Mijnia | Waimauku
“I would live in a smaller house, because it’s getting a bit big, and I would like to live in an area where, yeah a friendly area.
As I’m getting older, the house is a bit big to maintain and the garden is a bit big to maintain. I noticed when my daughter moved to a different suburb how friendly it was, and yeah how neighbours were very helpful, even boys across the road helping you with getting groceries out of her car, and things like that. I’ve lived here for 20 years, and you know, some neighbours I got on well with, and they’re helping each other out in different ways, and at the moment we have got a friend living with us, helping her out. That sort of thing I value.
Yeah, I’ve got two daughters and a granddaughter, and regularly visiting them, and keeping in contact with them. Not every day, because they have to live their own life, but supporting each other, or supporting them, you know, where needed without being intrusive. So, keeping a regular contact. They don’t live in Auckland, so yeah, so a lot of it is by phone, Messenger and yeah, so seeing them and visiting them.
I think it is extremely important, like you know, I’m outside the art centre, and I feel they have been extremely welcoming, not only to me, but to many people who do courses here, or who come to visit. Yeah, I felt the community I grew up with in the Netherlands, there was a sense of better community. The town did hold the people in it. It was a sense of feeling of belonging, what I have I suppose been searching for ever since I arrived in New Zealand, and I haven’t found it quite here. I know some small communities may have it, but when I talk with other European people, they more or less say the same, that it is not quite here.
Yeah, I’m doing a painting class. The teacher is wonderful. She really has a good way of bringing us all together as a group and letting us express, you know, what we are feeling, what we are thinking, and guiding us with all the different art we are doing. We can do abstract or more realistic, but anything what we do there is supported. Yeah that means a lot to me.
I grew up in the Netherlands, and I immigrated to New Zealand in my 20s. What I value is a sense of community, creativity like art in all different forms, yeah understanding among people. Nature and the outdoors, homeliness, and family values.”
