Tattoos

Another thing that strikes me about New Zealand is the frequency of large scale tattoos: I have the feeling any primary school teaching staff Monday morning meeting would make a tattoo convention proud. It seems that people like you and me need to have at least a certain percentage of their bodies covered in depictions of skulls, seemingly random words and symbols. 

The Maoris traditionally have had a strong tattoo culture and this seems to have reached all inhabitants of this country at this stage. In the Maori culture, as in many other cultures, tattooes have a meaning and a magical power. I feel quite colourless and non-descript here at times, when talking to people who have large scale images of whatever seemed to have floated their skin-colouring boats a while ago. But as this whole trip is all about opening my horizon, I am trying to come to terms with having innocent chats with innocent people who, in my culture, look like drug dealers with a triple murder conviction (this sounds terrible, but seriously, people with face tattoos?!)