School lunch programme helps Hamilton woman break free from Cash Converter debt

Friday, 21 May 2021

Max Toimata collects groceries from Western Community Centre most weeknights to feed her whānau.

For two years, Mondays were the worst day of the week for Max Toimata.

Mondays meant Cash Converters.

The stairs to Toimata’s front door in Hamilton are scuffed from rugby boots, the living room bannister covered in black pen marks where her five children and seven grandchildren have grown.

“I just love cooking for people and feeding them,” Toimata tells Stuff.

A free school lunch programme is one reason Max Toimata has been able to free herself from two years of spiralling debt to Cash Converters.

But the day before her benefit came in meant stretching dollars as far as they could run.

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Max Toimata says free school lunches from the Ka Ora, Ka Ako programme save her $50 a week and fresh leftover food picked up from the Western Community Centre can save her another $150 a week.

* Where do thousands of uneaten taxpayer-funded school lunches go?

The 54-year-old started going to Cash Converters to take out loans for food, borrowing off guitar gear or tools she’d handed into the store. The stress continued for about two years.

Toimata, front, and her sister, Tina Utatao, cooking lasagne together – collecting food from the community centre has reconnected the sisters, who are teaching each other how to cook their favourite meals.

“By the time you go back to pay it, the following month, you have to pay more.

“The debt builds up and up.”

The loans were getting stressful, reaching into the hundreds, so Toimata stopped returning for the goods she pawned.

But this year, two things have put a stop to that debt cycle: a free school lunch programme and discovering a local foodbank in the city.

Recently Stuff revealed thousands of school lunches from the Government’s flagship Ka Ora, Ka Ako lunch programme were going uneaten each week. Nor was the Government counting those that were snubbed.

Most nights Toimata cooks for her 10 children and grandchildren.

Rejected stacks of lunch packs travel in large plastic bags to community centres in Hamilton city, where any person can pick them up.

News of the uneaten lunches prompted calls from opposition leaders that the policy was “poorly targeted” and potentially “wasteful”.

But Toimata says it’s been a “huge relief”, saving at least $50 per week for her two high-schoolers, including loaves of bread, fillings and muesli bars.

Add another $150 savings thanks to the free groceries from Kaivolution, including fruit and vegetables, collected from the community centre in Nawton.

The sisters were raised on a farm in Kaikohe, where fruit and vegetables grew abundantly.

On the day Stuff visits, Toimata has already picked up biscuits, breads, dented cans for that night’s dinner, and extra meat salad wraps from the leftover lunches.

The lunches are beef and salad wraps, which will go to her seven grandchildren or older kids’ work lunches.

“I'd be very disappointed if the school lunches did go away, because I think it would add that stress back on.

“For me, this programme is awesome.”

Daylight sinks around this suburban Hamilton street, and by early evening the warm, sweet-sour smell of bubbling tomatoes fills Toimata’s house.

Toimata and her sister, Tina Utatao, are cooking a large lasagne in the narrow kitchen.

Most nights, Toimata cooks for her 10 children and grandchildren, while Utatao often looks after 16 grandchildren.

Toimata with her two boys, Alex, 14 and Hamish, 15.

“They love Nanny’s cooking … mums always go last.”

Picking up the lunches and fresh food from Kaivolution has unexpectedly reconnected the sisters, who mostly lost touch since moving to Hamilton years before.

They recall their childhood in Kaikohe, surrounded by paddocks and fields, where their family grew potatoes, corn and watermelon.

They would go to the beach and find toheroa – a large clam now subject to a fishing ban – which they’d fry up, eat raw, or make into fritters.

“During holidays we were planting the crops, then later harvesting. We went to the beach and got our own kaimoana.

“It was a good way to be brought up,” Utatao says.

Utatao didn’t know her sister had hit hard times recently, struggling with loans for food.

“I usually don’t tell anyone that I’m struggling,” Toimata adds.

Receiving $800 on her benefit leaves Toimata about $50 to $100 at the end of the week, she says, after power and phone bills, mortgage costs, vehicle payments, and petrol is paid for.

Now that the school rugby league competitions have started that will involve regular travel costs to practices and games.

The walls of the house are covered in her children’s league and netball medals, with rows of Warrior shirts lined up against the window – the original blue-green Auckland Warrior jersey from over 20 years ago takes pride of place in the centre.

Toimata’s favourite shirt is simple, black, with the words “keeping the faith” imprinted across the chest.

Just like sport, cooking and food connects the family. Even if money is tight, nobody should go hungry, she says.

“Just because we are on a benefit, we still have to pay housing, we still have to pay power, we still have to pay to clothe and feed our kids like anybody else … we don’t want our children to miss out.

“You’ve got to be able to make good food, and if anyone wants to marry one of my sons they have to be able to cook too,” Toimata laughs.