Kei nga manukura o te motu, tau mai ki te hui. Ko Mihingarangi teenei e mihi atu nei ki a koutou katoa. Welcome to The Hui ` Maori current affairs for all New Zealanders. E taro ake nei ` Two brothers taken too soon, and a whanau left devastated by COVID. - No one thinks that you're going to lose anyone from it. I definitely didn't, because he was a strong man. - We spoke to the whanau of Alan and Nigel Te Hiko. - Do you want a phone call late at night from a doctor saying, 'I don't think your husband's gonna last much longer. You have to look at turning off life support'? Do you want that phone call? - And a development in the case of missing Tolaga Bay mum Jamie Kaiwai. - We're in receipt of some information from the community. www.able.co.nz Copyright Able 2021 - As the debate rages over Aotearoa's elimination strategy and whether or not we should just learn to live with COVID-19, the Te Hiko whanau knows only too well the true impact. They lost two loved ones in their whanau and several others fell gravely ill. Tonight, they share their story with The Hui in the hope that it encourages other whanau to take the virus seriously. Kia tahuri ake tatou. (SOMBRE PIANO) When Auckland went into lockdown in August 2020, the coolstore factory Americold became ground zero for the outbreak. For Alan Te Hiko, Americold wasn't just his workplace, but a second home and his workmates were his whanau. So, the other people that worked alongside of him. What did they make of him? What kind of colleague was he? - He told them what he thought. They knew when he was happy with them and when he was angry with them. And he supported them as best he could because a lot of` a number of them were only young guys. And being Islanders, they were really, really shy to speak up for themselves. So he'd be in that support role for them. He was literally their spokesman. - So he became kind of like they tuakana ` someone who fought their fights when they needed to? - Well, quite a few of them referred to my husband as their work dad. - Aw. That's lovely. On his weekends off, Alan would return home to Tokoroa. And it was during a trip home Alan would start to experience symptoms of COVID-19. - So we travelled down to Morrinsville on the Saturday, and then we carried on to Tokoroa on Sunday. He stayed with his brother, and I went and stayed the night with my mum. And then the Sunday morning when I picked him up for us to travel home, that's when he was sick. - What kind of sick? What did he say to you? How did he feel? - He told me that he was achy and that he didn't feel really, really well, so I ended up driving us home. He literally slept all the way home from Tokoroa back to Auckland. - Was that out of character for him, when he'd been unwell in the past? - Yes, that was very uncharacteristic of him. Mm. - Alan had stayed with his brother Nigel and moko Calani Te Hiko in Tokoroa. And Calani says her koro complained of a bad night's sleep. - When he came to Tokoroa to visit us, he slept in my room. So I just went in and said good morning to him. And he was moaning about my bed. He like, 'Oh, your bed's too hard. Your room's too cold.' I was like, 'It's just you. You're old.' And we had a laugh. Then, that night when he got back to Auckland, he rang me and he was serious. I was like, 'What's going on?' He's like, 'Oh, I'm sick. 'I think I have COVID.' I was like, 'No, you don't. Then I think it was the next morning we got the call that he was positive, and I just cried. I was broken. I mean, no one thinks that you're gonna lose anyone from it. I definitely didn't, because he was a strong man. But, yeah. Oh. Still broken now. - Can you run us through how quickly he became unwell? - He tested positive and went into isolation, I think, on the 12th of August. So one of the things I wrote down was... 24 days. I think we were in isolation a couple of days, then he went into hospital. Then they put him in an induced coma. And 14 days after that, he passed away. So I'd say approximately 24 days altogether. - Over the course of those 24 days, a number of whanau members, including Trish and Calani, would test positive for COVID-19 and were sent to the Jet Park MIQ facility in Auckland. And then you got COVID. - Yeah, that was scary. - Tell me what was scary about it? - Just went downhill overnight and got sent to hospital. - What was that like? - Scary. I was alone. A lot of times, I couldn't talk to my family because I couldn't breathe properly and... Oh, it was just` Yeah, it was scary. - 'During his stay at MIQ, Trish says Alan's health quickly deteriorated.' Tell me about the last conversations before he was transferred from MIQ to hospital. - I got scared for him. He laid down and he wouldn't respond to anything when I spoke to him. So I phoned up the medical staff and I told him I was scared. And then I rang up my mother. And I asked her to say prayers with me. And it