On meeting Graeme Kennedy writer of "New Tales of the South Pacific"...

On the weekend, I also had the neat privilege of meeting author, Graeme Kennedy, who is an accomplished writer having worked in Journalism in New Zealand for a few decades. He was also at the book Festival with his lovely wife and we got to chatting as my stand was obviously Pacific with a lavalava print displaying my books and I observed a Fijian tapa cloth on his display with Graeme wearing a colourful lei.

That's the thing about being Pacific (and often Samoan) people as I've observed having travelled in Samoa, American Samoa, Oahu (Hawaii), Rarotonga (Cook Islands) and Fiji etc. I've always felt (I'd even include parts of Australia, U.S.A and of course New Zealand) that there's a definite friendliness with similarities that I've been able to share in having laughs and sharing smiles and experiences with people from the different Islands but similar to mine.

Suffice to say that I was brought up in a church community that celebrated the differences between Samoans, Cook Islands and Niueans in faith, dance, food and as a symbiotic community so that when I went teaching in knowing the different backgrounds of Pasifika students it was easy to relate to them.

So this was what I observed upon meeting Graeme Kennedy. I'd call him an honourary Samoan as he had a keen knowledge about much of the history and some of the characters of whom I was aware of but hadn't met eg. Aggie Grey and her family, political and honourary dignitaries and the like etc.

He had an obvious love for Samoa and Samoans having shared his experiences of flying to and from NZ for over 30 times (almost as much as my parents) and the neat thing was that I was able to understand from him was that he had been very aware of the racism of the 70s that I was aware of in Muldoon's era and had even written articles against it in the then Auckland Star.

I was able to glimpse a few pages of his book on the Amazon.com website and he wrote so caringly about Friar Beauchemin who'd lived in Samoa for much of his life that I think I have to either buy or get my work library to buy the book.

Wow! such a privilege to have met some very special writers/authors at the NZ Independent book Festival and looking forward to meeting with many more...