We enjoyed a Servas visit with our hosts Brenda and Jimmy Paul, a Maori couple who live in the small town of Kawerau with a diminishing population since the company downsized. Each of their five children have moved away in order to earn a living which changes the culture of the close-knit Maori community. She grew up in a rural Maori area and has been bilingual most of her life. Jimmy grew up in a coastal town and learned Maori from Brenda. Brenda served as the Maori teacher in preschools in the area. There is strong government support for keeping the Maori culture alive which appears to be well supported by the dominate white New Zealander society.  In fact, some of English extraction would prefer the traditional Maori name, Aotearoa, “land of the long white cloud,” as the name of this country and even expect that it will change within a few years.

Both Jimmy and Brenda are hard working people who value all they have, exhibit great warmth and much interest and curiosity about the rest of the world. They have traveled to Japan to visit the families of the many Japanese students who have stayed with them and plan to visit Europe and the US. We appreciated that they could send us directions to destination sites, waterfalls and lakes well off the radar of most tourists.

We took them out to dinner. They chose a restaurant that was housed in the building where they met over 45 years ago.