wasn't long after that they came in. They came and he had to` Because you're not allowed in the rooms, and so he had to walk out of the room, and that was the last I saw him. - Once in hospital, Alan would be put into an induced coma and on a ventilator. For two weeks he battled, but it became clear Alan wouldn't recover. - When I was finally able to go in by Alan, I had to wash my hands and wear full PPE gear. I was` I think I had a different kind of mask on and glasses and a hat as well. And they told me things that I could or couldn't do. But my son and I managed to spend a couple of hours with Alan before he` before he went. So, I'm thankful for that. - I thought he was going to come out OK, that he would be all right. Then the Friday morning when I got the phone call from my uncle that he wasn't going to make it, um, yeah. Oh, I cried. Um, and I was alone in the room, so that was worse. And (SNIFFLES) I just messaged him on Messenger, and I told him I loved him and that I'd see him when we came out. (SNIFFS) - But he didn't come out. - No. - At the same time, Alan's brother, Nigel Te Hiko caught COVID-19. His whangai daughter Gwen Te Hiko still remembers the fear she had for her whanau. When did you find out he had become unwell? - He tested positive maybe a week after Kalani. It was like a delayed positive test result, yeah. - Was he sick? - Yes, he had a bit of health conditions. So he had kidney failure as well. - And so then he learnt that his brother went into a coma. And how soon after that did he go into a coma? - It was` I think it was a week later. - Were you optimistic he was going to come out? - Yeah, I` I... I had heaps of hope and faith that he was going to come out of it. - But two weeks later, Nigel lost his battle with COVID-19. And then he passed away with Alan. How was that for your whanau, actually, for the whole community? - Yuck. It was yuck, yeah. It was not nice at all. - Calani Te Hiko was just as close to losing her life. But all she could think about was her Koro Alan and Koro Nigel. Does it make you realise how sick you were? - Yeah, it does now. But at the time, I just wanted everyone to be OK. I didn't care about myself, cos it's always been family first for all of us, especially with him. So, yeah, I just... (SNIFFLES) I wanted him and Koro Nigel to be fine. - Coming up ` the Te Hiko whanau wants Aotearoa to know COVID is real and it takes lives. Do you want a phone call late at night from a doctor saying, 'I don't think your husband's gonna last much longer. 'You have to look at turning off life support'? Do you want that phone call? - Before the break, the Te Hiko whanau shared their devastating experience of losing two family members to COVID. Brothers Alan and Nigel Te Hiko succumbed to the virus while other whanau members battled for their own lives. Since Alan's death, his wife, Trish, has returned to live in Tokoroa. Next, the Te Hiko whanau discuss the long-term impact COVID-19 has had on their lives and encourage other whanau to protect themselves against the virus. Tokoroa brothers Alan and Nigel Te Hiko shared a close bond. Alan was an adored father and husband, raising his two mokopuna. - He was basically my dad. He taught me a lot, and a lot of the stuff I love to do is because of him. He was a good man. - Nigel Te Hiko was a much respected iwi historian for Ngati Raukawa who worked tirelessly for his iwi and community in Tokoroa. - He loved his work. He loved his workplace. He loved the people he worked with. He just loved everyone that he'd come across. - Alan and Nigel died within two weeks of each other from COVID-19, and the Te Hiko whanau were left facing intense public attention and scrutiny. What's your thoughts on the way that the Americold case, your husband's case, was first described? - I looked at it as segregation. They segregated us by making it about race, and it isn't. COVID doesn't care what colour you are. It doesn't. - So you had this absolutely devastating month and a half. where you were really, really unwell. You've lost your husband, and you've had to bury him, and your mokos are all sick. What was the reaction of the community to your whanau? - I actually stayed away from social media, but my sister-in-law phoned me up and said to me, 'Oh, Trish, the people in Tokoroa, they're awesome.' And I said to her, 'Why?' And she said to me, 'They're actually thanking our whanau for going and getting tested 'and isolating before anybody else found out about it.' So, yeah, because I know there was a lot of rubbish floating around in Auckland, and that's why I stayed off of media, mm. - Too hurtful. - It was really hurtful. The night... The night Alan passed, we left Middlemore Hospital, and we had to drive past one of the camera crews set up outside. And I think at that stage, Middlemore had told us that somebody had gotten a hold of my husband's name and had released it. And I was