Oscar, Gordy, Millie, and Willow play on the ukeleles donated by Ōhaupō School. Photo / Supplied
Oscar, Gordy, Millie, and Willow play on the ukeleles donated by Ōhaupō School. Photo / Supplied
Mother Teresa said, “It is not how much we do, but how much love we put in the doing. It is not how much we give, but how much love is put in the giving.”
The manaakitanga (care and compassion) which has been extended by the generous people of the Waipā District to our small settlement of Haumoana has resonated deeply within our community of playcentre parents.
For those unfamiliar with the geography of Hawke’s Bay, our wee village of roughly 1200 people is located at the mouth of the Tuki Tuki River, 20km to the south of Napier City. This is the same river which broke its banks at Waipawa and ploughed its way through two towns before travelling overland back into its normal path, most likely saving our hazard-vulnerable community from a worse fate.
This story is pretty common with many other areas of the region; subject to the power and ferocity of the rivers which swelled during Cyclone Gabrielle and battered by heavy swells on the East Coast the water, with nowhere to go, overtopped our beach crest and flooded the estuaries and drains, impacting areas of housing. As well as damaging homes, the mix of flood, seawater, silt, and septic waste inundated our fire station, coffee shop, small businesses, and the local playcentre.
Our family home escaped the flooding by a mere 3 metres; my husband evacuated the kids and dog while I headed into town to help at the Emergency Coordination Centre.
By Tuesday evening, most people were trapped wherever they were, hemmed in on all sides by flooded rivers, streams, and culverts. We hunkered down between shifts at the house of a friend, the police welfare checking us at 3am, and we waited it out until we could creep our cars slowly back through ponding to our home the next morning.
Residents along Haumoana Rd being evacuated after Tukituki River mouth got blocked. 17 September 2021. Hawke's Bay Today Photograph by Paul Taylor
Early in the first week of the aftermath, the family moved around between friends’ houses, offloading frozen goods into functioning freezers and generally enjoying the hospitality offered, while I worked night shifts in the coordination centre. I had turned up that first day thinking I would be doing a favour for a friend, a couple of hours at the most.
We worked 14-16 hour shifts in those first four days. Those living outside the walls of the emergency services couldn’t really comprehend how bad things were; no power meant no television, newspapers, phones, or the internet. For some the ignorance was bliss, for others it was fuel on a fire of frustration and isolation.
We were the lucky ones. Two days before the cyclone we’d been debating its possible impact with our friends: one remarked that using words like ‘catastrophic’ in a forecast was irresponsible. I’d replied that for a family living in poverty, losing the contents of their freezer in a power outage would be pretty catastrophic to them. The guilt for making that premonition lives with me even now.
We took showers at the neighbour’s using a generator (shared between three households) plugged into their gas califont, ate meals cooked for us in areas with power, and I slowly threw away the rotting food in our house. Our spare fridge went across the road into the coffee shop, the spare fuel into whoever’s generator needed it most.
The residents built a response hub with free food, psychosocial support, and a team of people trying to manage and coordinate the excess of donated items which poured into the region. It was community resilience at its most beautiful.
The whole time, weeks on weeks, people were offering assistance. The abundance of Kiwi generosity and aroha was overwhelming; equipment, resources, skilled labour, supplies, money and the more intangible things like moral support, empathy, and a willingness to help, continued to flow in long after the power had come back on and the bridges had reopened.
Most surprising to us was the magnitude of love for our small playcentre which came from you, Waipā District.
Within a week of having been on the phone with the family in Pirongia and Cambridge explaining to them the level of damage and losses our centre had sustained, they had fortified words into action and were busy collecting money, toys, books, and musical instruments for our tamariki. My parents loaded up their ute and drove nine hours to deliver sandbags and toys and books.
Couriers arrived with packages containing beautiful words and colourful things. Messages turned up in inboxes with pledges and promises. Money appeared in accounts overnight. The tightness in our chests eased.
Denise and Tammy teaching Frankie how to play some chords. Photo / Supplied.
Because playcentre is important to us. This building, the land, the maara kai, is more than a place for children; it is a refuge for the weary. It is a resting house for bone-tired parents who have not showered yet and ate toast crusts for breakfast.
It is an oasis for the frustrated caregiver whose charge is stir-crazy and has torn up the house three times over by 9am. And it is a place for whakaora (recovery); where a cup of strong coffee can materialise out of thin air, a piece of cake magics itself into your hand, and the baby who has kept you up all night and driven you to tears is passed from warm embrace to warm embrace while you take a moment to breathe out all that maternal anxiety and rage.
Most importantly, post-flood, this is a place of psychological safety for everyone. It is a mechanism for wrapping support around our local whānau; they come so their children can play, and we collectively shoulder some of their load for a few hours.
We come to lend them a compassionate ear, to give space for korero, to replenish their mauri (life force), and we couldn’t have done this, would not have had the place or resources to have done this, without the incredible efforts of the tamariki in Waipā. Without the efforts of all Kiwis really. You have honoured us with your gifts.
The incredible power of giving and the love with which it was offered has been felt ten-fold in our community. We now have a temporary playcentre set up for the next six months in one of our local halls, furnished with big containers full of aroha.
In particular, we extend our most heartfelt thanks to the following people and organisations of Waipā who have supported us in creating this place of fun, learning, and safety for our parents and children: Ōhaupō School (ukuleles and books), Pirongia School (cash donation), Te Awamutu Playcentre (toys and books), and Glencore Grain/the Derbyshire family (supplying sandbags for future flood protection of our centre).
