Kiwi night Chch fundraiser

A small group of enterprising Kiwis in a couple of companies up here got together and organised a Kiwi night after a touch tournament as a fund-raiser for the earth-quake appeal. Includued in the organizing group was Raukura who worked in UC Ed Plus with Madeleine and I, so it was so great for the three of us to catch up. The group organized a fabulous evening with Kiwi food, clips and footage of all those old Kiwi favourites, Country calendar Billy T James and countless old TV adds. And of course just to get up some intercontinental rivalry a showing of the infamous under arm incident which had the Aussies at my table squirming. The food had a Kiwi flavour, roast chicken, no pork this is a Muslim country) potatoes, as fries, roasted, or mashed but definitely lashings of potatoes, green peas Kiwi fruit but no pav!. Towards the end of the evening the Kiwis present got up to sing and the men did the haka which was rather rousing, getting an ovation from the audience. With a number of raffles an auction and selling frosty boy T shirts the evening raised 40, 000 AED. Depending on the dollar that’s about $15,000 NZ. The evening was fab and so lovely that so many other people from all the others countries represented in our various companies came to support us. There is quite a large Tangata Pasifika group in Abu Dhabi and Dubai and these guys all rocked along, and just stepped up. Their presence was huge.