Inspring Visit

Te Ao Hou, October 1956, Page 50

Inspring Visit Later, when the club needed piupiu, a teacher had to be found. As there was none in Mangakino, Mr Waiwai invited his mother who is eighty years old to visit him and this old lady was a wonderful inspiration to the club. Although the people were all far away from their homes, they felt as if once more their kaumatua were amongst them. She left behind her not only a knowledge of piupiu-making but also a memory of the gentle spirit of the past that had come to the Tuhoe club. After a year's work, the club is still housed in a small hut, which has been given the appropriate name of Te Awhina Hall; large scrolls, on which the club songs are printed in a clear hand, hang all along the walls and in a corner lie the club's few properties, the sticks for the stick games, musical instruments, piupiu. There is a table for the Chair, and benches along the walls. The night of our visit there were thirty people, because our arrival was not known, but often there are over a hundred in this small room. All the activities are run under the tribal committee's auspices, but they are so numerous that we were only able to talk to a few of the many walkers and organisers. The chairman, Wari Ward is the administrator of the club; during the day he is in charge of the office at Maraetai dam, and he is a born organiser. He is afraid the club may have tackled too many things at once; perhaps more results could have been achieved if there had been fewer activities, but the club members love to roam over the whole field of human knowledge trying now one thing and then another and Mr Ward is I think, glad that everybody is so enterprising. Those who give their lives to social work always feel the same: there is so infinitely much to be done that nothing seems to be quite enough, there is always some problem left, something to be learnt, some unhappy families, some unsatisfied people, some who are lonely, some boy who waits outside the pub for his father and who warms his feet by the piecart radiator.