Many Cook Islanders who live abroad return home for a month or longer at Christmas time. Important events such as twenty-first birthday celebrations and weddings are often postponed until this visiting period so that as many extended family members as possible can attend. It is also the time when most tere pati are undertaken. In the following, I describe one such occasion that occurred on the island of Aitutaki in 1996.

Two tere pati, one from Melbourne and the other from Auckland, travelled to Aitutaki in mid-December. The Melbourne tere pati had 80 participants who slept in the Amuri village hall (the village from which most of the tere pati members originated). At the hall, a roster was drawn up for cleaning and food preparation duties for all members of the group. Community groups and family groups linked in various ways to the tere pati brought fresh fruit and vegetables to the hall on a daily basis. Many hosted large feasts at surrounding church and village meeting houses. The tere pati sent four shipping crates of household and farming materials by sea to coincide with their arrival. The items shipped included packets of toilet paper, cartons of tinned food and frozen chicken pieces, a tractor, and 80 mattresses which the tere pati used to sleep on and then donated to the village of Amuri when they left.

The family I was stayed with during this Christmas period had one brother return with his wife and three children with the Auckland tere pati. In addition to contributing to this group’s donations, he also brought goods for his immediate family living on Aitutaki. Their shipped crate included containers of food such as large quantities of frozen steak, minced meat and New Zealand oysters and mussels. It also contained a new washing machine for the family home, a grass cutter, an outboard motor, a plastic outdoor table and matching chairs, and two pushbikes for the male nephews. They told me that it cost NZ$5,000 to ship the crate. In addition, both members of the tere pati and members of this particular family also gave sums of money to family members and to village organisations.

Tere pati are obliged to undertake community projects during their stay. The male members of the Melbourne tere pati rebuilt the hall’s roof with funds raised back in New Zealand and Australia. During other years, tere pati have been involved in community projects such as fixing a sea wall and replastering a church. One member of the tere pati said ‘we need to do these kinds of work to say thank you to the Aitutakians that stay here and look after our land and our village’. Similarly, at the family level, overseas members pay, with cash and goods, family at home to maintain their family homes and to clear and plant their land. Neglected land is considered a matter of shame and can also lead to challenges to ownership by other family members.

As well as these economic and political agendas, tere pati provide occasions for intensely pleasurable proximity between long-distance family and friends (see Alexeyeff 2009). Feasts, informal get-togethers and bar-hopping involve a great deal of drinking, eating, dancing and singing. Stories, laughter, tears, new dance moves and songs are exchanged throughout the trip. One important occasion that is held during the Christmas period on Aitutaki is the koni raoni: a day-long event held each December 26 and New Year’s Day.^[5] Koni raoni means ‘dance round’ and refers to the event’s structure, which involves one of the villages travelling around the island singing and performing choreographed dance numbers. The other villages reciprocate with gifts of money, food and by joining in the dancing and singing. Like many forms of group entertainment, the aim of the koni raoni is to raise funds for the performing village. In 1996, the travelling village made special stops at the halls where the tere pati were staying ‘to pay tribute’ a performer told me, ‘but also to get some money off those rich ones!’. At the Amuri hall, the Melbourne tere pati waited for the performing village. The sound of drums, trucks and motorbikes announced their arrival. After a series of speeches, prayers and listing of donations of money, the performers began to dance. On certain occasions, members of the tere pati dance with the performers and leave coin donations in the contribution bowl when they are finished. These interactions were accompanied by raucous laughter and screams of delight as dancers on both sides aim to variously show off their dancing skills or dance in humorous or deliberately provocative styles. After about an hour the performers are provided with food and drink before they move on to the next village.

For the koni raoni the Melbourne tere pati donned matching green t-shirts. On the front, a circular emblem featured the words ‘Teupokoenua – Melbourne’ (Teupokoenua is one of the Cook Islands Maori names for Aitutaki) and an emblem featuring a kangaroo and a palm tree. On the back was a map of Australia with Melbourne marked by a coconut tree. The map was surrounded by the words ‘Melbourne-Aitutaki Tour 96-97’.

These t-shirts make an important statement about the nature of Cook Islands diasporic communities and about transnationalism more generally. Both the emblem and the map visually represent the way these Melbourne Cook Islanders view their group’s identity and place as dual: they are Aitutakian but also Melbournians. This twin state of belonging is a key aspect of transnational identities and Cook Islanders, like other Pacific Islander diasporic communities, have a complex range of investments in more than one country (Guarnizo and Smith 1998, 13; Lee 2003, 2004, 135: Spoonley, Bedford and McPherson 2003).

The sheer joy and excitement experienced during koni raoni epitomises the general mood of tere pati undertaken during the 1996–97 holiday period. It contrasts starkly with the emotional tenor when the tere pati return home. The tropical food stuffs, island brooms, coconut oil and mats given to those leaving are exchanged quietly, with no formal ceremony. At the airport, long silent hugs between family members seem to amplify the distance that will soon separate them.