Alessandra – Auckland City
“I would say to my 11 year old self, have more confidence in yourself.
I’m from Brazil, and I came to New Zealand in 2010 just as a visitor and I fell in love with New Zealand and then worked my way through staying here. I used to live in Queenstown for four years, and moved here to Auckland in 2015 and I’ve been here since then. I’m a mix of both cultures I live in. I still hold on to a lot of my Latin culture, but I adapted to some of the Kiwi ways. You have to adjust when you migrate, don’t you?
(Auckland’s) safe compared to where I come from. Violence surrounds you back home, but it really hits you hard when it’s directed at you. I used to work really close to the place I lived, seven blocks away and I used to walk to work. I was taking the same route, and some homeless people were studying my movements, and after maybe two months of doing this path to work, they cornered me on a dark street, and then they had like a broomstick with them and they were asking for all my belongings, which I didn’t have much at the time, but it was quite shocking because people passed by and nobody helped. So it was kind of traumatic.
I love (Auckland); so many things happening – cultural, parks, walks. I’ve never had much confidence. Growing up in Brazil is tough. I’m from a coast city, so we have beauty pageants which I never fit in, and your teachers or even friends always telling you you’re not good enough or you should try harder or you don’t do anything as good as somebody else – it’s hard for a child to grow up hearing that, and it kind of sticks with you. So now that I’m a grown-up, and I’ve had a little bit more experience in life, I see that perhaps they shouldn’t say those things to kids.”
