Kyle | Glenfield

“So, the one thing I think would shock most people is that I am half Indian.

So, basically my granddad he’s from America, he was Native American, and then met my grandma. Then my mum came out a little bit whiter than normal, because my grandma was from France actually, from the royal family, the De Poitiers family. So I do have royal blood in my stream, and my mum met a bloke in England, named Andy, and then I came out of the picture. So yeah, and I’m pretty white, not going to lie.

I’m South African. I moved here about five months ago. I lived here previously for three years, moved back to South Africa for two years, came here five months ago, and loving every day that I can. Yeah. So I grew up in South Africa for most my life.

Grew up with lovely friends and family that side, and I came this side, and I’m willing to do whatever it takes to bring my family from South Africa here, to share the wonderful experience that I’m having, and that’s going to be my ambition in life at the moment until I can focus on some more of the important things in my life.

One thing that I thought, with the royal family, I do have a claim of some sort, but I can only claim that when I’m 45, which will be pretty cool. Can’t wait till I’m 45. It’s all in the system. I’m not really that big or fussed on it, but my Gran is. My Gran loves France. She would die to go back there, but the thing is, she’s got two residencies. She’s got the South African and American. She had to cancel out her European passport, which she did. So, she can’t move back there. She can only get visas, which is unfortunate, but she wants to go back, so maybe one day when I earn enough money I’ll be able to help my Gran out with that, and help out my family with everything I can.

So, what’s preventing them at the moment from coming into New Zealand is money. Money is a big part of it, because it’s pretty expensive in South Africa. I mean one dollar is 10 rand. Trying to earn money in South Africa is pretty intense. I had a job for Network Security, which is a pretty top-notch job. I was earning 4000 rand a month, and my rent was 3500 rand a month. I had 500 rand to live on. To give you a comparison on how much that is, I was surviving on $400 a month. With the rent taken out, that’s $50 a month to live, monthly, not weekly. It’s a month. 500 rand would probably cover my milk, sugar, coffee, bread, and some frozen chicken bits. So I was living off that for quite awhile, and then I phoned my dad, and asked if I could move into New Zealand, and he was like, boy come.

So I came, and now my family is kind of stuck with the situation I was, it kind of eats me up a bit, to be honest, that they’re there and they’re missing out on everything here. So, what’s preventing them is money at the end of the day, and also me not being able to provide that money at the moment. Hence, why I am studying business and psychology, to use that in my later aspirations in life.

I am studying. I’m studying business psychology at the moment at Massey. I go there some days. Some days I like to sit in bed, have some Mi Goreng noodles, you know, but studying is very important to me at the moment, because that’s the foundation blocks, and most people don’t want to admit it, but it is.

I listen to classical music mostly actually. A little bit of hip-hop on the side, I’m not going to lie. A little bit of Post Malone, and some 21 Savage chucked in there. Also movies that I like, horrors, yeah, I dig the horrors; nothing beats a good old horror. I like to go fishing. Gardening is a big surprise for most people as well, especially the gardening in New Zealand, because gardening in South Africa, you can’t really, you have to pick the right times. Here, there’s mostly four seasons in one day, so you get the best of all worlds. You know what I mean?  So, yeah I’m really happy to be here, really happy to be in New Zealand.

What I like to take out of life is advice. I use the advice that is given to me.”

Want to do something to grow our humanity? Click here to find out more.