I'd like a man made of chocolate

One of the gurls at work who is a bit nuts has organised a baby photo competition - not who's cutest but who can identify the most people. It's been done I know and a bit cutesy even for me. We did it when I was at the Adventist School in hmmm, maybe form one when I was about 11 or 12. I can't remember the exact photo I contributed, but I do remember Mr Bishop standing up, holding my photo out to the left and then the right so all could see and then loudly pronouncing,

So who's this handsome fellow?

I am scarred.

Yes I was incredibly fat, and bald until I was about five. But I found one I quite like for the upcoming comp at work. I'm probably about 11 months old and I'm sucking on a beer bottle.

My closest friend at work had a bit of an issue when the competition was first discussed. She is of Indian descent and happens to be the only black/coloured person in the organisation. The girl organising it said it was great because people needed an easy one to warm up. And I don't think my friend is really concerned, but it made me think about identity, and taking things for granted. I know you're kind of thriving on being the blondie and sticking out like a sore toe Kel, but I wonder if it would get tiresome if you had that your whole life, or you were in a culture less receptive to diversity or difference. I wonder how significantly it could shape you as a person.

I had to give a little talk on Timaru to workmates, and one of the things I raised, because I was being provocative, was the importance, or rather unimportance placed on cultural awareness and cultural competency during one of the meetings on the visit. There's a new policy at work, it may even be provided for in the legislation i'd need to check, where cultural awareness is one of the competencies a doc has to demonstrate. But when the issue was sidelined as less than five percent of the population in Timaru are Maori I spoke up, (which I didn't do a lot of throughout the day), but it seemed to me that a lot of our docs are coming in from overseas, and moving around the country a lot, and there should be an element of cultural education in their training, this may include introduction to the local marae, kaumatua, basic tikanga, the recognition of inequalities in health outcomes for different ethnicities in NZ. And both at the meeting at Timaru and while I was doing my talk back at the office someone jumped up and said, but cultural competency doesn't just mean an awareness of Maori issues. And I completely agree, it's understanding the peculiarities of the NZ health system, it's communication in English for a lot of them, it's transcending traditional conceptions of gender roles for docs coming in from some middle eastern and islamic nations, it's acknowledging our burgeoning pacific island and asian culture. But I hate it when people stamp their foot and say - New Zealand is a multicultural society, as if this statement negates the need to protect and respect ethnic and cultural diversity and is rubber stamping assimilation. Lip service isn't enough, not in the public sector at the very least. It frightens me that Winston Peters is found as attractive as he is to middle New Zealand - what's he polling at currently, like ten or eleven percent.

I remember walking to the supermarket with Jake back in Tauranga when he was quite little and walking past a very very dark skinned man, undoubtedly from the african continent, i'd hate to guess, and Jacob waited until a short moment after we'd passed him to exclaim,

Is that man made of chocolate?

Ofcourse I had to answer with, I don't know, are you made of vanilla?