Community kuia Zita Smith creates kahatu stones to gift to residents moving into nine new Kāinga Ora homes.
Community kuia Zita Smith creates kahatu stones to gift to residents moving into nine new Kāinga Ora homes.
Living in a Kāinga Ora home along Rutherford Rd in Napier for 32 years, Zita Smith was excited to welcome new neighbours to the street.
Zita’s home is one of six flats, and she is part of a close-knit community. Many of her neighbours have also lived on the same street for a long time, and looking after each other has become a way of life for the community.
As a well-known Māori Warden, local kuia and all-around charitable person, when Zita saw the new homes in the street were finished and new families were moving in, she wanted to awhi (support) them with love.
The kuia said, “I wanted to make sure our new neighbours felt welcome and knew where to turn if they needed anything.”
She told her new neighbours if they needed a cup of sugar or anything else, they knew where to find her.
While welcoming her new neighbour, Zita, who is very skilled at crafts, made a taonga (treasure) to gift to those moving in.
Kāinga Ora senior housing support manager Waipuna Nohokau, (left) Zita Smith (centre) and Kāinga Ora regional director east North Island, Naomi Whitewood (right).
After the nine newly-built homes were blessed by local kaumātua in Rutherford Rd, Napier new tenants and guests who attended the blessing then shared whanaungatanga (getting to know each other).
Zita said she chose to create a taonga for her new neighbours as a way to share her feelings and aroha out towards them.
“This is the way I thought it would be a nice way to give them a simple touch to make them welcome to our street,” the kuia said.
She made a kohatu, a decorated stone embedded with aroha (love), to enhance the wairua (spirit) of each new home.
As a tangible symbol of welcoming and to symbolise a new start, a kohatu was placed on the bench inside each home before whānau moved in.
Zita told the Napier Courier that her “new neighbours’ reactions were overwhelmed, surprised, and delighted to receive the kohatu stones and the koru keyrings.”
Coming from a place of love and knowing, she said her “aroha went out to the whānau, moving in as many had come from living in motels and other living arrangements unsuitable places to raise their children”.
She added, “These whānau are at the start of a new journey, and they will blossom now. It is a great feeling to have one of these beautiful, warm places to call home and to start building new memories.”
Zita dedicates her desire to help to the way she was raised. Growing up on a farm outside of Wairoa, where her family was isolated and had to grow their own vegetables, they shared what they grew with others in the community.
She said, “That was how we were brought up and it has stuck with me, my sisters and my children.
“We are all involved in giving back to our communities in some way.”
A couple of days after placing the kohatu stones in the new homes, Zita went to visit some of the new residents to see if they had settled in and were happy with their new homes.
The neighbours that were home thanked Zita for the kohatu and told her they were “very happy” in their new homes.
Maddisyn Jeffares became the editor of the Hawke’s Bay community papers Hastings Leader and Napier Courier in 2023 after writing at the Hastings Leader for almost a year. She has been a reporter with NZME for almost three years and has a strong focus on what’s going on in communities, good and bad, big and small. Email news tips to her at: maddisyn.jeffares@nzme.co.nz
