. Captions by Antony Vlug. Edited by Imogen Staines. www.able.co.nz Captions were made possible with funding from NZ On Air. Copyright Able 2015 AMBIENT MUSIC Westgate is a West Auckland suburb, soon to be the site of a new 1-billion dollar, purpose-built town centre ` shops, offices, houses, parks and a town square. It's a large project that will transform the area. 13 years ago, when we moved here from Delhi, I had never imagined the empty grass areas where I used to go for walks would look like this. But even then this area was home to a wonderful mix of vibrant communities. Let's meet some of the people who give this area a real sense of heart. We'll meet a woman who's made it her life's work to help the Samoan community out west. I trained as an early-childhood educator. I was 40 years old when I started education, and I'm very proud,... (LAUGHS) because I was the first Samoan to get that degree. A South African artist shows us the unexpected ways that her new environment has affected her work. There's no clay in Pretoria ` not where we live ` so initially when we came here we were like, 'What's up with all the clay?' And now we're like,... (SINGS) 'Clay!' We'll discover the heirlooms that inspire a local businessman. Mum and Dad have never ` this might sound a bit corny ` but have never really left, because they're here. And a woman born in Hungary shares her grandmother's culinary secrets. Everybody in my family says that I'm like my grandmother. She's, uh, very ambitious, and, uh, she's a doctor ` still working even if she is 89. I'm Neha Bhatia, and this is my neighbourhood UPBEAT MUSIC I wasn't at all happy when my parents first told me that we were moving to NZ. I was in high school, and I was having the best time of my life. I had my friends, and everything was just so perfect, and I was like, 'What's the need to go anywhere, you know?' But my parents were like, 'No, it's good for you, for your future,' and I remember saying goodbye to my friends at the airport and crying all the way through Immigration. Despite the tears, I never questioned my parents' decision, because we've always been taught that family comes first, and those bonds are still strong today. Local woman Laine Tipi knows how important strong families are to a community, and she's made it her mission to support Samoan families living here for decades now. TRANQUIL MUSIC I was born in Samoa. I came here to NZ in February 1974. My future husband is here, and so that's why I chase him. (CHUCKLES) I left my parents, and I come here to be with him. When I came from Samoa, I was 22 years old. I was young and beautiful. (LAUGHS) I was working as a nurse aide. Years goes past, and then I train as an early-childhood educator. I was 40 years old when I started education, and I'm very proud,... (LAUGHS) because I was the first Samoan to get that degree. That's the proudest moment of my life. It was very hard work, especially when Samoan is my first language and because everything was doing in English. When I went there, I don't know what 'assignment' means, what 'essay' means. And I said to her, 'Can you manage to coast through the course?' And she said, 'Oh yeah, just give me your support, and I will do it,' so I took my hat off for her for what she achieved now, and I'm so proud of her too. CHILDREN CHATTER Our preschool is Leataata O Tupulaga O Le Pasefika. It means the shadow of the future generations of the Pacific. ALL SPEAK SAMOAN The only thing that's different with the Palagi school is the language. I got four, uh, children. They went to Massey High School. They were looking for some parents to come and take part in helping Pacific students, and so my children come and ask me to come and stay at the school, so that's where my involvement started. That's how I saw that most of our Pasifika children on those days, they don't know how to read, they don't know how to write properly, and their comprehension is lack because of that. Uh, self-esteem is very low. I know that if I go and work as a early-childhood educator, that's where I know that I've done something for these young children, so when they come to the high school, they are all ready. I want these children to achieve well. I want them to do well at school. I want to educate the parents that if they really want to see their children's success, this is how they do it. ALL SING IN SAMOAN I follow up with all the local schools and how are they doing. And they say that they are doing really well. They know that they are from our preschool. What I heard from other, they are in top classes, so they are doing well. I run a homework club twice a week, because I can see that those children, they still need help with their homework ` not only that, but their reading and doing their times table, and so they are very happy when they come there. I got notice from, uh, principals of local schools and thanking for helping, giving them extra help for reading, and I make the parents involved too to come and see what we are doing so far. The future ` I want to see all these young ones to be well educated and get good jobs, and then me and my` my husband and I will retire to Samoa, and we invited everybody to come... (LAUGHS) and do the same things like what we did here in Samoa to our people. GENTLE MUSIC BABY LAUGHS I remember when I was little, me and my dad would hold a hairbrush and pretend it was a microphone and sing Bollywood songs at home, and I guess my passion for music and love of talking into a microphone started right there. Now I work for an Indian radio station. Our listeners come from all different backgrounds. They're from India, Fiji, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, South Africa, NZ, of course, um, and it's just great to see how Indian culture is expressed in different countries. Each has its own distinct flavour, but there are still many things that bind us together. A local artist from South Africa has taken inspiration from her country of birth, mixed it with the flavours of her new home, and the combination has influenced her work in ways she did not even expect. PEACEFUL MUSIC I'm Franda, and I was born in Pretoria in South Africa. We had a really nice childhood. We grew up on` on a farm. We had lots of freedom when we were younger. We walked for miles. We were building things from rocks, and you know the old-fashioned childhood ` the one where you don't have computers and you just make things and you think creatively. And the fear only really started setting in probably in my teenage years. Like we would` My parents would go out, and I would have to look` take care of my two younger brothers, and they would leave the gun with me so that I would look after the boys. Um, we had a few break-ins. Um, my parents had guns aimed at them, and armed robberies and things, and just` those kind of things change how you think and how