The Electric Coconut Christmas Tree

On Stoddard Road, just across from the medical centre, The Auckland Samoan Assembly of God church is an old factory building, large, with a warehouse roller door on the side for trucks to back up to. The car parked on the road outside has prayer beads and an Arabic inscription hanging from the rear-vision mirror.

The motorway runs along behind the building. Next door: Panel and Paint, on the other side: the Elegant Knitwear factory, then an overflowing dumpster and Tulja Centre. Tulja Centre is a mall. What an excitingly modern idea it was in 1974, fresh from the distant home of capitalism – the shops are inside! Not a verandah in sight! But not so exciting now. And don’t think Dubai. Tulja Centre doesn’t have a ten-million-litre aquarium with 300 species of fish nor an indoor rainforest. It is mostly deserted, it has four shops on either side of its central passageway. Roti Hut and Hyderabad Kitchen if you want to eat Indian food; Nims, Sakhi and Devotie if you want to buy Indian women’s clothing; Sona Sansaar if you want to buy Indian jewellery or a few elephant deities …

If you approach Tulja Centre from the other direction, as you avoid the kids on bicycles, weave amongst the women with headscarves, the black man in a thick down jacket on a hot summer day, the old bearded man in dishdash and skullcap, a series of smells reach you as you walk – incense from the vegie shop, spicy cooking smells, linen and washing powder from the giant laundromat. There are a more than reasonable number of barbershops, a couple of tailors, a TAB and ‘a name you can trust’ Mohammed’s Halal Meat.

At Deliciously Pasifik you can buy Samoan taro or Fijian pink taro. There is a security guard outside the Post Office. Hip Hop bursts from passing cars and across the Siasi ’O Tonga (NZ) Trust Board sign – an incomprehensible green tag.

And at the back, left-hand corner of Tulja Centre – Café Abyssinia.

And in the central walkway of the mall – the electric coconut Christmas tree. It brushes the, admittedly low, ceiling. The trunk is green plastic but the coconuts are green plastic lit from inside and the ten or so meager fronds are made from plastic tubes with flashing lime-green lights inside. The tree rests on a wooden board and an unapologetic electric cord is plugged into a socket in the wall.

‘Ganna’ he calls it – the commemoration of the birth of Christ on 7 January. He recalls the white netela the people wore as they headed to the round stone church in the evening, the songs, the processions, the candles, the walking home in the silence at 3 a.m.

No flashing trees, no presents – the holy service, the feasting: Ethiopia before The Derg killed the Emperor, before the Red Terror. About the time they were building the Tulja Centre here.


Dhiraja