Maori volunteers in the Pacific

Tu Tangata, Issue 16, 1 March 1984, Page 40

Maori volunteers in the Pacific

Volunteer Service Abroad is the sort of organisation which encourages the recognition of different cultures and races which is one reason why it is proud of its seven Maori volunteers.

Another reason for pride is the unique contribution these volunteers are bringing to their assignments in the Pacific. There is no doubt that being Maori helps them relate more easily to local people, often living in quite traditional Polynesian or Melanesian communities.

They are among just over 80 New Zealand VS A volunteers with many more needed to fill requests for people with skills and qualifications on twoyear assignments throughout the Pacific and parts of South East Asia.

One of the furthest away in distance is 52-year-old George Wharehoka, from Pungarehu, a member of a well known Taranaki family. Employed by the East Sepik Rural Development Project in Papua New Guinea, he has been supervising the building of houses and an inservice training centre near Angoram.

George is based at Gavien, where local people are being taught job skills while constructing homes and other facilities for a resettlement scheme.

The jungle has been cleared for a rubber plantation to employ tribespeople being resettled from their part of the Sepik River area, a move necessary because of increasing health problems associated with w;ater transmitted diseases from surrounding swampland. As well, traditional food areas are being depleted and hunting grounds lost. For the settlers, George is worried

about a possible loss of tribal identity, seeing similarities in the breakdown of traditional life to problems faced by the Maori.

Working in a completely different urban environment in Papua New Guinea is Josie Keelan of Ngati Porou/Tuhoe descent.

With a Diploma in Social Work from Victoria University, experience overseas, as a community officer with the Department of Maori Affairs, and five years as a youth recreation worker for the Y.W.C.A. in Auckland, Josie is well equipped for her Port Moresby based work in the Youth Division of the Government’s Office of Youth and Recreation.

Her pace and amount of work is impressive with involvement at local levels in urban youth vocational training, facility management, employment policy, community organizing, project planning, negotiating and co-ordinat-ing.

Providing skills training for urban youth means Josie is in close contact with school leaver and vocational training centres, Port Moresby Technical College, the Education Department, outreach programmes, community development officers and others.

She firmly rejects the temptation to let youth groups allow her to make decisions for them. Their self-reliance would not be served.

A measure of the Urban Youth Programme’s success is that where only three youth groups operated when Josie arrived, seven months later there were

33! Working with youth groups, identifying their priorities and their projects, training others as community youth coordinators and keeping a tab on the even-present financial problems leaves Josie little free time. But she is enjoying working in the ‘‘heat, wind and dust” of Port Moresby and appreciates the insights she is gaining in this Melanesian urban environment which brings contact with poor squatter areas and housing re-set-tlement schemes.

Ben Spooner, in Kiribati, and Madge Mohi in Papua New Guinea, each originally from Hawkes Bay, have the same tribal affiliations to Ngati Kahungunu and Madge’s family is within Ngati Mihiroa.

Ben and his wife Sue, are teaching at Hiram Bingham High School on the atoll of Beru, one of the southern islands in the Kiribati chain which crosses the equator in the Central Pacific. The Micronesian community has been welcoming and appreciates the contribution Ben and Sue are making to the school.

Its isolation has meant special adjustments and sometimes provisions from outside are scarce, but there has been more than enough compensation. Ben wrote recently of an on-the-spot invitation from an old man he had never met before, to a large feast, and the consequent hospitality. “I was really thrilled by the generosity of the old man and the people of his village. It is this aspect of these people that will live forever in my memory,” Ben said.

Madge Mohi is one of two Maori volunteers lecturing at teachers’ training colleges in Papua New Guinea. She is on the staff of St. Paul’s Teachers College in Vunakanau, near Rabaul, provincial capital of the large off-shore island of New Britain.

Going from Ruatoria to Vunakanau was like moving to another rural scene. Half an hour away, Rabaul provides insights to a developing country’s urban life in what is considered to be one of the more beautiful areas of the Pacific. However, Madge keeps a wary eye on Rabaul’s active volcano.

She has enjoyed the stimulation of working with Papua New Guinea trainee teachers but has found the male dominated society can be restrictive. She cannot, for example, move around as easily as she would like to visit students’ villages.

Mere Rankin, of Whakatane, is the second Maori volunteer working as a teacher’s college lecturer in Papua New Guinea, this time at St. Benedict’s at Wewak, on the north-eastern coast, in the East Sepik Province.

Bringing up a family and many years teaching experience have helped her contribute in such areas as the Community Life Syllabus Advisory Committee for which she recently travelled down to the capital, Port Moresby.

Mere, a former senior teacher and deputy principal of Kawarau Central School, is bringing some Maori culture to the East Sepik. She led some other New Zealanders in practising Maori songs and dances for a local performance which was well received, and at a primary school where she spoke on New Zealand, she was the first Maori the children had seen. After overcoming their shyness they asked many questions, she said.

“I did wonder why they glanced at me in passing with a questioning look though; I thought I could quite easily have passed, for a Papua New Guinean”, Mere said.

Turangi school teacher Heather Tipene recognised the similarities and differences between her own Polynesian heritage and that of Western Samoans, in her assignment based near Apia.

There are differences in teaching too but she doesn’t mind about a lack of some facilities, when the pupils are keen. She is so keen that she has extended her assignment to a third year.

Away from Levaula College, where she lives and teaches, Heather has taken part in sporting activities like netball, again adjusting to Samoan conditions and helped coach a marching team for the South Pacific Games in Apia this year.

The ability to coach in a number of sports has also helped Margaret Pahuru, of Hicks Bay, East Coast, who is now teaching English and maths at Luesaleba Provincial Secondary School on Santa Cruz Island in the eastern Temotu Province of Solomon Islands. She exchanged classes at Edgecumbe Primary School for this remote boarding school of 300 pupils, which is reached by powered canoe, IV2 hours down the coast from the small provincial centre of Lata.

She and another VSA teacher at Luesaleba assist with the library and as well as sports coaching, the girls have asked Margaret to teach them some Maori songs no problem for one who ran the school’s Maori cultural group at Edgecumbe.

There have been others in the past and it is hoped more will follow Maori volunteers who have contributed not only skills but a particular cultural identity from Aotearoa, New Zealand.

They have taken part in other cultures, seen how change affects lifestyles and in the tradition of volunteering, will have increased the understanding and acceptance of diversity both at home and in other parts of the Pacific.