Summer resissue: Has the country changed all that much in three decades? Loveni Enari compares his two New Zealands.

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It’s 6.30am when I wake up at Rodíles, a beautiful, deserted beach on the northern Spanish coast. It’s summer, so the only reason it’s deserted is the hour. My daughter still sleeps and I need to go to the toilet so I move quietly as I open the van door and contemplate the eucalyptus forest and light, blue sea and sun on the sand, beyond. I grab my phone and, as quietly as possible, slide the door closed.

As I relieve myself against a tree, I think, “Too much.” That was Peter Fats’s favourite saying. ‘Too much!’ Remember Fats, the mighty Auckland and Manu Sāmoa rugby personality? At the press conference after Sāmoa had beaten Wales, and shocked the rugby world at the 1991 World Cup, he led the coaches on stage, above the crowd of waiting journalists, in true Fats style, with three bottles of beer in one hand. His other hand was injured otherwise there would have been another three.

He saw me in the front row, stopped and stooped down to give me one. I laughingly accepted, it’d been a long day, and the world press, eyebrows raised, looked around at each other, unsettled. I loved it. This was not the normal etiquette, protocol, and was so typical of Fats sticking two fingers up at the establishment ways. I had a shit-eating grin on my face as wide as the Wairoa river, as his charm worked its magic. It was like, “World, I’d like you to meet hard-case, piano-mover, Peter Fats. Peter Fats, here’s the world bro. Go for it!”

And he never looked back. What a man, what a life.

The cosmic leaps my mind makes – morning piss, Fats, Manu Samoa rugby and 1991.

That’s when I last lived in Aotearoa.

Thirty-two years later and here I still am in Europe, moving towards the beach, deliberately not looking at my phone until I get there, wanting to postpone the screen thing, to be mindful and present in the beauty, especially as it’s just me and my daughter, and we haven’t had time together like this since last year. She’s finishing her master’s degree in applied sociology and I’m so proud of her. She occupied a squat during most of her studies in Madrid (just like her parents did in London) and saved us a pretty penny.

I sit down on the beach, contemplate the beauty and wonder about Fats and whether I should exercise before my swim.

First the phone.

And there it is. Five missed calls and the text. My sister in law, Sarah, has died of cancer.

The love of my brother’s life has finally lost her battle. On the day after her birthday when she received and spoke to all the well wishers who turned up. What strength and what a will – one final push to see, celebrate life with and farewell loved ones.

F…, that’s the end of my holiday I think. Gotta pack, get home, find my passport and leave. Will let my daughter sleep first. Then head off. I contemplate the rising sun on the water. It is beautiful. Sarah was a believer. I tell her in my mind – God’s made a beautiful day for you, girl.

I ring a niece. She answers. I mumble something totally inadequate and get passed to her dad. My brother. My rock of all ages. We discuss her passing in a calm manner. I tell him I’m coming over. He asks about the course I’m supposed to be giving. I don’t know but say I can sort it. I tell him I’m coming for him. I cry. He says it’s OK, to stay and give the course. Life is for the living, he says. Or to be lived.

I pause, unsure now. I’d made plans to work the Rugby World Cup, was gonna do a rugby roadie to end all roadies, following the mighty Manu Samoa and, for once, maybe earn some money off my writing about them. And then I was to come to New Zealand to try it out for a few months. To be closer to my family, and a girl I’d met almost a year ago, after the Covid quarantine had put the final nail in my marriage and given me two years of the single life, and a cat.

That was the plan before she died. Now my brother’s saying, “As you were. I’ll see you later in the year”, and I don’t know what to think. I say I will get back to him. We mumble our goodbyes and I sit and look at the sea again.

God’s creation is indeed good, Sarah.

A week later my flight is about to land in Auckland. It had come down to being at the Rugby World Cup, and regretting not being with my aiga, or being with my aiga, and regretting not being at the Cup.

