Abandoned baby unites community
The body of a baby found dead and abandoned in a South Auckland reserve last year has brought a community together as she was laid to rest.
Around 100 people shed tears and scattered rose petals around the tiny white coffin adorned with dinosaur stickers during yesterday’s ceremony at Ma¯ngare Lawn Cemetery.
Ma¯ngere local James Papali said the discovery of Baby Mona’s body – by a member of the public out for their morning walk through a reserve on Mona Ave – had highlighted the importance of living in a tight community.
‘‘It was such a shock to have it happen in our own backyard,’’ he said.
‘‘I just feel for the mother ... it was as though we had failed her, as a community. Baby Mona showed us there are gaps, and is an incentive for us to be stronger.’’
Ma¯ngere MP Aupito William Sio, who presided over the funeral, said he wanted the mother to know she was ‘‘surrounded by aroha’’. He urged any other woman who found herself in Baby Mona’s mother’s situation — pregnant, with nowhere to turn — to tell someone, and for that someone to offer their support.
‘‘The thing I want most for our community going forward is to never find ourselves in this situation again,’’ he said.
Noma Salapu was at the funeral and said it was important for the community to ‘‘focus on what Baby Mona represents’’.
‘‘It struck a nerve, and we realised that culturally, this just isn’t us,’’ she said. ‘‘He shows how important it is for families to pull together.’’
Police believed the baby, who was wrapped in a shirt brightly emblazoned with the words ‘SAMOAN CULTURE — OUR PRIDE AND JOY’, had been in the reserve for less than 48 hours.
He had not been obviously injured and preliminary post-mortem results last year could not determine whether or not he was born dead. Police had cast their nets widely in bids to locate the mother, but to no avail.
Forensic tests also failed to shed light on the baby’s identity, though he was believed to be of Maori or Pacific ethnicity.
Sio said he had dubbed the baby Mona after the reserve he was found in, and noted the name’s meaning in Arabic – ‘‘unrealised promise’’.
Another attendee, known as Queen Shirl’e, had brought her children along to the ceremony to let them witness community spirit.
‘‘It’s important they know they are products of this environment and it’s also important for them to see this aroha,’’ she said.
‘‘We need families to talk to each other, for young people to know they can always talk to someone — even if it’s not their parents.’’
Children took turns to shovel earth onto the coffin, which was wrapped in a tapa cloth before it was lowered into the ground to the sound of Samoan hymns.