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Shooters, Feeders and Faka Lapisi! |
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Written by Seuamuli Des Bentin
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Saturday, 03 November 2007 |
My son Damian the Ve’a, who had grown to be a bit of a monster in size in the three years since I last saw him, confided in me a few days before he went back to the Hawkes Bay, in all seriousness, that he had been beaten recently in a foot race by a girl. I thought it was one of those serious father – son moments where it was imperative that I reciprocated with a similar confession of my own. We were watching the Auckland – Hawkes Bay rugby NPC semi-final game on television at the time. His mate Zack who he had played rugby at Napier Boys High School with, and who had shown this season that he was a pretty handy player with tons of pace, was playing on the wing for the Magpies. Damian, who also knows his rugby, captained their Second Fifteen rugby team at Napier Boys and is pretty quick himself. I wasted a few more seconds wondering whether this serious admission about being beaten by a girl in a foot race was a rather circuitous way of saying that she would have probably beaten Zack as well, or that he was faster than Zack. Or maybe she was just plain yummy enough to throw a race for. You’ve never analyzed the pus out of a simple statement of fact like that from one of your children before? I do and think I now know why the family calls me Freak Head at times! Anyway, I waited for an explanation and sure enough it was a good one. The fleet footed young lady was named the following day in the New Zealand Women’s Sevens rugby team. By this time, the father – son candid moment was gone and I did not have to tell of the time when I got my ass kicked by a girl. You of course are just simply dying to hear about it, ain’t ya?
Margot was a Scandinavian beauty who sat a horse like she was born on it, looked like a model in those women’s fashion magazines dressing down in lived-in jeans and Swannies, and was also the only woman in the Gun Club. I loved guns and had a few. I had done a fair bit of hunting in Samoa where, out of a desire not to waste expensive bullets, I learnt “to get as close as you can and then get 10 yards closer!” Patience in learning to wait for the best shot also meant that you got good enough to call your shot – whether it went high, low, or where intended – and therefore very seldom had to follow through with a second shot.
That all changed to a certain extent when I arrived in Aotearoa New Zealand where a shortage of bullets never entered the picture. I also found that I wasn’t concentrating more on pin point accuracy but more on making the shot in whatever time it was presented to you and prepare for a second shot, which was happening quite frequently, than to wait for the perfect shot and watch the last deer on earth walk out of your life. It was a disturbing shift in attitude but I justified it by saying that there was no shortage of meat in the freezer. Whether it was pie-plate accuracy or one well-placed heart/lung shot that brought it down was not the point. This was also the only possible explanation for what happened when I met Margot at the range to test out what we had agreed on to be true. The rifle does not a shooter make!
I had a Model 70 Winchester .270 which was known as “the Rifleman’s rifle”, which never strayed very far from me and she was shooting a Husqvarna .270. I had heard of them of course but the only Husky I had met before then was a chainsaw! We set the targets at 100 yards and agreed that I would shoot first – prone with rest of choice. I managed a pretty tight grouping which I thought would be good enough. She was a girl after all. I trained the glasses on the target more to keep my eyes away from her prone form a few feet away than anything else but quickly focused when she single-holed her first three shots. To cut a long story short, she then took my rifle and did the same with it. I got my butt well and truly kicked that day. Moral of the story; Do not arm our Police or anybody “supporting” them! Guns are deadly things in the wrong hands and when fired for the wrong reasons.
Six years ago, I wrote in my then Observer column questioning the logic or sense behind the practice of getting school pupils to supply food for school teachers at what seemed like most schools around the country. Someone who I could only guess may have been a teacher responded and seemed to be saying that my father agreed with the practice when he was with the Education Department, which therefore made it okay. I disagreed with that statement back then and mentioned how my father worked very hard to convince our village School Committee to discontinue the practice of having 100 school pupils provide food for two or three teachers employed by the Education Department to supervise national exams at your school. It was with great pleasure therefore that I read all the letters and Editorials calling for the practice of feeding teachers to be abandoned. How many times have we heard this “culture” excuse being hauled forward as a smoke screen or to explain things which people with a vested interest would like to see continued or prolonged? It is as simple as saying “No more.” The Education Department/Government must instruct School Committees to stop asking parents for food supposedly to feed the teachers with, which they themselves dig heartily into, or they will send in the armed Police unit as a “last resort”.
If I asked the question six years ago and people are just catching up to this unnecessary burden on parents of school children, then will it take another six years before people will start asking if it was necessary for each family to have a mini rubbish dump in front of their houses called “faka lapisi”? Each family should have a “faka lapisi” at the back where they collect their rubbish to be brought to the roadside only on the day that the rubbish collectors will come to collect it. The Town/Country Beautification Committee should slip it into the next meetings agenda don’t you think? And let’s not wait six or more years before we do something about it.
By the way, whoever says that sarcasm is the lowest form of wit is just another over-edumacated and misinformed intellectual convinced that they are the only people qualified to have an opinion on anything! Don’t let them stop you guys. Opine away. Must go. All this name calling has made me thirsty! Have a nice one folks!
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