angry, because we never even got a chance to tell all of our whanau. And nobody gave us the privacy, you know? Nobody. No, I was really angry. My niece came outside to make a phone call, and there was a TV crew at our gate wanting us to make a statement. We had a lot of rarurarus and mamae going on in our house and our hearts, and they want us to make a statement? I don't think so. - Today, the Te Hiko whanau members who survived COVID-19 are still grappling with the long-lasting health impacts. - My daughter, it's a year... well after a year now since she had COVID, and she's still suffering side effects from that. She can't taste. She can't smell. Alan's other brother that went to ICU as well, he had to relearn how to read and now sleeps with a machine at night. And my son still suffers from fatigue. - What do you say to other people out there who don't really think COVID's that bad or, you know, don't really want to get a vaccination? What's your message now that... knowing what you know? - Don't be silly. It's serious. It's really easy. Just... It's just a needle. It's better than being in a hospital bed, fighting for your life, or losing someone who means so much to you just because you want to be an egg (SNIFFLES) and believe what everyone else says. - COVID's real, eh? - Very. Maori vaccination rates remain worryingly low. The Te Hiko whanau want others to be spared the mamae and loss they've endured as a result of COVID. - I've heard some stupid things. One of my own nephews said to me, 'Auntie, they put a tracker in you when they give you the injection.' You know, that makes me angry. One of my nephews said, 'Auntie, have you heard the stuff they're saying around COVID? 'They're saying that it's not true.' And I said to that nephew you've got an uncle in ICU and in a coma and you've got me and your cousins and your nieces, and, you know, what more do you need to prove that COVID is a thing? For your own safety, for the safety of your whanau ` because if you get sick and you go into isolation, if your child is negative, your child has to go into isolation with you. And when they do, your child's going to get sick with you. Do you want that? Do you want a phone call... Do you want a phone call late at night from a doctor saying, 'I don't think your husband is going to last much longer. 'You have to look at turning off life support'? Do you want that phone call? I don't want another phone call like that. (SOLEMN MUSIC) - (SPEAKS TE REO MAORI) And that story was filmed within Tamaki and Tokoroa's respective COVID restrictions. Kia mau tonu mai ra te titiro, ko te kehi o Jamie Kaiwai e whai ake nei. Next month marks two years since 27-year-old Jamie Kaiwai vanished from Uawa Tolaga Bay. The ongoing search for Jamie has been driven by her cousin, Jonique Oli-Alainu'uese, who's kept her case in the public eye. Now a private investigator hired by Jamie's whanau is appealing for photos of the 2019 Tuia 250 event held at Uawa the weekend she went missing. Hamish Kerr believes the location of Jamie's car could be critical to the investigation into her disappearance. It's been two years since Jamie Kaiwai disappeared from Tolaga Bay, but her whanau remains as determined as ever to find out what happened. They have raised money to hire two former detectives to investigate, and what they've found may upend her case. - We've looked at the information provided by them. There are some questions that need to be answered, and we feel that there is some more work to be done yet to better understand what actually did happen to Jamie. There certainly are, on the face of it, some issues that are problematic, primarily around the scenes that the police have looked at. And I'm talking there about, obviously, Jamie's car, which is quite relevant to this matter. - The police have always maintained that while unexplained, Jamie Kaiwai's disappearance from Tolaga Bay in October 2019 is not suspicious. They believe she died in the sea. - They said that she was seen at the end of the wharf, and that was it. They didn't say she jumped in the sea, but I suppose they wanted you to say that she went into the sea. - The police had said the case isn't suspicious, and I guess with her, you know, occasional drug use, with the mental health history. What is it about that that you can't accept? - What I can't accept is the lack of investigation surrounding her disappearance. - And that's because police didn't perform important procedures in the days after Jamie's disappearance. Firstly, they didn't secure a potential crime scene ` Jamie's car ` nor was the car or the room where she lived tested for fingerprints. Instead, they formed the view Jamie's disappearance was unexplained. - I can't let go yet because there's too much that's wrong. (SNIFFLES) And there's too many things that we could have had answers for. - And her persistence in trying to get those answers seems