The listeners

Each summer, we commission 12 of Aotearoa’s finest writers to tell us a short tale. This year’s theme is ‘the joy of friendship’. Here are the first four.

- Airana Ngarewa

The photos on the walls in the wharenui have a heck of a time. They are there for everything, watching and listening as the daily dramas of the pā play out. Place is like a soap opera on the best of days – let alone when things really hit the fan.

Just last week, one of the koros was complaining his hangi rocks got moved and his own brother went for his throat, yelling you’d know where they were if you came back more often. That’s the topic on the table most get-togethers. Who visited yesterday, who’s planning to visit tomorrow, who hasn’t been back in ages? The iwi might as well mandate everybody wear a sign around their neck:

[FIRST and WHĀNAU NAME] has not been back to their pāpākainga in.. 

DAYS 

The whānau name is the most important. Everybody is always being asked where their aunty/kui/cousin is. The photos on the wall can’t help but crack up while they watch their whānaunga scramble to make excuses. Oh, Aunty is busy as with mahi. Working nights at the moment, y’know. The photos know the true story, though. Aunty’s feelings are still hurt from the last time she arranged a working bee and no one showed up. Teach her, the trustees reckoned, for trying to organise a clean-up the morning after a Warriors game. Half the pā are still drunk and the other half hung over. Heck, even the teetotal need a half day to recover from another NZ Warriors hiding. But she’d know that, the trustees said, if she came back more often.