Pounamu Pounamu

In Search of the Emerald City

We’re leaving today!

‘Kia tere, Matiu!’ Dad shouts. ‘We’re going soon!’

Boy! This is exciting! E noho ra farm. E noho ra house. Goodbye. Hey! I forgot to say goodbye to Emere!

I jump down from the window and run out the door.

‘Matiu!’ Mum calls. ‘Where you off to?’

‘Just going to say goodbye to Emere, Mum!’

‘E tama!’ Mum sighs. ‘Don’t be long. And don’t you dirty your clothes or I’ll really give it to you!’

‘All right, Mum!’

I climb over the gate and step carefully through the mud.

‘Emere! Emere! Come to me, Emere!’

There she is! Down at the end of the paddock.

‘Morena, Emere! No, don’t come too close, you’ll make me dirty. I’m going to miss you, Emere. You can’t come with us. Cows don’t live in the city. Guess what, Emere? We’re going to make a lot of money! Dad, he says so. Emere, are you listening Emere? You just listen to me, you pirau thing!’

I swear at her, a bad word. And she moos and makes me feel sorry.

‘I’m sorry, Emere, but you really are a dumb cow you know! E noho ra, friend.’

I give her a kiss.

‘Eee, Emere! You need a wash!’

Then back to the house I run. First though, spit on my hands, wash my face, and smooth my neat clothes so Mum won’t growl.

She gets crabby sometimes!

‘Matiu!’ Dad yells. ‘Come and help me load the car.’

‘I’m coming, Dad!’

‘Aue!’ he moans. ‘That’s a heavy box! What you got in it?’

‘All my writing books, Dad. Miss Wright, she says I have to take them to my new school, that’s what she says.’

‘Can’t we leave some behind?’ Dad asks.

‘No, Dad! I have to take all my books. Miss Wright, she says …’

‘All right, all right. But what about this book?’

‘You can’t chuck that one away, Dad! That’s my best. Neat story! About the straw man and the tin man and the cowardly lion and the emerald city and …’

‘Boy, you can talk, Matiu!’ Dad laughs. He hands me another box. ‘Here, put this in the back too. Your Mum’s stuff. What does she want to take all this stuff for!’

‘Too much moan,’ Mum yells. ‘Turi turi to waho!’

She comes onto the verandah.

‘Matiu! Where’s that sister of yours? Where’s that Roha gone?’

‘Down the road, Mum. To see that Hone.’

My sister and Hone, they go around together. I know. I seen them kissing each other!

Hey! Look at our car! It’s neat eh! Dad, he buys it from Mr Wallace. See? No dents. And honk honk goes the horn. And I can drive it, Dad said so. I’m a good driver!

Hey! Look at all those people coming! Coming to say haere ra. Tena koe Mr Parata, Mrs Parata. Tena koe Mrs Mohi. Tena koe, Nani Tama. Yes, Mum’s in the house. No, you’re not late, we’re still here!

‘Hey! Matiu!’ someone calls. It’s Hemi, my best mate! He waves to me to come and we run away from the house into the trees, and fall down laughing.

‘Want a smoke?’ Hemi asks. He lights one and puff puff puffs away.

‘No, Mum might smell it. Where you been?’

‘Down the river. And look what I got!’

He pulls out a hinaki head from his pockets, the biggest I ever seen!

‘What a beauty, Hemi! Where’d you catch him?’

‘Near the willows.’

I gasp. We been after that hinaki for a long time. They reckon he’s so long, he has to go right out to sea just to turn around!

‘I caught him for you,’ Hemi says.

‘Just for me?’

‘Go on, take him,’ he goes on. ‘He’s yours. Show those city people what a hinaki is. Go on.’

‘Gee, thanks Hemi.’

We grow silent. We talk some more, but it’s hard. Then Mum calls me.

‘I have to go now,’ I say. ‘You coming?’

‘No. Too many people.’

‘Well … e noho ra, taku hoa,’ I whisper.

‘Haere ra, Matiu,’ he answers.

Then he is gone. My best friend. He’ll always be my best friend. You just see!

‘Where you been?’ Mum growls. ‘You have to help here! You better tell your father to lay off the beer. I’m not going to be driven by a drunk!’

‘That’s right, Hine,’ Aunty Wiki says. ‘You show your old man who’s boss!’

The old ladies cackle to one another. Mrs Koko, who’s hapu with her seventh, takes another swig at the beer bottle.

‘Hey, Makareti!’ someone yells. ‘Lay off the brown bottle, eh! Your kid’ll come out boozed!’

I run round the back. The men are drinking the pirau. Sonny is playing a guitar. Dad is speaking to Uncle Pita.

‘Dad, when are we going?’ I ask.

But he’s too busy talking.

‘Course I’m right!’ he is saying. ‘There’s no jobs around here. Only the railways, the forestry, the Works, maybe shepherding.’

‘Well brother,’ Uncle says. ‘I manage okay. Come back to shearing. You’re still a gun at that game.’

‘No, Pita. Me and Hine, we had enough of shearing. You shear for a few months and then what? Maybe some fruit picking or go down South to shear some more. No, I need a job all year round. Had enough of the gypsy life. The winters are getting too bloody cold! Wellington’s the place. Plenty jobs, plenty money.’

‘Boy!’ Uncle says. ‘Everybody’s moving, the whole whanau.’

‘Can’t be helped,’ Dad answers. ‘I don’t like to move. Waituhi is where our bones are. But we got to move. Not much room for pa living any more.’