I arrive on the day of the funeral and I wonder about a conversation I had with my atheist, Spanish family before leaving. My siblings and their families are believers. Personally, I struggle with the wholesale acceptance of religion as part and parcel of Pasifika culture. After all, the ‘gift’ from the colonisers is still less than 200 years old in Samoa. However, and this goes back to my conversation, we recognise that if religion allows people to have the peace and calm to face life’s problems, including cancer, with dignity and tranquillity, then more power to their church and prayer. (I make a note to myself that I still do not want to listen to radio Rhema anymore. Ever.)

From the airport it’s straight to brother number two Fatu’s house in Manukau. Fortunately, it’s big, as cousins, uncles and nephews are there from Australia and Sāmoa. They’ve all come to pay their respects to Sarah, and my brother Brian. It’s the Samoan way. As usual on these occasions, despite the sadness and solemnity, the reencounters with aiga, always willing to take the mickey, are a small spark away from loud, Sāmoan guffawing. We look at each other with a twinkle and make mental notes, “you’ll wait!”

A shirt and ie-fai-taga, (formal lavalava), appropriate for the occasion, have been laid out for me. I put on my ie-fai-taga. I’ve come from a beautiful Spanish summer and the South Auckland wind whistles between my legs. Stuff the protocol, I cannot wear this. Jeans it is, with a formal Pasifika ula (lei) as a nod to formality.

 Sarah leaves behind many. Four loving daughters, various nieces and nephews, countless cousins, a whole Tongan Basketball Association, which she co-founded, friends all over Auckland, and one doting widower. It’s very sad and beautiful and in terms of numbers, hugely impressive. The church is actually overflowing. She was a generous soul, very active with a vivacious personality. She loved nothing more than to drive all over the city, reaching out to friends and relatives and friends of friends whenever she heard they were suffering, or she just hadn’t seen them in a while. It was usually done with a cake or two, or panipopo, or home-baked pies. She touched so many lives, it’s no surprise so many turned up.

Being proudly Tongan, her funeral therefore, is Tongan-run and it’s impressive – the singing is amazing. The eulogies are touching. At the very end, as people file past to drop a flower with the coffin, and say their final goodbyes, it gets really sad. The Sāmoans I talk to later are so impressed by how quickly the Tongan ceremony winds up at the end – there’s no fa’a Samoa, customary speech-giving, and there’s no reception, two things which often cause funeral programmes to overrun by many hours. It lasts over four hours anyway and everyone picks up their feed at the gate as they leave Māngere cemetery. 

The next morning at her house, I am awoken by the sound of gentle conversation outside my window. I look out and see middle-aged Tongan women, dressed in black, enveloped by huge, bunched-up ta’ovala, (fine mats), walking around the gardens picking up rubbish, trimming, cleaning. As certain members of Sarah’s family, it is one of their duties to the deceased’s family. Later in the week, three of her cousins have their long, beautiful hair cut to shoulder length by Sarah’s sister, as a sign of their devotion and mourning. I marvel at the support of the Tongan community and am wowed by the intricacies of their funeral customs.

I think back to the last Spanish funeral I attended where the feeling of here today, gone tomorrow predominates. There’s one day of ‘viewing’ the casket behind glass at the funeral home, while you share some minutes with the bereaved, before the funeral on the same day. Mourners barely have time to catch their breath.

The following week I am in Wellington to spend time with my grandson and my Kiwi son. He’s a personal trainer and his rugby team, Oriental Rongotai, is in the Wellington final. They are rank outsiders. At the ground in Kilbirnie, he points out the main players and gives me some background during the last training run. One of them is lucky to be playing and is lucky to be alive, he says.

While out playing pool in town recently his friend was jumped by some gang members and given a beating. He saw one of the gangsters in the street and beat him up, which did not please the local chapter. The president of the gang put out a bounty on the rugby player. What does that mean, I ask. It meant they had to vacate the player’s house, move the grandparents, partner and siblings to a safe house while the bounty was “on” as they ran the risk of the house being shot up in a drive-by and someone getting killed.

It would not be the first time this has happened in New Zealand.

