Sarrah | Mount Albert
“To be a woman today is to be able to do everything, you’re not cornered into one sort of job like staying at home and looking after your kids, or just being in the kitchen. Women can do anything and everything; be anything they want to be.
They can be a mother and at the same time they can do a fulltime job, and juggle everything in between. Anything a man can do, a woman can do. My kid goes to a day care nearby, and there was a Father’s Day the day care offers, and there were a lots of Dads around. I’m a single mum, so she was happy to see a lot of men around.
Yeah it’s pretty much relentless. You have this fulltime job and your day starts at like 6:00AM and finishes att 10:00-11:00pm. Your child goes to bed at 7:00, but you still have to do things and you have to think of how to make ends meet. So you choose to go to a fulltime job, even though your child is still small and you want to look after her and watch her grow, you can’t really, so you have to sacrifice a lot of things, but if you see the fruit of labour, you see the child happy, you’re able to give her everything, it’s pretty rewarding, although it’s tiring.
It’s for the child’s future anyway, and it’s not just me; anyone out there who is a single mother or single father, can do anything. I’m working for child support, as a collection officer, and it’s another way of me getting the broader picture of being a single parent out here in Auckland.
On Children…
In New Zealand it’s not really easy, but we get a lot of help from people. In the morning it’s hard to leave her in day care, as every time she cries and clings to my leg. Before it was hard, but I realise if I leave her feeling heavy, she feels it. So I need to leave her in day care feeling positive, leaving her with positive words like, you take care, you enjoy your day, and everything. So it’s hard. It’s like pulling your heart with a baby, leaving her in day care, but other things in the future would be her questions, how will I answer those questions? If she has questions about why the other parent isn’t here. So, a lot of things are hard, but I know I will be able to deliver along the way when it happens.
On Diversity…
I’ve been in my job for only one year, it’s a government job, and everyone pretty much knows everything and you’re adjusting getting to know everything and you feel different, because technically I don’t know much yet. I feel different because I’m a solo parent and they’re a whole family and if their kid is sick then someone is able to look after the kid, but me, I have lots of absence whenever my kid falls sick. So yeah, I feel different, because if I have a whole family, I might not have to struggle like that.
I live with my family here; my Dad, Mum, sister and brother. We all live together and have a fulltime job. My younger sister is at university. All of us have different lives and we all get together at night and have dinner together. We always have a positive relationship because we tend to go out every weekend, and me and my sisters have lunch or breaky somewhere.
With my previous relationship, my child’s father; it’s not really a good story to tell, but when he knew that I was pregnant he just got off, got on the plane and headed somewhere. He went to Singapore and then to Abu Dhabi and then he tried to contact me when my baby was born in January last year. He contacted me in February.
He just asked, what’s her name, why did you give her that name, and I’m sorry I did this to you, and, you know, I’m not ready. I was like, it’s fine, I don’t want to hate you because you’ve given me a great blessing. He is getting married soon, and he’s having another child with someone, so yeah I’m sorry. I never told this to anyone, so I’m kind of stalking him and I know what’s going on. So he’ll be a good father to his second child. I heard he’s having a boy this time. If he’s going to be happy, so be it.”
