Tommy Wilson: Care served up with slice of hope

There is more and more poverty in the Bay of Plenty every day.

When Captain James Cook reached the rich shores of the safe anchorage of Tauranga in 1769, he may have missed the turn off into our harbour and sailed on by, but he did take time to name us the Bay of Plenty because of the abundant food stores the villagers had, which differed vastly from those found in the area he had recently named the Bay of Poverty.

Maori had already worked that one out 300 years before James Cook and in summer there was a steady migration of bordering tribes who would come across the Kaimai and set up camp for the summer here in Tauranga as there was plenty of kai to be foraged and feasted upon.

Fast forward to my day and the thought of going without a kai was about as foreign as those sailors on Jimmy Cook's ship.

There was plenty for everyone and a happy puku was a way of life, as it was for all the kids going to my school.

But not so today.

And it's not just the puku of poor people who are unhappy. It is now becoming not only what am I going to eat tonight but where am I going to sleep.

Poverty is not exclusive to the bay it was named after back then, nor is it to Te Tai Tokerau up north today. It is alive and starving here in Tauranga Moana.

We see it more and more every day and it is getting near to buckling point.

Last Friday was as busy a day as we have ever had at Te Tuinga and it was all about desperate people having nowhere to live.

Daily we are dealing with families who have fallen on bad times and we are their last port of call. What is most concerning is these numbers have almost doubled in the last six months.

It is not unusual to have families waiting when we open our doors at 9 and there is an answer phone full of calls when we arrive at work.

Many times lately I ask myself, "How can this be in a Bay that has plenty, where did it all go wrong? We will only know that answer when we know the true extent of poverty in this town.

The time bomb question is: "What happens when desperation turns dysfunctional and the communities from where these poor people live start to buckle - as is starting to happen?"

My guess is we will all be invoiced in one way or another.

Many or most of the mothers who come through our front door are doing their best, usually without a dad who has buggered off back to prison or taken the easy way out and left home.

This leaves Mum to try and hold it all together and they give it a damn good go, sometimes living on nothing more than noodles or a food parcel to keep a roof over their heads and their kids in school.

We as a community need to call on our leaders to pull together the real picture of poverty in Tauranga.

At the moment we are dealing in isolation with a problem that is only solvable when we take an inter-agency approach - guided by our leaders.

Someone somewhere needs to pull a focus group together, made up of frontline workers in the poverty industry, plus local MPs, councils (both regional and local), Health (DHB and PHO), Police, MSD and community care groups.

We need to know the numbers before we can work out the solutions and then gear up to help those who are not able to help themselves.

If we can spend a day getting to grips on the real face of poverty then we will be able to start looking at zero poverty in the Bay that has plenty.

There are some talented people in Tauranga who can solve this sad situation by learning from others and finding out where the surplus kai is, and developing a logistics strategy to get it to the hungry.

The same applies to finding grateful beds housed inside somewhere safe for them to sleep at night.

We have 30,000 retirees in Tauranga who given half the chance could pitch in to help.

It may be baking muffins one day a week or growing one tree that feeds fruit to a family.

It may be sharing a wealth of experience in how to catch a kai or grow a garden. Foraging for food is fun and shows those in need that others care.

And care served up with a slice of hope is a community solution that most of the mothers we see are looking for.

broblack@xtra.co.nz

• Tommy Wilson is a Tauranga author and writer.