Day Six - Kiwi Farm, Te Puke School Visit, and arrival at the Marae.

Early in the morning, we left our place of lodging and set off for our first destination of the day; Kiwi 360.

As we all know, Zespri which is a brand of Kiwis, is commonly seen being sold in Singapore in the last 4-5 years. Zespri operates world wide, and holds on to the monopoly of the kiwi sector. 25% of their kiwis are the Gold Kiwis, and the other 75% are the one we usually see and eat; Green Kiwis.

We have found out that Kiwi 360 has 50 Individually own orchards, with 10 larger companies running pack houses, 70 Kiwi ships(exports all by sea). Also, the kiwis can be stored for up to 6-8 months at 0 - ½ Degrees celsius.

Every year, New Zealand has the whole market to itself from May to December, whereby they hire 25000 workers; majority of the labour force come from countries like Malaysia, the Pacific Islands, Indonesia as New Zealand's amount of labour force is not enough. Because they are close to the ocean (cold), places like Japan 20% of national crop - Europe 80%

Every year, 1 million bees are imported into these kiwi farms for pollination, which is approximately 100000 bee hives from bee companies. No irrigation is needed in New Zealand for kiwi farms as there is sufficient rainfall, volcanic soil/ash, sunlight and frost which helps to kill diseases.

Another industry to trim and groom the trees - Accommodation for labour - Labour for 6- 7 months - Biggest  Chile, Italy, France, Spain, Greece, Chine, Japan, South Korea - New Zealand have the whole market to themselves from May to December - From China. They re branded it

Thats the living condition of the kiwi~!

Don't you just feel like being there, under these kiwis, and wait for them to drop into your mouth? X)

Te Puke School Visit

Sidetrack a wee bit.. This group of Te Puke students you see above? What happened was.. We wanted to take a photo with them and asked if we could.. THEN, they got all excited about it and posed. They thought I wanted to take a photo of them only, so oh well. Didn't want to embarrass them and myself so.. *snap* Comes the photo~

Anyway.

We left the school at 2-ish and took a short bus trip to the Marae.. It's pronounced 'Ma-rai' for those who don't know.

The ceremony to walk in was rather.. Very Formal. Like.. Super Formal. We weren't allowed to take photos before the ceremony ended and just nice while we were walking towards the Marae, we saw a beautiful full rainbow. Note; full rainbow. But couldn't take pictures!

But the sunset there was really beautiful.. It's not something you would expect to see in Singapore..

Not only that, the experience we had there was definitely one of a kind. It was quite surprising, when we actually expected to be welcomed by Maori people in their traditional costumes, and their usual songs and dances.. But no, we were proven wrong.

Instead, we were welcomed by only 4-5 of them, who were in normal modern-day clothes; similar to what we were wearing instead. They then told us, they didn't want to be what people refer to as 'Plastic Maoris'. In other words, Maori people who wore the traditional costumes just for show.

The way we were welcomed.. Made us feel true warmth in our hearts (despite the cold weather). They welcomed us in the most sincere way, and of course, we returned their gestures by obliging to their ground rules of the Marae. Like, not eating inside it.-.-"