Occupy Omaha

Omaha is a beach community not far from here.  It is mainly on a sandspit, the houses in brave defiance of the biblical warning about the man who built his house on the sand.  A medium tsunami would wipe them out.  Nevertheless, a fair proportion of the Omaha houses are the upmarket summer retreats of Auckland’s wealthier lifestylers.  One of these is NZ’s Prime Minister, John Key.

Omaha is an extraordinary sight in places – house after house behind high grey security walls, dutifully equipped with built-in barbecues, pools, indoor-outdoor flow, pebbled surrounds, yuccas and pampas grass.  Each house says Keep Out, privacy, privileged only.  These people employ professional day and night surveillance of their assets at Omaha, video cameras and all, 24/7. 

You can sight some of the inhabitants on sunny summer Saturdays when they venture out to the Matakana market.  Women in their casual designer label frocks accompanied, often as not, by their indulged bored and sullen 14-year-old daughters named Samantha or Madison.

Behind the sandspit is a large lagoon, a golf club, a state-of-the-art boat ramp.  Not going there often, I don’t know much about it.  It’s altogether too depressing.

Suddenly there appears a delightful little novel set in Omaha.  Cathie Koa Dunsford: Occupy Omaha (Global Dialogues Press, 2014).  Our local rag, the Rodney Times, had a news item about this but, typically I’m afraid, omitted to give us the title of the book.  I prised that somewhat essential information out of the editor, ordered a copy, and behold – what I got turns out to be Copy 10 of 100, signed indeed by Cathie Koa Dunsford. 

Her story is witty and instructive.  Her hero is a 60-year-old named Gloria, made homeless since her new house turned out to be a leaky home and worthless.  The developer responsible for this had his holiday home at Omaha.  Gloria decides to move in, since it’s vacant most of the year.  She is very caring and responsible.  The Moet she drinks and the items from the freezer are all credited to his debt to her, the amount she believes she has lost through his deceit.

Soon it’s the occupation of many of these Omaha mini-mansions by single mothers and others, all strictly enjoined to do no harm, and all done legally by signed house-sitting arrangements.  It builds to a great drama involving the blocking of the causeway to Omaha, legally again, helicopters and much fun.  Cathie Koa Dunsford makes her point about various basic issues. 

Well, this afternoon I attended a meeting at our local Mahurangi East Public Library, at which Dr Cathie Koa Dunsford launched her book.  She was accompanied by Dr Karin Meissenburg.  I am unsure of Dr Karin’s role or relationship, but she played a kind of soulful ocarina or Maori flute while Dr Cathie read extracts from the book. 

I am no good at these events.  Dr Cathie knows how to talk.  I would have preferred quiet thoughtful questions from people who had actually read the book.  As it was, we luxuriated in memories of former days before garden centres and inequitable distribution of wealth. 

For all that, it’s a worthy little novel.  I think it might be time to read one or two of her others.