Opinion: French connection could flourish into something tres kapai

VISITORS: Eric Hoyeau and wife Anne Konitz in front of Sir Tristram House, the beach bach of Sir Patrick Hogan who they were hosted by on their visit to New Zealand. PHOTO/SUPPLIED

Voila is one of my favourite French words and I have used it a lot this last week.

Voila is used to express success and satisfaction very much in the same context as Maori use the word kapai.

If I were to use voila and kapai in the same sentence as a symbiotic hybrid brand to pull two countries together, there would be no better place than the potential of bringing together the two cities of Deauville in France and Tauranga Moana here in Aotearoa New Zealand.

There are many similarities and shared cultural connections between Deauville and Tauranga as I have discovered in our hikoi back to our daughter's namesake of Honfleur, a nearby seaside village to Deauville, where our great-great grandfather Emile Joseph Borell departed from aboard the whaler Roland, to carry the Catholic faith across the world and start a new life here in Te Puna.

So it makes sense that the only French (Wiwi) Maori community in the world sets up a whangai (to adopt) relationship with where our Wiwi ancestors Borell and Bidois first voyaged from in the 1840s.

Deauville is a couple of hours or so commute from Paris as Tauranga is from Auckland. Deauville is a seaside resort much like the Mount where Parisians have back-up baches. Sacre bleu! Calling them baches is like calling Marine Parade and Pilot Bay a couple of streets full of seaside sheds.

Deauville and the hinterland of Calvados produce fine fruit and fortified wine as we do kiwifruit here and they have a strong horse breeding and racing industry similar to Tauranga and in the Waikato.

In fact, we, all 45 of us, stayed in the Karaka-like sales yard owned by our hosts, on our hikoi there in 2015.

So, to adopt Deauville as a sister city to Tauranga Moana could be cool, or tres chic from the Wiwi (French) side of the cultural coin.

We visited Deauville just more than a year ago as a touring group of 45 from Te Puna, on a hikoi to connect with our Wiwi ancestors and along the way we connected with Anne Konitz and her husband, Eric Hoyeau, who is a good mate and business partner of the mayor of Deauville, Phillippe Augier.

One thing led to another and quicker than you could say Rainbow Warrior, we had an official audience with the mayor, who was a very suave ex-Parisian-Gerrard Depardieu kind of guy.

Monsieur Mayor was up with the boys doing the haka and the video of 45 Te Puna people and a cool-as mayor doing a full on haka in his mayoral chambers, went viral across France.

So seeds were sown and during the past week they were watered when we played host to Anne and Eric, showing them the sights, tasting the kai and spending one-on-one quality korero with tangata whenua of Tauranga Moana.

It is not until you walk and talk around Mauao, hikoi along the estuaries and shorelines of our Moana, listen to the waiata of our wahine and taste the kai of our bountiful food basket, that you realise what a taonga, a treasure, we have in our own back yard.

A treasure that can stand alongside any attraction on the planet including Paris and its city made for lovers, like part-time residents on their houseboat, Anne and Eric.

Our tiki tour with Anne and Eric finished where we started, around the table of the most superb restaurant they have experienced anywhere in Australasia, Somerset Cottage.

This is where we hatched the plan to put together an exchange of cultures, kai, korero and taonga in the form of a whangai sister city, kick-started by an internship-type of scholarship, supported by The French Ministry for the Environment (Conservatoire du littoral) and possibly regional council and community kingpins here in the Bay of Plenty.

For me it is an opportunity like no other for our tamariki to see how the other side live, while learning social, cultural and environmental skills to bring back and share.

When we consider the French eat and drink all day and never get drunk or fat, there is a lot to learn, especially in light of what obesity and excess binge drinking is doing to us as a country.

Perhaps this is why the word warrior Alan Duff, who was once in Aotearoa, has settled for the slower pace of the Wiwi, where fine wine and great kai are enjoyed around a table over a long time, not as a quick feed to fill the puku and heaps of waipiro (grog) to get haurangi (drunk).

If this can happen, and I have every reason to believe it will, then voila! A French connection started way back in 1840 could flourish into something tres kapai.

Tommy Kapai is a best-selling author and writer.
broblack@xtra.co.nz