In the last He Tāngata, Elisabeth Easther talks to Kelvin Davis, Minister of Tourism
I had a wonderful childhood in Kawakawa. There were 14 families in our street with a total of 96 kids and everybody's house was open. Our cul-de-sac backed on to farmland and we used to make huts and swim in creeks among the eels, or do bombs off bridges.
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When I was 9 my parents said: "In a week, we're taking you to Porirua to stay with your uncle." This was our first real holiday and it was the most exciting news our parents had ever delivered. We had so many questions like: "When we go past Mt Ruapehu, will we see snow?" We were totally agog. When we finally got to Porirua, we went to the Waitangirua Shopping Centre, and it was the biggest, flashest most amazing set of shops I'd ever seen. Twenty years later I went back and I don't think it'd changed much. No disrespect to Waitangirua, but it wasn't that flash, but to my 9-year-old memory, there was nothing as amazing as that mall.
I was in the seventh form when I went on my first trip overseas, to Tonga with an organisation called Friends of the Pacific. We went to a village called Kolovai to help rebuild the school after Hurricane Isaac. We spent three weeks hammering, building and helping. I was billeted with an old lady and, when I arrived, I was shown my bedroom. Because it was late, I went straight to sleep. The next morning I walked into the lounge to find the old lady had slept on the floor because she'd given me her bed. I was 16, and I really wanted to say: "You sleep in the bed and I'll sleep on floor" but I didn't know how so, for three weeks I felt guilty for sleeping in her bed. Aside from that, it was an amazing experience. At church they sang in eight-part harmonies which blew me away. They even sang grace before meals and that was also stunning.