Carol | Kaitī, Gisborne

“Today I attended a Salvation Army get together, and it’s a companions group for elderly people. I’d seen this guy around a few times in Gisborne, at various places, and I went to speak to him today for the first time, and to look at him, you would never expect him to have the experience and the diversity that he had.

He’d been all over Japan, Canada, America, entertaining people in various singing groups, and he was very interesting to talk to and he gave a different perspective on people that move away from their hometown and then come back again. 

At the beginning of Covid I got really sick, and I didn’t really go out anywhere, and I got sort of insulated in my own little bubble. There’s just me and my husband, and I thought, well if I carry on like this, I’ll become, really sick. So, I made myself go back to the things I was doing before, I went back to my keep fit class, and I belong to a singing group which is associated with the Hospice and it was closed down, because of the pandemic. We’d go around to various old people’s homes and sing, old songs, and they’d join in, and have a good time. I also belong to a drama group in town but the poor lady who runs it has died now, so it sort of died with her.

I came out to New Zealand from the UK with my first husband who’s a school teacher, and we went to live in Balclutha and it was such a culture shock. It was 50 years behind the times. It was in the ‘60s and all the men were in one group and all the ladies were in another group, and it was very masculine. It was only when I moved up to Auckland that I got a different perspective on New Zealand, from a small town to a big city, and it was quite a shock to get to Auckland. It was the time of the Vietnam War protests and the women’s rights protests, and I took part in all those, but that’s a long time ago. Then, I went back to live in England because I got divorced, and then I came back to New Zealand and I met my second husband who’s also English, and he was from Hastings, not far from London. We got married and had two children, a boy and a girl, and my daughter got a brain tumour when she was three, which was quite dramatic for her and for us, but she’s completely cured, thanks to the wonderful surgeons at the Auckland Hospital. There was no Starship then, so she had to be there, and so I sang to her so she wasn’t frightened of all these guys. She had her fourth birthday in the hospital. Then, my son who was a brilliant mathematician, he took part in all these maths competitions against schools in Australia and New Zealand, and came back top in Auckland. Then my daughter got a diploma in childcare and she lives in the UK now. She’s been there 15 years. So, I really miss her. 

I think if you’re all together in one group, like the Chinese people in that group, Māori’s in that group, Pākehā’s in that group, then everybody gets sort of weird ideas about each other. In Auckland, I  belonged to an English dance group, and we went around meeting different groups like people from Tonga, people from Scandinavia, Dutch people, and we all got together to have a big festival, and Muldoon came to one of them.”