Kia ora koutou,
the first Busk for 2003. Its been a summer filled with surprises, some good, some not. The weather around Otaki has been a little variable, I would have liked more sun, but when I think of the areas which have been subject to floods, cyclones, ruined houses and orchards, farms and businesses, I know I am very lucky.
Its amazing how we all find the courage, the resilience, to deal with disaster. We pack furniture up high, grab some clothes, calm the kids, and we’re taken to a safe place. We curse the rubber-neckers driving around making waves that slosh more water inside our house. A day or two later we come back to clean up and there’s the smell. That damp muddy stink hanging over everything. We open all windows and doors, stick a lot of stuff outside to dry or air in the now sunny conditions and the kids are pleased to find the budgie, safe in its cage, bowls still filled with seed or water, chirping. I think it would chirp for anyone but the klds think its chirping with pleasure at seeing them.
The clean-up takes longer than we thought and the memories never go. They come back when we hear/read of others enduring the same sense of helplessness in the face of natural disasters.
From this distance I can only bless those who helped everyone in trouble, who saved lives and were kind and who worked －cooking, baking, shovelling, driving, scrambling down banks, up on roofs, through windows, under houses, made beds, looked after kids, helped the old and disabled, all the hundred and one other things we do in this kind of hellish situation. We can donate money and we can remember. Remember that it takes a lot longer to fix this kind of damage than it does to cause it. What was it? Three days? A day more or less? It will take twenty or more times than that to make things right and of course some will never be. It’s a long haul but we’ve done it before, we can do it again.
Aroha
Renée
