Kava’s family grateful to have his body home: ‘ a weight has been lifted’

Tevita Kava isn’t alone anymore.

Yesterday — 13 days after Kava fell into Waitemata Harbour from a commercial party cruise boat while celebrating his friend’s 30th birthday, and four days since his body was pulled from the water — Kava was returned to his family.

At his Tongan church in Otahuhu, his casket was carried inside and then draped in fetea’u — traditional Tongan funeral decorations made up of cloths and flowers.

The decorations were white, 29- year- old Kava’s favourite colour, and family and friends shared memories, prayed and sang traditional Tongan hymns.

Ngaire Speedy sang too, and she thought of her adored older cousin and how he always encouraged her to be heard.

“Neither of us could sing. I think it skipped me and him in our family, but he didn’t really care. He said, ‘ If we don’t have a voice we will just sing louder than everyone else’.”

Kava, also known as David, i s home, and those who loved him won’t leave his side until he is buried today.

It means so much to have him back, Speedy told the Weekend Herald outside the Mangere home of Kava’s step- parents, with whom he lived. His own mother died in 2011.

Every day Kava was missing, family were out on the water, or scouring the jagged coastline.

“Uncles, aunties, cousins . . . they’ve been out every day, at sea, walking around, calling him to come home. We all had hope that we will find him eventually,” the 21- year- old said.

Kava, who couldn’t swim and who repeatedly expressed his fear of falling overboard in the hours before the tragedy, tumbled backwards into the water when he leaned against a closed ramp at the stern of a Red Boats charter just before 9.30pm on June 3.

The alarm was raised, but despite a desperate search by those on board and emergency services, Kava had disappeared into the pitch- black winter’s night.

When the news came on Monday that he had been found, it was like a weight lifted from their shoulders, Speedy said.

“For my mum and her siblings, they found their boy. For us [ cousins] it was just ‘ we found our brother, our brother can finally come home . . . [ we can] have him with us in his last moments before we lay him to rest’.”

Red Boats owner Andrew Somers said last week their thoughts were with Kava’s family but he could not comment until a Maritime New Zealand investigation was completed.

Immediately after the tragedy, Somers said the ramp wasn’t broken and he was unsure how it was unlocked and untied on the night Kava fell. Speedy said the family believed what had happened was “in God’s plan”. “There’s no bitterness.”

As they gathered together around the family home each was already finding a way to remember him.

For Inoke Kava, it was by having his cousin’s name tattooed across his back. Injecting ink into your skin doesn’t usually come without pain, but he didn’t feel a thing.

“It would’ve if it had been something else. But because it was his name, it didn’t hurt a bit.”