Food for thought

It is mid-winter in the Bay of Islands-not the usual time for seeing a large group of what are clearly foreign visitors wandering around the Kerikeri Basin. They are rugged up in jackets, beanies and scarves as, indeed, we all are.

 

These visitors, though, are not your fleeting whizz-in to the Stone Store and whizz-out again day-trippers. For quite a few months of the year they live and work here, embedded in the local community picking or packing fruit at places like Orangewood and Kerifresh.

 

Until recently most of these visitors harboured a secret that no-one in Kerikeri was aware of and it took some covert digging, the use of some instruments andadegree of persuasion from a few locals to extract it from them. If that sounds like something straight from a LeCarre novel it couldn't be more removed as one man who has worked with this large group of visitors from Vanuatu explains:

 

"One of the guys was playing a tune on his cell phone one day and when I asked what it was, he said it was his own band playing. There was a slight language difficulty but he volunteered the information that several in the group with him not only sang and played various instruments, but they also singacappella. Things moved

along from there."

 

Although there wasa natural shy reluctance to perform in front of people they didn't know inacountry they are living in temporarily, it took a borrowed tea-chest bass,a guitar, some shakers and a conga drum for 15 Vanuatuan fruit pickers to be booked for their first gig in New Zealand at the Kerikeri markets on a chilly Sunday in June.

 

Music speaks an international language and there was no need for interpreters. Here was a group of men nearly 3,000 kilometres from a home where the temperatures at this time of the year hover around a 'cool' 26ºC, wrapped up against an unfamiliar winter and singing their hearts out for no better reason than they can. And well.

 

"They were an instant hit," says David Watson, Market Co-ordinator for the Kerikeri and Paihia farmers' markets.

 

"The crowd seemed to come from nowhere and formed a large circle around them. There were so many spectators you couldn't get past the table area."

 

As one of the enthralled locals listening to these melodious Melanesians remarked, the singing was a catalyst for breaking down perceived social barriers.

 

"You see them around town on the weekends and you don't know how to start a conversation but we can now begin by chatting about music."

 

The man whose band was playing from his cell phone is known as Andrew and although he hasn't performed with the group singing at the markets he adopts the role of orchestral leader. "I prefer to let everyone else do the singing," he says in his selfeffacing way as he signals them to commence. And they need very little urging to sing with or without instruments.

 

There's a palpable camaraderie among this group who work together, play together, united by the common bond of a shared homeland and spreading joy through music. By coming to New Zealand for the picking 'season' the sacrifice they make in leaving wives, children, close family and friends for several months on end is literally

compensated for by allowing them to better the lives of family back home when they return.

 

Their adopted community of Kerikeri and the Bay of Islands farmers' markets are certainly beneficiaries too.