Birch, as black and withered as one often lightning struck. The Maoris believe that the roots of this lonely tree form steps from which the dead descend to the water below. It is here that Maori spirits climb down this woody ladder, dive in to the ocean, and swim across the Pacific to be reunited in death with the island of Haiwaiki, their ancestral homeland and origin of that first voyage to New Zealand. 'Reinga' is the Maori word for the underworld. This story, seeing this tree, is what made my car sickness a manageable evil today. Homecoming; it reminded me of the herons in Petulu, the swallows in Elm Avenue, of my own resistance towards the inevitable return journey. Everyone and everything it seems has a need to be reconciled with where they came from.

When I was 16 I started working for a company called Crossroads where my job was to provide respite care for disabled 5 to 18 year olds. This job was at times very difficult, emotionally challenging, physically exhausting, left me frequently covered in other people's sick and poo and spit, and my own bruises, and to top it all off... was based in Dagenham. I stuck with it though, in truth I absolutely loved it, and returned every school and University holiday to work for Crossroads and the parents and children there until I was 21. When I left University I accepted an equally strenuous and stressful (if not quite so messy) job, in Dagenham again, teaching Drama to children and teenagers of mixed ability at a school just off of the hell pit that is the Heathway. It was hard work, with much pressure and responsibility placed on my shoulders - but placed there by myself. One of the reasons that I saw a year in that job through whilst simultaneously working full-time for Social Services is that I felt, what I have only identified now, as an obligation of service to that small Dagenham community. I felt like that group needed me, I was told by parents and teachers what an important extra-curricular outlet this group was for those children, what a rare opportunity it was for them to be able to freely express some kind of creativity in a safe environment, it was, for a few hours a week, giving them a voice.

Dagenham isn't an easy place for a child to grow up; senior schools are fitted with metal detectors, gang culture is rife, it's a highly multi-cultural London borough that voted in the BNP, literacy rates and qualification tallies are significantly lower than the national average, teenage pregnancy, disability and crime rates are among some of the highest in the country, one statistic from late 2008 suggested that 55% of children were living in families affected by poverty, every other person you meet will be claiming some kind of state benefit, I could go on, but it only gets more depressing. Dagenham is where I was born. I lived there for the first few baby years of my life before my parents did the best thing they have ever done for me - they moved. I was spared a childhood growing up on the graffitied estates and syringe littered public parks of that borough; a self-conscious, bookish, sarcastic little swot like me would have had a bloody tough time at school with some of those streetwise, mouthy sweethearts I later volunteered to teach. I have always been immeasurably grateful to Pat and Ray Gillman for financially damaging themselves in order to save me from that possible outcome, and yet what did I do? The second I was old enough to take employment, I went right back to Dagenham, to see if there was anyone there who I might be useful to. Call it a payback, a reimbursement of debt through duty. I've always felt like I had a lucky escape, but knew there were other children who hadn't, and won't, and I went to them. If the right post came up I'd work there again quite happily, as much as I abhor it sometimes, I feel a tangible connection to the place and the people.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that after I die I can see my spirit hopping on the District Line and joyfully floating off somewhere between Elm Park and Upney, it won't be merrily clambering on to a 174 and gliding off the bus at the Civic Roundabout. But what I saw today reminded me of this half-hearted, partial return that I once made, back to good old Dagenham. Standing on that last piece of land, seeing that tree and the eternal ocean beyond it, imagining hoards of ghostly Maori spectres queuing around me, waiting for their turn to climb down the roots and go loyally back to Haiwaiki, it made me wonder, where, when it matters, will feel like home enough to me that I'd be willing to swim an ocean to reach it?