‘You’re quitting too soon,’ Uncle says. ‘Can’t you wait a while longer? The koroua, Nani Tama, has another case before the courts on the return of our land. Things are bound to look up.’

‘Must be the booze talking!’ Dad laughs. ‘No brother, we’ve been waiting long enough already. I’ve got to start looking to the future and to getting the kids educated. Boy, that’s the story. My kids are going to get some brains. I want them to have better than I had. Easier than slaving your guts out. Me and Hine, we been working all our lives and we end up with nothing. You got to go where the money is. That’s the Pakeha way.’

‘The Pakeha way, the Pakeha way,’ Uncle growls. ‘And next thing you know, everybody is leaving.’

Dad looks at him sadly.

‘Well brother, it happens. But you have to move with the times. And the times are not happening here in Waituhi. As long as I’m buried back here, that’s all I want.’

Uncle cuffs Dad playfully.

‘Easy on, brother! None of that talk! Still a lot of life left in you.’

‘I don’t know, Pita. Sometimes I feel my years. Feel old. Lost.’

‘Hey! Come off it!’ Uncle says. ‘You better have another beer!’

I jump up.

‘Mum says you’re not to get drunk, Dad.’

Dad looks at me, a strange look.

‘I’m doing it all for you, Matiu. All for you,’ he whispers.

‘Aw, Dad,’ I answer. ‘We’ll make out. You’ll see, you just wait and see.’

Mum comes round the back.

‘E hoa, man!’ she says to Dad. ‘We better get a move on. Long way to Wellington.’

‘Wait your hurry, woman!’

But Mum snatches the bottle from him.

‘No more beer! I want to get to Wellington in one piece. Come on! We have to move.’

I follow Mum and Dad round to the front. The men follow too, suddenly quiet. The crowd gathers. Roha is with Hone, bawling her eyes out.

‘Well,’ Dad says after a while. ‘I guess we’d better get on the road.’ He turns to Nani Tama. ‘Will you say a karaka for us, e pa?’

Nani Tama nods. Ever since his old house burnt down he is looking older and frail. But his voice is strong and although he doesn’t want us to go his words are filled with love and beauty:

‘Our whanau may be being dispersed to the far corners of the earth by the winds of change,’ he begins, ‘but none of you will ever be forgotten and you will never be lost to us. After all, you are seeds that were planted at Raiatea. Go forth on your unending journey.’

Then the prayer is over. Mum moves through the crowd saying goodbye.

‘E noho ra, Queenie,’ she says to Auntie. They press noses and the tears begin to fall. ‘E noho ra, Nani. E noho ra, Hopa. E noho ra, Mum … oh, Mum!’

Dad joins Mum, shaking hands, embracing, and doing the hongi. ‘Farewell, taku hoa. E noho ra, my friends, my family. Taku Waituhi, e noho ra.’

These are my relatives, my whanau, my home. Now I am leaving them all and I am sad.

Sonny strums his guitar. All the people sing and sway softly. Mum has to get her handkerchief out.

The song draws to a close. There is silence and weeping. Mum stumbles into the car and hunches in the seat. Roha gets in the back. I get in too.

‘E noho ra,’ Dad whispers again. He starts the car.

The people wave as we depart. The car gathers speed. Mum sobs loudly. Dad is crying too. They look back.

The houses are getting smaller. We pass Rongopai. All the waving people become little flags fluttering far away. We turn onto the road. We leave Waituhi behind.

I look ahead. The road leads to Wellington, the big city. Emerald City!

Hey! I should be happy!

But I’m not, you know. I thought going away was supposed to be happy.

It is happy, isn’t it?

I am happy, aren’t I?

I look back.

We have been living in Waituhi all our lives, and that house disappearing was our house, and those people were our people, and we had green paddocks and Emere was our cow and …

E noho ra, Emere.

Stay away, tears.

At the time I was a boy, the great rural to urban migration of Maori was happening, from 1945 through to the 1970s. Maori were leaving their wa kainga for jobs in cities. Clearly, a people without a land base has no economic livelihood. Although my family, for instance, were now living in Gisborne, my father was still working as a member of the Smiler shearing gang, or sometimes for Robbie Cooper as shearer and labourer. The trouble was that the work was seasonal, so a lot of people had to be laid off during the winter.

Cities offered the prospect of more variety of work in factories, better pay and better education opportunities for children. I guess it was inevitable, therefore, that every year more families left Waituhi, mainly to live in Gisborne where the freezing works and Wattie’s canning factory were. Some families migrated even further away, to Wellington or Auckland, and I could not help but notice that every year more and more houses in my beloved Waituhi were lying empty.

What set this particular story off was watching my grandmother, Teria, saying goodbye to one of her sons, either Uncle Mike or Uncle Win or maybe it was Uncle Mafeking. Sometimes a moment — in this case, my beautiful grandmother trying to be brave, not breaking down, and merely tracing the cheeks of her son with her fingers — is enough to create a huge sense of emotional loss, and I was witnessing such a moment. I wanted to capture that and, in particular, the eagerness of a young boy whose family is all packed up and ready to go.

I’ve used, in the title, imagery from Frank Baum’s The Wizard of Oz. Later, I wrote other stories of that same boy in ‘Yellow Brick Road’, ‘Return to Oz’ and ‘Kansas’. I like to think of this story — indeed, all the stories in Pounamu Pounamu — as my Songs of Innocence. In subsequent books, I expanded my work by writing my Songs of Experience, narratives of race relationships and the hugely difficult times for Maori as they traversed the Pakeha world and engaged with it, not only in urban areas but, ironically, also on their own turf.