Whakapapa
“He's Devon but he’s not really Devon, he’s mongrel Devon!”
O.K. so I’ve got a ‘British’ passport and I follow England and all the other home nations in the sports. But I grew up on the South West peninsula of the United Kingdom, surrounded by the majestic beaches of the Westcountry and the rolling hills of Devon. My roots are in the land, not my nation.
Then comes your Whakapapa, your people. Shortly after I came along, my parents decided to divorce and live separately. They were still commited to being a mother and a father but realised all 3 of us would be happier this way, rather than suppressing all the shite and trying to uphold the image of a nuclear family in society. I stayed with mummy.
My mother says she brought me up to question everything, and of course, she was the first place I would try. Sorry mum!
Sam in his caravan, aged 19
My father remarried and spent his time between working at sea and home with the family. His garden and house were interesting and stuff but the real fascination was when we got on dads boat. Crews originating from all over the world, so many flavours and styles yet all family people. And these people became my teachers, and I listened to their stories, from all over the planet, and the West Country melted into a little island off the continental shelf of Eurasia, Atlantic side, and over there, the mighty Pacific.
And you’re in this big metal box, the ship, surrounded by sea and air. Everybody has to look after it, it’s your home. Then out from the vast expanse of nature arrives a bit of land. New faces, smells, accents, people, busy busy busy. Your little world in the big metal box , which then seemed so small, arrives at a new world. How exciting for me! And, by tradition, it is the captain who is responsible for his people and his vessel on this journey. I was desperate to learn just how he did that. So, throughout my childhood, whenever he offered me a choice, a trip to sea, I always said yes!
My father was always very generous with his time for me on those childhood trips to sea, explaining the tools of his trade. The charts, dividers, parallel rulers, GPS and sextant. We looked up into the skies and I learnt the names of all the bright stars, and the little stories, maps and tricks to find one from another. But I also learnt the context and the framework of the heavens, the mechanics of our little sun supporting our earth, a system so small in the grand universal scheme of things. The ancient arts of navigation.
This is just a short rootlet of my Whakapapa tree, relevant to this page. But you cannot really get to know someone from a CV. Sure, you can assess his or her functionality and aptitude to perform a particular function of society, grade and compare accordingly. But to really get to know someone, you need to share their whakapapa. So, like a tree, my whakapapa roots stretch down into the land, into the past , searching out nourishment for my soul . The trunk and the branches ,my body and person, growing outward and upward into the world. And, like a forest, my root system entwines with the other root systems of all the other nearby trees , becoming merged. The forest is essentially one unit, one organism, growing from one earth. It expresses itself as a shared destiny. Yet it is made up not just of the individual trees, but of all the other little parts. The insects, animals, flowers and birds etc, the nitrates and the phosphates, the pollen and the pooh. And, like the forest, we are learning that we too are one humanity, one consciousness. We are of one mind. We are all in this together.
