Waimania – Pt Chevalier
“The last message I sent to somebody was via text to my daughter who has started at Otago Uni this year, and it’s her first time away from home.
There are some cheap flights going today, so I wanted her to email me her itinerary. I’m very proud of her going off and doing this, because she’s only 17 – just a baby.
I actually grew up in Dunedin. I guess that was probably one of the reasons why she chose Otago. I moved here when I was 23 and it seemed a bit more lively in some ways than Dunedin, yet in others not quite as exciting. Dunedin, as you might know, lacks physical warmth, but makes up for it in emotional warmth. So when I came to Auckland I thought, ‘oh this is so nice – I feel like I’ve come home’.
Well, I’m a mature student at AUT, and it costs about $3.50 to $4 to buy a coffee. So I buy instant coffee that is in a powder form and I just bring in my cup every day and a spoon, and I make it at AUT with boiling water, and it’s a flat white. It froths up at first, but then the froth completely goes. It tastes alright – not bad. It’s a fraction of the price.
I’ve got to say that I used to be more connected to my neighbours than I am these days. I think in your 40s you get really busy. When you’ve got young kids you are more connected to your community. I have to make more effort now to connect to my community. Being in a sports club helps; I’m in a tennis club. I used to be on my local school board, and that kept me very connected.
One of the things in my life that’s always connected me with my friends is around food. You know, within Māoridom having a hangi is like a really big thing; gets people together. It actually brings people from distances to have hangi food. I think we should have the odd free hangi in Auckland. I’d quite like to see that. I think that’ll bring a lot of people out of the woodwork.
This is probably going to sound a little bit inflammatory but I feel as though in Auckland children and young people are a little bit more segregated race-wise, like from their own racial groups. I noticed it with my children that when they were at primary, particularly my girl who was obviously of colour. My boy is much more pale so he’s had a lot of white friends, but my girl often hung around with the Asian kids and, you know, the kids of colour, and there did seem to be a little bit more segregation within the schooling system, and I do see it at AUT a little bit more. Not so much at Unitec, which is more multicultural.
Where I grew up, because it was such a small place and Māoris were much more of a minority, there wasn’t the segregation that there is up here. You have much of your Māori population living over on the south side, so that’s a geographical separation. Auckland is much more racially segregated than is healthy. I don’t think that’s very helpful for getting to know each other and having common ground.
What inspired me to go back to uni is I have worked as a visual artist and a ceramicist, but I was very interested in communication and media, and I sort of felt as though just reading about it wasn’t quite enough; I had to immerse myself in it. I’d been doing communications for my husband with his work in creative industries and I felt like I needed to do it better, and I sort of struggled along with it doing as best as I could. In recent times things have gotten a little bit tougher and I decided to improve our family fortune, so I’ve come to university to learn how to keep up with the times, and do what I was doing already, much better.”
