Star turn for marae
People come home to make DIY project a TV success
Film crews, wha¯ nau, tradies and trucks all descended on Te Puke’s Makahae Marae last Thursday. Four days later, a “to-do” list had become a “done” list, there was a ha¯ kari (feast) to celebrate and a TV production company had screeds of footage from which to put together a Marae DIY show for Ma¯ ori Television.
But, just as importantly, many, many people returned to the marae.
Television production company Screentime selected Makahae Marae as one of seven to feature in the next series of
Marae DIY to screen next spring. Marae committee member Jo’el Komene was the DIY co-ordinator after suggesting the idea of making a pitch to be included in the series.
“One of our kauma¯ tua, Teia Williams, recently resigned his position as a representative for our hapu¯ , Nga¯ ti Tuheke, and I was elected,” says Jo’el.
The committee is three years into a five-year plan for the marae.
“I thought to myself, ‘how could I best benefit our marae with my new role and try and make things a happen a bit faster’?”
While watching Marae DIY, he decided that could be one way of moving things on.
“I brought it back to the committee and presented the idea, and they said ‘yeah, find out about the process’.”
Jo’el made the application in October, getting it in by the skin of its teeth.
“It was all a bit of a rush, but I got it in on time and they got back to me quite quickly and said ‘we’d like to pick up your marae for one of the episodes this year’.”
Since then, it’s been a helter skelter ride for organisers.
“It’s all happened really quickly in the last three months — getting it organised,
getting funding, letting the wha¯ nau know and getting down exactly what we were going to do for the DIY.
“There’s been a lot of work going on in the background.
“A lot of my mahi was getting things organised, searching out wha¯ nau members who had the tradie skills that we needed to do these projects, and a whole bunch of phone calls making orders and keeping people in the loop.”
Around 80 people signed an on-line register to help and at times there were over 100 people on the marae.
The five-year plan sets out several goals relating to looking after “our buildings and our place” — one of which is whakahuihui tangata.
“That’s about bringing our wha¯ nau back to the marae — contributing, reconnecting and that kind of thing,” says Jo’el.
Other goals relate to the environment and the bank to the west of the marae was cleared prior to the DIY weekend, and 4000 trees planted.
“They have all got a purpose. Some of them area are rongoa¯ , used for medicinal purposes, and we’ve got fruit trees in a mini orchard so we can utilise the fruit that comes off them.
“We’ve also got natives such as ma¯ nuka and to¯ tara. We have four carvers at our marae, so hopefully in times to come, we might be able to harvest some of those and use them as we know trees in general and particularly native trees are becoming more and more scarce.”
Screentime production manager Emma Calveley says the marae was chosen partly because of its committee.
“They have a really strong committee and they have a future in mind, making the best use of the land and being sustainable and we thought it was a wonderful place to start.”
It was the first of the episodes for the new series to be filmed.
“We’ve changed the format a little bit this year,” she says.
“[Episodes] will be a little bit longer this year and our approach is to really get to know the wha¯ nau through it and understand, beyond the DIY, what they want for their people.
She says the building work at Makahae Marae was fairly typical “but we’re going a little deeper into the future and the reasons why they want the change”.
She says the seven marae that have been chosen for the next series are “really diverse”.
“One marae was closed for 30 years because of a fire and has only recently been reopened and wha¯ nau are coming home in droves.”
At Makahae Marae the specific goals for the weekend were to rebuilding the driveway, lay concrete, landscaping, painting, kitchen renovations and external work on the main wharenui.
The work came on the back of the replacement of the whare kai roof over Christmas.
Jo’el says everything went pretty much to schedule.
“We did everything we set out to do and quite a few people turned up on Sunday when we had a big ha¯ kari (feast) at the end.
He says the elders and committee members are “over the moon” with the end result.
“The number of people that came forward and helped out doing the work and the sponsorship and all of that type of thing was overwhelming.
“We haven’t had a gathering like that at a positive event for some time.”