to be paying off. - We're in receipt of some information from the community. Two photographs ` one of which shows Jamie's in a position in that car park in the evening of the 10th; and also a photograph taken by an individual who happened to be going to the Tuia 250 celebrations taken from the Tolaga Bay wharf, back towards the car park, where we can clearly see Jamie's vehicle in that car park. The relevance to us to that is that in those two photographs, the vehicle was in two separate positions. What that infers to us is that the vehicle has, in fact, moved between those two time periods and in fact, possibly another time, given that when the vehicle was uplifted on the 13th by the grandfather, it was again in a third and separate position. - This must be a breakthrough, really, in her case. - It does beg more questions. The public need to understand that a matter of this scale needs the public to come forward with information, like we've had before, because we can actually build a very accurate timeline of her movements. - So it's a period of, you know, four to five days there. You've got... Now you've got images for two of those days. Are you asking anyone that was in Tolaga Bay or anyone that came to the Tuia 250 to just check those photos on their phones and cameras, just in case they may have caught something too? - Absolutely. Look, if anyone's got photographs of the car park area in general, we'd love to see it. - So it now appears Jamie's car was moved several times from the date she went missing to when her car was discovered. You know, your organisation is investigators, but you're also former detectives, so this is not new territory for you. When we were looking into this case, one of the things that struck us was the fact that neither the car or the room were ever locked down, and there were no forensic tests performed on them. Was that something that struck you as well? - Yeah, I think that's a reasonably obvious conclusion to draw. You know, that is problematic for the police, mostly, around the integrity of those scenes. And what I mean by that is that if a scene's insecure, evidence can potentially be tampered with, and we'll be none the wiser. - Then there was the issue of Jamie's wet clothes found in the car. - There were certainly some points of interest and, again, more questions that I think need to be answered. We're aware and the public's probably aware now that some clothing of Jamie's was located within her vehicle, some of it described as wet or damp with sand on it. And in one instance, a shoe was caught up in the legging of one of those pair of pants. Now, again, this does raise some questions of how those pants were able to be taken off or pulled off while they're wet, while her shoe was still... as I understand, still tied up on one of her feet. Now, we haven't got the second shoe either. So where is that shoe? Is it still on the beach? Is it in the water? Where is it? - And the jersey with the blood on it, was that a concern for you? - Yeah, look, it is a concern. It's a concern because we don't understand how that blood got there. Whilst I understand that the blood is Jamie's, how did it get there? - It's coming up two years since Jamie's been missing. Police say they believe that she's still missing. The case is open, but she's had a mental health issue, and they think that possibly that's been her end. How likely is it that someone goes missing into the water and two years later, nothing is found? - You'd probably assume that if she was in the water, we should have found her. There are examples where people in Tolaga have gone missing before and haven't been found, but most times if you talk to the locals, it would seem to me if someone goes in the water, gets in trouble and drowns that the sea gives them back. The fact we haven't found Jamie to this point is certainly a major part of the thrust of what we are promoting, which is that there could be another possibility of her disappearance. - And until every possibility is explored, Jonique won't give up the search to find what happened to Jamie. And in a written statement, police say the investigation into the disappearance of Jamie Kaiwai remains open and active. However, at this time, it's not being treated as suspicious. Once the investigation has concluded, the matter will be referred to the coroner. Please continue to liaise closely with the family and encourage anyone with information about the lead-up to Jamie's disappearance that may assist the investigation to call 105. Or you can call Jamie's team on 08000 123 114. Kua hikina te hui e hoa ma. Noreira hei whakamanawa i te timatanga o Mahuru Maori anei te waiata Te Wai No Rua Whetu na Troy Kingi. Noho ora mai ra. Captions were made with the support of NZ On Air. www.able.co.nz Copyright Able 2021 - ALL: He mea tautoko na Te Mangai Paho. - The Hui is made with support from New Zealand On Air.