Te kōrero o Reggie Collins , Reggie Collins' story
Reggie is a rongoā practitioner and had a kōrero at Tāne Ora about her mahi around her rohe.
Tell us a little bit about your background and how you got into and this gift of rongoā and who has helped you tap into it along the way.
I’ve actually been down this way for about forty two years now. I jumped ship and headed for the South Island because they were going to put me into the army at the time. But I thought that I had enough of the army stuff at home because I lived with an auntie of mine at Foxton (my mother hails from Foxton).
But as for getting into rongoā, it came through friends of ours. We went Omaka marae where there was a kura for rongoā. Out of twenty two people that were there, only I and one other are still practising. And I thank that kura very much for bringing out those… well at the time I didn’t know I had what I had.
It’s has been a hard road (to a certain extent) because you have those highs and you have those lows. And when I say highs and lows, I’m inclined to be a bit nosey, because I want to know everything right and there and then.
We had another lady who worked with us. She was a very good lady on the rongoā side of things and she used to make oils. She taught me a few things too. But otherwise, from there till now, I still enjoy what I do. I do mirimiri as well as making oil. I know we have a lot of people around this motu who are very pleased with the service that we give out. I go up and down the country as well and people sort of know us and what we do.
But this here, that we do, is for the wellbeing of our people. And that is something that’s sort of really always been embedded, I think, from the word go. I can always remember a trip going to Papua New Guinea – we lived in New Guinea for a couple of years – where people were sick. They used to bring them to me, and there was lots of puha in their gardens. And I used to always go and get the puha [Reggie rubs hands together indicating how she prepared puha]. Don’t ask me how I knew what to do, but I just did. And I think it went from there. But, like a lot of people said, right from the beginning, that they saw what I had. But I didn’t because I was too busy playing sports [laughs].
We discussed the western, or the non-Māori terms, such as sickness, illness and disease. Do you want to talk more about that?
We are there for wellbeing because the thing is, if they are not well – if tūroro are not well – they can’t help their families. And no matter how much they say about illness. I don’t like that word illness because it’s a tauiwi word more than anything. I just look at us as being that vessel to help those ones to be well. To be as well as we can make them, because some of us are more down-and-out than others. And the other side of it too is, really what you hold in here, in yourself, being able to pass it to that person. To help them, to heal them.
The healing part, I suppose, I wouldn’t say that I heal people. I just give them what I can. Because to me when you start bring in those words ‘healing’, there’s others too as well, and people sort of try and put you up on a pedestal.
I don’t really like it because I’m there because it’s my job in a sense. But it’s a job that I don’t only do inside where I work; it’s also a job outside that too as well. I have stuff at home. I like to just pick it up and make whatever I have to for somebody else, whoever turns up or rings.
But it’s beautiful that people do come along like that. My tāne is a tauiwi and he hasn’t got used to it yet. And we’ve been married for thirty four years [laughs].
I have people that say “Oh, how much does that cost?” And I say “Look, don’t start doing that to me”. Sometimes it used to make me tangiweto. “Don’t do that to me. Look, just keep coming and just be here if you want to be here. If you want to korero with me, that’ll be fine you know. But you don’t have to pay for anything”.
A lot of people think that whatever I give out, payment should be there. But it’s not about payment. It’s about getting them well, getting back into their whānau.
