The tourists came to Murupara

Saturday, 23 November 2019

Tourists are forever looking for 'authentic' experiences. Here in New Zealand, they are flocking to small town Murupara where a local school gets as much joy out of having visitors, as the international guests do meeting them, writes Benn Bathgate. Photography by Christel Yardley. 

We arrive at Murupara Area School at 9am on Friday, and we're not alone.

There's Anas Nawahda from Jordan, weighed down by a box with packed hangi. There's Carlos Fernandez from Spain, Katy Whiting from the United States, Ivana Crnjac from Germany, Liana Redaelli from Switzerland, Thibaud Vaubrurg from France and Owen Meredith from the United Kingdom. 

They're here in what is possibly New Zealand's least likely tourism spot, to take part in what is undoubtedly one of the country's most unique tourism offerings, Kohutapu Lodge and Tribal Tours in the eastern provincial settlement, Murupara. The tour is the recent winner of the 2019 Tourism Aotearoa Industry community engagement award. 

The tour is changing the mindset of a generation in one of the country's most deprived areas. 

READ MORE: 

* The tourism boom is over, prepare for a flatline 

* Stephen Colbert's Very Kiwi New Zealand visit

* Murupara, the town that drove out the banks

Today's part of the tour is simple. The visitors, a genuine United Nations of nationalities, have come to the school to meet about 50 children. The tourists will tell them something about themselves, the country they're from, and answer any questions before splitting up into smaller groups to talk, play and share their stories. 

While they're armed with the huge box of hangi meals (since the tourism venture's inception the school has received 20,000 of these meals), the food left over from the day before's meal at the tourists' accommodation at Kohutapu Lodge, they're doing more than filling pukus. They're expanding minds. 

As the guests line up the children perform haka and waiata before the introductions begin. 

Fernandez, from Spain teaches the children, 'hola'. Whiting, a US citizen but resident of Jordan, teaches them the same in Arabic. 

And on it goes until the children, well behaved and respectful, but obviously buzzing with excitement, get to ask their questions. Do you any of you get to eat snails? What do they taste like?

Over the next hour small groups of children converge around the international guests, peppering them with questions about their lives, their jobs, their thoughts on New Zealand. Sometimes though, it's just horseplay. 

Vaubrurg, sweat glistening on his forehead after an outside workout on the climbing frame, says he's travelled widely before this trip,and it's unlike anything else he's either seen or done. It's the best way to learn the real culture, he says.

He's not alone. 

'Usually it's take a photo and off again. This is a real life experience meeting people,' says Crnjac.

She works as a teacher in Germany and has a special interest in seeing how children are educated in New Zealand. 

'One hour is just too short. I would like to stay for a day or two.'

Nawahda was moved by the potted history of Murupara, delivered candidly by our charismatic guide Erinah Cecelia, known as Enah, earlier in the tour, but was happy to see the children 'reignite their love for their culture'. 

The benefits are mutual, however, with teacher Miriama Iti-White saying the tour had a 'huge impact' on the pupils. 

'Most of the kids don't get to meet and mingle with people from around the world, some don't get out of Murupara much,' she says. 'I know it's opening their eyes to the world. They bounce topics off them and its good for ideas.'

Principal Angela Sharples is even more convinced about the positive impact these hour-long sessions each Friday have on the children - it boosts their confidence and language skills, and instils pride in the children and the Ngati Manawa iwi. It's changed their aspirations - once upon a time they only extended to a sporting career - and improved their performances. 

'It's widening their world view beyond Murupara.'

Murupara was described in an Otago University research paper by Ann Pomeroy as a community that exemplified  how whanau who maintained their cultural identity persevered and coped in the face of extreme adversity, including famines, floods, epidemics and even volcanic eruption. It scored a 10 - the highest - on the 2013 deprivation index, and the town has high unemployment rates. 

As the hour draws to a close, so too does the first and only groan from the children. It's time for their guests to leave, but it's not a quick goodbye. There's a flurry of selfies that need to be taken, with Crnjac practically mobbed and almost disappearing under a tumble of limbs, grins and thumbs up.

'I'm taking all of them with me,' she says, before reluctantly bidding farewell.

Nadine ToeToe, co-director of Kohutapu Lodge and Tribal Tours alongside husband Karl, describes the venture as 'real life tourism', and believes it's occupying the same space as eco-tourism years ago. . She says it's created jobs, and injected cash into the small community through the money the guests spend in the local shops. 

TIA chief executive Chris Roberts sums up its genesis: 'What is ordinary for us is extraordinary to our visitors.'  

Praise is effusive in other quarters too. Alison Silcock, Whakatāne councillor and Murupara Community Board member says Murupara is an unexplored area with plenty of tourist potential - a blank canvas. Tourism Minister Kelvin Davis said it was a great example of an off-the-beaten-path tourist offering. Visitors were looking to immerse themselves in Kiwi culture and 'get amongst the locals'. 

Nadine ToeToe is proud of the positive effect on the tamariki, and is eager to acknowledge their role in her success.

'They're just as important to us as other stakeholders in the company. It's really a simple formula, all it costs is your time and love.'

It hasn't been an easy road. There's the huge time lag getting council consents for their new accommodation block at the Lodge. The bank wanted six months' worth of figures, then 12. The operation they initially took on needed tuning too, with the lodge initially staffed by 'aunties with arthritis' who had an average age of 75.

But Murupara was 'untouched, untapped - and the industry has been screaming out for an authentic tourism experience, not a song and dance, not a show.' That included teaching tourists about Murupara's 'prickly issues' and showing them hope. 

'This is a story of survival and tourism is the perfect vehicle for that.'

The tour had started a day earlier, with us standing in a circle behind a parked bus on State Highway 38, the occasional logging truck roaring past. We're told we are heading back in time. We've all just introduced ourselves, and been introduced to the hongi. 'Firstly, it's not a kiss', and exchanged ka pais, then we cross the road and up a small, barely noticeable set of stairs that lead into Kaingaroa Forest. 

A few minutes in, a large wire cage, in place to protect what Enah says is the oldest known Māori rock art carvings discovered yet, carbon dated to 1050 AD. Stretching over a few metres into the rock wall are images of canoes that shrink in size as they stretch into the distance, a human face and a Taniwha, described to the guests as 'an eel, a dragon and a lizard smashed together'.

Enah talks about the battles fought on this ground, cannibalism, and Māori fighting weapons. 

After the group has enough photographs, the short trek back to the bus begins and we're off, back towards Murupara, while Enah delivers a candid history of its past ups, and recent downs. It once boasted a population of 5000, the forestry boom saw the town 'cashing bigger cheques than Auckland, Queenstown, Christchurch'. Mechanised forestry work largely put paid to the boom times.

The bus passes children on the street, men mowing lawns and the people of Murupara going about their life.