‘Brown Pakeha’
p. 68 · Read in the full issue
By Tautalatasi Malifa
He is our kin conned into believing a new era existed in this foreign land.
Borrowed ideas and westernised views have created mud pools of confusion, but salved by visions of easy money.
Road blocks, traffic lights, the bridge across the River Kwai of sophisticated New Zealand.
Days find him behind wheels of heavy machines, levelling the good earth into smooth rolling lawns of cold highways.
His life wears on into a dark cell, into a dark corner, into the next day shivering.
Compulsive living ferments a new car, a television home, until what remains is the physical being yet to be whitewashed— he falls into category of citizenship number 17414480 ALPHA. . . . . black hair, black eyes, brown skin still flourishes although he has grown fat ... .
. . . "sophisticated New Zealand"—Auckland.