Members of the rugby club approached the gang president and appealed to his sense of justice, pleading it was his gang members who had initiated the violence in the first place. Fortunately, the president agreed and the player’s family was allowed to return home. The player appears in the final at the weekend, plays a blinder and Ories win the title for the first time in 40 years.

The palagi supporters for the other team give me some of the usual rubbish said of Pasifika teams. “They’re passionate but tend to lose their discipline a bit,” says one. Ories’ hugely disciplined, more intelligent play is the foundation of their success and I thrive on calling out, “That’s the way Ories, beat them with your brains!”

The following week in Auckland, a secondary school student in Ōtāhuhu is attacked by five grown men in the street. They surround him and one of them pulls out a gun. The student, known for his street-smarts and handy fists, kicks the gun out of his attacker’s hands, and sprints away to safety. It’s stuff from a Hollywood film and it’s the talk of the school the next day. School mates later tell the teachers the assailants were gang members looking to “persuade” the student to join their gang.

A teacher at the school, tells me of the number of his students who come from gang houses. He tells me the story of the Pasifika woman whose son recently told her not to visit his house as the gang would be taking it over that weekend. That was their reply to her son when he told them he wanted out of the gang. They will not let him leave the gang and she had no idea he was even involved. The gangs offer companionship, brotherhood, cash and food on the table. It’s immediate, and much more tangible than a possible NCEA diploma further down the track.

A few days later in downtown Auckland two Sāmoan men are shot and killed at a work site. 

Almost a month after my arrival the New Zealand Herald announces four gang killings at the weekend.

I am beginning to see a pattern here. The gang thing all over the country, the shootings and the cool indifference to it all. I wonder aloud at the situation, remarking how quickly everyone seems to be able to move on after the CBD murders. I tell people the country I left in 1991 would have come to a standstill as the shock would have halted everything.

My mate jokes and says, “Well, you get half a day to get over your trauma and then park it, it’s back to work. There’s a lot of inflation out there.”

My 81-year-old mother doesn’t bat an eyelid, “Welcome to the new-New Zealand,” she says.

This is what happens, I suppose, after a white supremacist murders 52 people in one go – six killings in two weeks is small bikkies in comparison. 

New Zealand has definitely grown in my time away and it’s not just Auckland’s horrendous traffic problem. I’m not sure I like it. It’s more worldly, definitely more fun, but it has a tougher, outer skin now, it’s more cynical and less caring.

The other very clear conclusion to all these events is that they do not involve white people. It’s the brownies who are committing and suffering from the violence. I’m getting a clear feeling that the lines between the two New Zealands – that of brown as opposed to white New Zealand – though more blurred and shared in many work and social situations, unlike the past, are more marked in other areas.

On the one hand, when I left the country, Michael Jones, Va’aiga Tuigamala and Jonah were the only Pasifika brownies in the headlines. Nowadays, apart from the many sports people, there are any number of people in the arts, top government positions and making a name for themselves as successful professionals in the private sector. 

I love how so many other cultures, palagi included, know what a lu sipi and an otai are, an oka, a Fijian curry, while eggs benedict seems to be a brunch favourite of all Pasifika people I breakfast with. I love how many palagi say uso, or uce, or seki. The Black Ferns singing Sāmoan songs on the podium. Wow. Someone points out Māori singing Sāmoan songs in the national kapa haka competition. 

In my time, all Pasifika were supposed to adapt and learn their new palagi surroundings well, and shed their traditional ways during the week to bring them out only in the privacy of their weekends. Now it seems the intercultural exchange is a lot more fluid. This is the good side of the divide. On the negative side, the glass ceiling, for women and Pasifika people is real, blatantly so if you’re a Pasifika woman.

Pasifika, alongside Māori, dominate all the negative statistics. A report released in July 2023 called Te Mana Ola: The Pacific Health Strategy confirms some dark ones. I’ll only quote one of them. 25.6% of Pasifika children live in material hardship, compared to 7.4% of European children.

Anecdotally I accumulate all sorts of “experiences” in my six months in Auckland. The typical, serve the white guy first, despite me being there for longer, happens a few times. There’s my visit to the Ponsonby chemist where the proprietor stops all he’s doing, plants his hands on the counter, stares at me then doesn’t take his eyes off me the whole time I’m in the shop.

