NiuZila: Land of full fat milk and welfare money

It’s early days yet, but so far there are only two candidates for the soon to be new position as Mayor of the soon to new Aukilani / Auckland Super City:  John Banks and Len Brown.

John Banks is the candidate for the right.  Len Brown is the candidate for the left.  Despite this they are both running as independants.  Currently Banks is Mayor of the Auckland City Council, while Brown is the Mayor of the southern city, Manukau City Council. 

I like Len Brown.  He is a lawyer who has practiced in Aukilani Saute for many years.  He has been an advocate for workers rights.  He is a staunch supporter of Maori rights (including in this current campaign, demanding Maori guaranteed seats in the council).  But he is also approachable and human.  There’s a youtube clip of him dancing at Life Church in Manurewa not long ago.  He’s not ashamed to bust a move infront of a church youth group.

He is more a unifying candidate than Banks.

But I don’t want to keep my hopes up until all hands are played.  Coz I have a niggly feeling some other leftie is going to put their hand up and split the vote.  I hope my feelings are wrong.  The last thing we need is a divided voting bloc. 

Conservatives by nature are mostly a homogeneous group, giving Banks a much more solidified and reliable voting base.  On the other hand, the left is diverse and complicated, ranging from indigenous rights groups, feminists, trade unionist, minority rights groups, migrant groups, working class groups, environmentalists, to civil libertarians.

But Brown is on the winning side.  Well, the side that will eventually win.  This isn’t a one-eyed biased observation, but demographics show the fastest growing groups in Niu Sila, especially in Aukilani, are young non-Palagi’s.  Aukilani has a growing diversity.  With this diversity there is a need for unity.  I hope Brown is that person.

After watching that youtube clip, Len Brown might not be Samoan ‘brown’ but his dance moves certainly show’s a different shade of brown!

On an unrelated topic, other than name, there was a recent billboard in affluent (Palagi dominated) Parnell which stated “At least our brownie won’t eat your dog”.  It was an advertisement for controversial pizza company, Hells Pizza’s new gluten free brownies.  The message was referring to the recent news of the Tongan man in Mangere who killed his dog and was about to eat it fresh out of the umu behind his house before the SPCA intervened.

Now Hell’s Pizza thrives on publicity and have played some pretty bad media stunts to get that publicity, even if it’s bad publicity. 

I’ve already posted by humorous take on the ‘almost’ dog meal, so I wasn’t really offended with that aspect of the billboard.   In fact at first I thought it was quite witty, but as always there’s a historical context to language. “Our brownies” has so many racial connotations that the fact it was posted in a white area, you’ve got to question at the least the impression such an advert could have let alone any pre-conceived discriminatory idea’s the marketers may have harboured.

But at the end of the day, that’s all I want to say, coz the more we harp on about it, the more free ‘bad’ publicity the Pizza company gets.

We are familiar with the horse jokes in relation to our Polynesian cousins, the Tongans.  For those that aren’t it’s been a running joke that Tongan’s eat horses, and it’s a delicacy!  A cheeky Samoan would retort to their Tongan friend with a neigh or ‘giddy-up horsey’. 

It’s part of the love hate relationship Tongans and Samoans have, much like the Kiwi and Aussie relationship, or the American and Canadians.  There’s always something about the other country or people that is used time and time again to mock about.

Well my fellow Samoans, we can another thing to that list.  Not only is horse a culinary delicacy in the Friendly Kingdom of Tonga, but apparently so is dog!

It was reported in the news yesterday that the SPCA (Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) was investigating an Aukilani Saute / South Auckland man Paea Taufa who was found roasting his pitbull terrier-cross in an umu pit at his home in Magele / Mangere.  The dog had been skinned and gutted and was partially charred when SPCA inspectors arrived.

Mr Taufa said he had been surprised when inspectors arrived because dog was a delicacy in Tonga.  “I didn’t know I couldn’t cook the dog.  In Tonga, any time there I cook the dog and it is okay. Dog is good food.”  He had decided to cook the dog because it was too skinny and had become unmanageable.  He rendered the dog unconscious with a blow to the head before slitting its throat, which is regarded as humane.

However the SPCA said today they cannot be prosecuted because the dog was killed humanely.  Under the law it is legal to kill a dog in Niu Sila if the animal is slaughtered swiftly and painlessly.

Other than having a little smirk on my face when I heard the news, thinking of all the jokes I could mercilessly assault on my Tongan friends, it did strike me odd that in a nation like Niu Sila where it’s economy depends on the slaughtering of thousands of sheep and cows for export, that people would find this act ghastly.

I haven’t had a pet since I was a kid.  Some cats, no guinea pigs or goldfish (too expensive to look after?), but mostly dogs all called either Blacky or Rambo (aint most Samoan pets called that? hehehe).  But I’ve also had a pet pig and chickens.  Although I’ve never eaten a horse or a dog, it didn’t seem out of the ordinary that we ate my pet pig and chickens.

Although I never would have imagined myself eating Blacky or Rambo, who am I to judge my fellow Tongan brother on eating his dog?  The law seems clear.  Any other criticism stems from your particular moral thinking of pets.  While living in Samoa us kids befriended many of our ‘pets’ such as our pet pig Koko, knowing full well that one day Koko would be served at a toonai in the near future.

The man saw the dog wasn’t going to survive, so why not make the most of the situation? (Smirk.)  If anything, he’s being efficient (more smirking).  I used to go psycho at my mates if they threw food away: “Think of the hungry kids in Africa!”  I remember my parent’s telling us off for not eating all our food on our plates.  They made us feel guilty as they said their were children in Samoa that don’t have the luxury of food we have.  So we’d gobble it all up and never leave a crumb on our plates again (hmmm an origin of obesity?).

There are a few Palagi’s at work who always talk about taking their kids out for a walk to the park and buying this and that shampoo for them.  Lo and behold I found out they were talking about their pet dogs!  I thought, shucks if they spend so much money on the dogs hair and nails, no wonder they could never contemplate eating it!  My parent’s used soap for our hair coz we couldn’t afford shampoo hehehe.  They struggled to put food on the table to worry about if we needed pedicures!

In the end give the dude a break.  The man wanted to eat his dog… he killed it humanely.  Who cares about anything else.  Waste not, want not.

Plus it’s one more thing we can mock our Tongan friends about!  hehehe…