Standing alone in the Poroporo Valley of the East Coast of the North Island New Zealand is the sole memorial to Tiweka Manuera, or Manuel as the family is mainly known. Tiweka was one of many Ngati Porou young men from the early 20th century who answered the call to King and Country and crossed to the opposite side of the world. There like so many of these young men, he died fighting a battle for, and against people he couldn’t possibly know.
Tiweka was the second son of Apirana Manuel 
and Katarina Grant 
. His father Apirana was the oldest grandchild of Manuel Hose (our eponynous ancestor who came from Europe to NZ) and his first wife Tapita te Herekaipuke. His parents had 10 children, their 7th child, Tungake, known as Tuke is my grandfather.
Tiweka signed up at the age of 22 and left NZ for the Suez Canal aboard the Waitemata the week of the 18-26 October 1915 (Source the Auckland War Memoria Museum’s Online Cenotaph), although according to the Navy Museum website it left on the 18 September 1915. Accordingt to Wikipedia, Tiweka was one of 630 troops under the command of Major D B Mackenzie who boarded the Waitemata on her first journey as a troop ship on 18 September 1915 as “His Majesty’s NZ Transport” or HMNZT 29 with the advance party of the 1st and 2nd Battalion NZ Rifle Brigade, 2nd Maori Contingent and details of the 6th Reinforcements of the New Zealand Expeditionary Force. They arrived in Egypt on 26 October 1915. It cannot have been a pleasant trip as 10 months later when the ship arrived in Cape Town, South Aftrican authorities condemned her as a troop ship.
We have very little information on Tiweka’s ‘great adventure’ itself in Europe. What we do now however is that Private Tiweka Manuel, #16/657 is buried in Tidworth Military Cemetary England. He is listed as having ‘died of disease’. One can only assume that as healthy young man in the prime of his life, he must have died at the age of 25 from some form of trench sickness contracted on the Western Front.
The cover picture above of Tiweka was taken at the insistence of his mother Katarina. It is the only picture I know of that exists for him other than his 2 memorials.
Tiweka’s first memorial of course is his tombstone at Tidworth Cemetary where he is buried – 
. However a 2nd memorial exists for him and stands as a lonely vigil to an ancestor who gave his life 100 years ago 
. The 2nd memorial stands in the Poroporo Valley next to the now dilapidated homestead where my mother was born. The property consists of little more that shrubs that line the now long gone footpath to the homestead, fruit plum and lemon trees that are no longer picked, and a chimney surrounded by metal plates, the remnants of what was once the oven. 
It is sobering to know that people lived here, my ancestors. Barely 20 meters from the property stands the memorial to Tiweka raised by his family in memory to their son who would never come home. One hundred years later, the memorial is in need of repair. 
In late 2014 I took a scrubbing brush to it and removed much of the lichen and moss growing on it. That revealed the date of his death, 25th March 1918. It is nearly one hundred years since that date and we his mokopuna from his brothers and sisters wish to honour him once more to ensure that our own mokopuna remember him.