Moerewa - that's Backbeat not Deadbeat

WOULD WE find patched gang members heavying their way around the streets or lurking outside the primary school trying to recruit kids? Or a pitbull-cross ripping someone's pet to pieces?
"I've been looking for a gang presence," I tell community worker Shade Pihema. "Or at least a few dangerous looking stray mutts."
"Eh? Whateva!" she laughs.
We're in Moerewa - "Motown" for people who see the town's energy as more backbeat than deadbeat.
Even that gentle piss-take of a nickname flies in the face of a perception outside Moerewa that the town's as rough as guts, a hotbed of gang culture and unemployment.
Its southern entrance doesn't help that view. State Highway 1 streams past a monolithic, sprawling concrete ruin slouching behind a high, barbed wire-topped fence. It's a constant reminder of what really went wrong for towns like Moerewa and it isn't pretty.
To be fair, there's a crowded carpark in front of the downsized, lean-cut, modern operating plant. At the top of the season Affco runs two shifts and employs 350 people, although many live outside Moerewa.
There's another concrete ruin around the corner in Station Rd. The big dairy factory that once pumped fat into the community houses a small timber mill now.
But the demise of the two plants - milk and meat - within months of each other in the early 1990s nearly throttled Moerewa. The population dipped from around 1900 to the present 1700 and unemployment skyrocketed.
And then? It's like that frog theory, community development worker Ngahau Davis says. You put a frog in cold water, heat it up and the frog croaks.
"That's what economic decline nearly did to us - but did our people cause that decline? No. Those decisions weren't even made in this community. What they took represented our spirit because they were our jobs, our living."
Just like that fence around the old factory site, a wall of poverty went up around Moerewa.
"People say that when primary industry leaves a place, other industries start up. Well it did here; a black market. We spent years battling a gang culture and we've been battling unemployment and all the things that come with loss of spirit," Davis said.
He and colleagues at He Iwi Kotahi Tatou Trust, Ngati Hine forestry and health trusts, and developments like the kura kaupapa immersion school are taking down that wall, one block at a time. They are proving that you can rekindle a spirit.
"We have continual stats saying that Maori kids don't do well. You've got to look at why, what we can do to change that? We (Maori) are good sports people, good entertainers, good artists. How can we use those talents in a technology-driven world? By giving our kids the chance to enter that world."
The Advocate reporter didn't see gang culture in evidence although Shade Pihema, also from He Iwi trust, reminded us "there are people live here who happen to be in gangs, yes, but it's not like they're running the town. It's sad and wrong if that's how many people still see Moerewa."
BUT THE TOWN has just taken a bruising hit. Fire - arson - last weekend wiped out the 97-year-old former primary school buildings that for three years have housed the town's kura kaupapa, its Maori language immersion school.
A 16-year-old has been charged and two younger kids are being dealt with in the police youth aid system over the arson.
It was one dysfunctional event in an otherwise well-functioning town, say Moerewa's citizens.
"We've got to move on from here, just like we had to move on from the old primary industries," Davis said. "Our community rallied over those other setbacks and it's rallying now." And, the kids are okay. "Our young people are savvy. They have Bebo, iPod, all that, and they know how to use this stuff. How then can we take that savvy and turn it into employment? That's our focus."
Shade Pihema oversees IT training courses the trust delivers to local youth. She and colleague Sarah-Kay Heta-Leituvae are also DJs and trainers for Radio Tautoko satellite station in Moerewa. It's important for those kids to hear their own voice, to have others listen. It boosts everyone.
The trust also makes road safety billboards, has a recording and production studio, and makes health promo videos and radio ads through its own company, Tutu Productions.
"All our work has a youth focus," says Pihema.
Youth, focus, purpose, nurture, self worth, identity, pride, future - it's a kaupapa we'll hear again and again in the town that is trying hard - and succeeding - in its own rebirth.
IT'S WEDNESDAY, and at the burnt-out kura kaupapa there's a meeting that is brimming with both grief and promise.
Education Minister Chris Carter is there to offer his condolences to the school whanau and community. During the powhiri, the waiata and the speeches, a roomful of pained eyes turn again and again toward the blackened, twisted buildings in the background.
The weeping is still not over by a long shot.
School trustee chairman Wi Kopa is a nuggety, small-built fellow, a grandad, who looks as if he's worked hard all his life. His voice cracks as he talks of what has been lost, but what will be rebuilt.
Nearby on main street Motown, Maori-motif Tuna Cafe with its cheerily fused English and te reo menu serves espresso and good kai. At the funky hair salon next door a regular client from Kerikeri is having her hair done by stylist-owner Karel Van Eyk. Next door again is a tattoo studio with a fat reputation in skin art circles.
Like the grieving school whanau, the passionate community workers, the savvy kids, that's Moerewa.
Fast-visit outsiders get only a glimpse of the real deal, possibly see only a small, shabby Northland town - but Moerewa is so much more than the sum of its parts. "This (fire) will have an impact, but it would be the same if it was any school in the country. That community would suffer and the effect would be greatly felt," Davis said earlier in the day.
"When the chips are down, when the pressure's on, we will pull together. We've done it before. Now we have to make sure our youth can take advantage of relevant opportunities in the future."
That afternoon, in the ruins of a school building, the minister tells the gathering their new learning centre will have a library and a technology suite.
A clutch of pupils (the majority are already tucked temporarily into Moerewa Primary along the road) gasp with delight, they cheer, and their smiles light up a sad day.
These kids do know the way of the future, and ironically - tragically and wrongly - the arson will deliver it years sooner than the struggling, committed, courageous board of trustees could.