There’s the retired parliamentarian, Aupito Sio, at a book launch last month, commenting on being in an airport queue recently, behind a palagi woman with three bags, and he is stopped and asked about his three bags, while she breezes through without a hitch. When he presents his special passport he is waved through without a word.

These things are still happening to us, he insists.

My Sāmoan friend has surgery, spends some days on serious pain-killers, is transferred to another hospital and the nurse says she’ll start her on two panadols a day. My friend informs her the treatment is not just starting, she’s been on it for nearly a week, and on stronger medication, but gets an even shorter reply, “Well, here it will be two panadols a day.” This only changes when her respected surgeon turns up to visit and everyone starts bowing and scraping at his eminence.

While still in hospital, we overhear a conversation between a young palagi girl with period pains and the admissions nurse. The girl is given a bed overnight and released the next day. The nurse’s friendly tone and willingness to accommodate the girl contrasts sharply with the “panadol” nurse.

My dark, overweight cousin, visiting Aotearoa for Christmas, gets chased into the carpark by a palagi sales assistant. “Excuse me, can I see your docket? Excuse me, have you paid for all this? Excuse me, I just need to see your docket, please.” The assistant looks at her docket, dumps it back in her hand, and turns on her heels without a word of apology.

There’s my English friend who tells me her friend recently told her she was taking her son out of rugby. Why, my friend asked. “Because I don’t want him playing with 100 kilogram coons,” she was told.

I did not realise I had accumulated so many “racial incidents” in my six months here. Or maybe that’s not so many. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

In August I visited my palagi aunty in an Auckland hospital. She had been ambulanced from Waiheke Island and was calm in a curtained-off cubicle in Grafton when I arrived. She had been diagnosed with a rare cancer earlier in the year and was now susceptible to anxiety attacks.

Not long after getting there her English doctor turned up. Her bedside manner was impeccable. Calm, informative, reassuring. I immediately felt reassured at the state of the health system. After kindly guiding my aunty through the various procedures and options available to her, soon the two of them were done with clinical matters, and were chatting about Pip, a mutual friend who also lived on Waiheke.

At that moment I heard a woman praying in Sāmoan from beyond the curtain.

“Le atua e, ia e fa’amagaloina mai agasala o lenei auauna fa’atauva’a …”

(Oh Lord, would you please forgive the sins of this humble servant …)

Kalofa e, (poor lady), I thought. No way in hell would this Sāmoan woman be able to have the conversation about Pip on the Waiheke beach, that my aunty was having with her doctor. No way would the Sāmoan woman have the familiarity of the genial conversation, and no way would she ever be able to access the mutual friendliness and empathy my aunt and her doctor were able to generate. 

A recent report from Auckland University states that Pasifika people make up 2.2% of the doctors in Aotearoa; the Sāmoan patient would have a hard time even finding someone who spoke her language.

With the National Party in power, and not one Pasifika member among their parliamentarian ranks, I share the fear that for those Pasifika people at the bottom of the statistics – those relying on the food banks, whose children need the school breakfasts and lunches, whose youngest children are being brought up by the oldest siblings, children whose shared wardrobe is a cardboard box in the middle of the sitting-room, whose bed or bedroom at home changes from day to day, week to week – for these people, the great unseen by white Aotearoa, I feel matters are going to get worse.

I love so many things about the Spanish lifestyle, not least their free public health system, their efficient public transport, their work to live life-philosophy, their food. However, I had mistakenly thought I was proper Europeanised. I thought I was over the need to be around brown people. But this visit confirms how much more at ease I feel with them in sight, at the dairy, in the shops. The ability to connect with so many old friends and family helps me feel even more at home, as does the Pasifika food I hadn’t realised how much I’d missed. Auckland has it all.

This is the first summer I’ve spent at the beach in Aotearoa for 32 years.

Man oh man, what a beautiful country. And one worth fighting for.

First published February 15, 2024. This is Public Interest Journalism funded through NZ On Air.