From the collection
The six journeys
Jordan
Maha Al-Fayyad
Maha was a practising lawyer with six years' experience and a growing reputation
when her husband Hashem was offered work in New Zealand. She knew almost nothing
about the country — she thought people here might speak Spanish. Arriving
in 2006, she went from running her own legal practice to being at home full time,
and found the hardest part wasn't the work but the language.
I remember one time when there was laughter but because I missed parts of
conversation, it gave them the impression that I probably didn't have much of a
sense of humour.
She studied English online, then business, then started an immigration agency,
then a Jordanian takeaway. She talked her way from grocery assistant into Lead
Buyer at New World within a month. In 2015 she took her four sons back to Jordan
to reconnect them with their culture, and found she no longer fitted there
either. “I felt like a stranger and had to start from scratch again.”
Six months in, she was missing New Zealand.
Chile
María Cárcamo
María taught English in Punta Arenas, at the southern tip of Chile, to
every age group from kindergarten to adult evening classes. When her husband was
offered a permanent role at Methanex, the family moved in 2013 — partly for
the work, mostly so everyone could finally become fluent. Then she arrived, and
discovered that studying English at university is not the same as understanding a
New Zealander.
I felt like I had forgotten everything. I couldn't decipher it. I couldn't get
the accent.
Her sons adapted first, as children tend to. The eldest read his way through
book after book in his first six months here and went on to win a university
scholarship. María, meanwhile, found the generational gap harder than the
language one: she could follow older speakers at community meetings long before
she could follow her son's mates in her own living room.
India
Raj Khadilkar
Raj came from Pune in 2003 on a points-based residency application, having
negotiated a part-time role with his old employer before he'd even left. He and
his wife Priya weren't short of opportunity in India — it was safety,
lifestyle and the sheer competitiveness of Indian education they were weighing up.
In India it's more academic focused, whereas in New Zealand education is more
practical focused.
What stayed with him was small: their four-year-old asked to stand up in front of
his class and talk about his holidays, and a kindy teacher who told them to stop
drilling him in English and keep speaking Marathi at home. “Don't worry. He
will get there anyway.” The family later moved to Singapore, then back to
India, then returned to New Zealand.
Zimbabwe
Cheryl Mudawarima
Cheryl, a nurse from Gweru, had already lived and worked in England when New
Zealand came up. She flew out alone to test it, planning to send for her husband
Victor and their two children only if it felt right.
When I touched down at the airport in Auckland I really felt home. I never felt
like that before. It was like ‘I finally arrived’.
Her family joined her eight months later, and the settling-in was harder than the
arriving. Her children, thirteen and six, had come from private schools in Africa
and met bullying instead of welcome. Cheryl gave up her own work so one parent
could be there for them, and the family moved on to Taupō so Victor could find
engineering work. She's blunt about what integrating actually took:
“You've got to follow where the jobs are.”
France
Océane Smith Cômont
Océane — who goes by “Ocean”, to save everyone the
pronunciation — grew up in Arcachon, on the coast south of Bordeaux. She
had built a career running holiday camps and kayaking groups for children, work
that barely exists in New Zealand. Her first year here was orchids in a flower
factory, a fish and chips shop, a mussel restaurant, and making fishing gear.
New Plymouth was an accident. Driving back from a wedding in Wellington, she and
her partner detoured through a part of the country they'd never seen.
“This is the city I would like to live in if we move. It has the surf and
the mountain.” Years on, with a son who is both Kiwi and French, she's
still weighing up whether to take a New Zealand passport.
I want to keep my French inside of me, but I'm still wondering… if I'm
going to ask for Kiwi nationality or not.
Germany
Stephan Vogel
Stephan is a vet in Waitara, close enough to cycle to work. German by
background, he trained at Onderstepoort in South Africa, where he and his wife
Anne — also a vet — practised for years before deciding they didn't
want to grow old there. They timed the move around their youngest daughter
Erica finishing primary school.
He found the shift easier than most: “South Africa is English speaking,
it's colonial, and in the Southern Hemisphere. There are so many parallels, it's
a fairly easy job.” The gaps that caught him out were small ones.
In South Africa we had a plot… Here, a ‘plot’ translates to
something in a graveyard, we were told. It's a little glitch of language you
need to become aware of.
These days Anne works in craniosacral and equine therapy, and Stephan is
learning about rongoā Māori, making his own tinctures.
Homelands Then & Now was written by Ingrid van Amsterdam and funded
by the New Zealand Lottery Grants Board. ISBN 978-0-473-46042-6.
