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The annual Pasifika Festival is by far the best PR exercise that the Auckland City Council facilitates even if it costs $280,000 a year to stage it.
There is one Saturday in the year when the intoxicating fragrance of the Pacific saturates Auckland's Western Springs and the City of Sails throbs with the pulsating rhythms of the South Seas.
Pasifika Festival transcends all other gatherings of its magnitude in multicultural Auckland because it sees no barriers.
Its like everyone's blind or deaf. Everybody walks around with a smile on their face, 15-year-old volunteer Sereana Patterson said.
She was one of 200 volunteers who was up at the crack of dawn to help prop up the eight villages and the four entertainment stages dotted around the large man made lake.
Once the sun warms Western Springs, Pasifika Festival transformed the lakeside venue into the single most largest gathering of Pacific Islanders in the world.
The wonderful spontaneity that sparkled with in Pacific Islanders surfaced shamelessly on this one day in March when people let down their guard to simply enjoy real food, good music and a visual feast of the arts, tradition and culture.
There was plenty of humour in Pasifika. Pacific Islanders have a lot of energy and they love to laugh and often have a lot to laugh about, assistant project manager Mere Lomaloma Elliot said.
You wont find tall, blonde, leggy models in a size 10 Versace number in the fashion shows, but big smiling grandmothers generous around the waist poking fun at themselves.
For adventurous village hoppers hoping to traverse the Pacific in an hour, the Aotearoa
Village exhibiting all things Maori is a good place to start. Then a hop
across carefully constructed water bridges to the Cook Islands, Fiji, Kiribati, Niue, Samoa, Tonga and Tuvalu.
You would see, hear and taste the difference in all the eight villages, Mere said.
We've left it to the communities what they want to present in their villages. Music and dancing is so much a part of Pacific culture, the intimacy and the fact everyone can join in without question naturally leans toward having a good laugh.
From the not so familiar fragrance of coconut oil to the tropical fruity pine and the mouth watering whiff of traditionally baked fare the choices were never ending.
Pasifika was conceived ten years ago by the South Pacific Islands Development Association, a group of Pacific Island Consuls, the Pacific Island Chamber of Commerce, TVNZ, Telecom and a group of companies in association with the Auckland City Council.
What was essentially a one day
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extravaganza and celebration of Pacific Island cultures has today expanded into showcasing the full range of performing arts, drama, poetry, comedy and theatre sports.
The entertainment stage featured a healthy blast from the past with the Yandal Sisters, the glamorous fafafine Le Poly Diva Lindahe, Michele Rounds and Darren Kamali rapping in Fijian. Hip hip rap band Nesian Mystics was on every teenagers lips this year.
Sheer numbers at Pasifika Festival prove Auckland is by far the largest Polynesian city in the world. While the first Pasifika in 1993 drew 30,000 with 2002 attracting close to 130,000.
Planning for Pasifika was a 12 month assignment for Auckland Council, the Pasifika Komiti and a happy band of enthusiastic volunteers.
But the soul of every Pasifika Festival had always been the Pacific Island people themselves.
Without the Pacific Island communities, there is no Pasifika, observed a former project manager.
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