you feel about things. My mum already was quite interested in moving. We were still young enough to come and do something for a new country, become, you know, useful citizens in another country where we can be safe, um, and make a difference. The immigration finally went through in 2003, and that's when we` we finally came over. This is one of me and my mum. I was only very young. I was probably about 22, 23. Um, I won an Artist of the Year competition in South Africa. That was just before we came over. My artwork is a bit of a variety. I like to make pottery, which is kind of a recent one. That's one of my new passions. I love painting. I'm a massive drawing person, and I tend to be quite hyper-realistic or quite realistic with what I draw. I get a bit of a kick out of the fact that it looks like what it is, I guess. I'm painting my family tree on jar lids, and in my vision, I will one day have this entire wall covered full of jar lids of all my family members, past and present. Today I am doing my dad. Print out a little photo, and then I would just draw them on to the lid, and as soon as I think I've kind of got them, then I would start with the mixing and the painting. It's a lot of layer build-up, so I would tend to go over and over and over until I finally feel like I've got their essence. I can easily spend about five hours, six hours on a jar lid. The jar lids have been going for quite a while. Um, it's not something that I'm in a hurry to finish. It's OK if it takes a long time. It's not for sale. It's for me. So this is my mum, which I have a really close relationship with. She's the one who makes it possible for me to work, who helps me with my kids ` pretty much my best friend, I guess. So we have a really close relationship, and I always think ` without her, I don't know what would have happened in life, and if it wasn't for her, we wouldn't have emigrated. My art has changed from moving ` from emigrating. In South Africa it used to be looser, um, much more obvious brushstrokes. I seem to have been less obsessed with being perfect over there for some reason. Here my work has become much more perfectionistic. Where there I feel stressed and maybe not as comfortable, I seem to balance it with really bright, happy things in my paintings. Where here, I feel really happy a-and really comfortable with who I am, where my work is more controlled, so I have this weird kind of paradox between the two. UPBEAT MUSIC I would say my whole family is arty in different ways. My brother is an amazing potter. He's much better than I am. And he found at Hobsonville Point, they were building new houses, and the clay that they've been digging out there is nice to work with. This one looks like it's a nice one. Shall I lift it? Do you want to cut? Let's do that. It's OK. You can lift the piece up. OK. It's free clay. I-Its local clay. It's a connection with where we live. It's nicer because it's from here, for me, and the work has more meaning because the clay is from here. It's important to remember if you go and get clay, get the dirt out if you can. Oh! BOTH LAUGH I don't think it's nearly as much fun if you're doing it all by yourself, and you get excited about clay and people are like, 'What's wrong with you?' But he gets this. He knows why I get excited, and he almost gets more excited than I do, so it's wonderful. I can't think of anything more creative than pottery. I think it's the ultimate form of creativity, because you literally have nothing, and you make something from it. There's no clay in Pretoria ` not where we lived. It was that red, kind of, um, sandy kind of ground - nothing` nothing like this. So initially when we came here, we were like, 'What's up with all the clay?' And now we're like,... (SINGS) 'Clay!' We get so excited when we see big earthworks anywhere, and we're like 'I wonder how the clay is there.' It's really addictive. It takes a little bit over. It does take a bit over. Yeah. And your kitchen over and your house and everywhere. Yeah. It takes over, and it makes a lot of mess, but it's OK. My ceramic work, I think, probably will evolve, and at the moment it's natural shapes and natural clay, and it's kind of simple shapes ` nothing over the top, nothing too complicated ` homely kind of shapes, I guess. I can't go a single day without having some time to myself, creating something. Even if it's just a little thing, I just need that, um, inner reflection, I guess ` that time of processing my thoughts and what I'm doing and what I'm thinking, and this for me is the way I stay sane; it keeps me sane. GENTLE MUSIC One of the first challenges that we had to deal with when we first arrived here was where to live. We had a huge house in India, and to get a mansion of that sort in NZ seemed impossible. I remember our first house was pretty tiny, and at that time, my uncle and auntie were also living with us, and then my grandparents came to visit us, so at one point it was, like, nine of us living in a three-bedroom-and-one-bathroom house. Those were pretty special days. Despite of the cramped surroundings, one thing that we would never have got rid of was Mum's suitcase of saris. I mean, how many do you think you have there, Mum? Have you ever counted? (LAUGHS) I don't know. I have never counted. I just love buying them. They are so beautiful. And keeping them in a suitcase. Yeah, whenever I get time, I wear them, but hardly in NZ, because it's so windy and it's wintertime. Most of the time. Yeah. BOTH LAUGH Yeah, she doesn't get a chance to wear them very often, but she has an amazing collection. A local businessman also has some family heirlooms he treasures that tell the story of his Norwegian family's appreciation of the arts. PENSIVE MUSIC My name is Carl Dysthe, and I was born in Oslo, Norway. I do enjoy, yeah, being surrounded by art and creativity. I'm very much the son of my mother and father and m-my grandfather. This is my grandfather, uh, and, uh, he sort of set the stage for the family to a large degree. He was very culturally, uh, interested, uh, very active, uh, in Oslo's, uh, cultural activity, if you will ` uh, founder of the Oslo Philharmonic and several singing groups. He was a very active singer. My Dad, he always had a love of art, um, collecting a lot of paintings. The portraits are something very special to me. These are portraits that were done in the mid-'50s of my mother and father, um, and, uh, they have been very very dear to me ever since. Being the eldest son, um, I got the portraits of my mother and father over the strenuous objection of my sister. She wanted one of them, but they would not have wanted to be split up. The painter who made the portraits was a fellow by the name of Armin Holt Horowitz. He really captured a huge amount of their personality. My father was at times a bit stern. Very very principled, you know ` placed loyalty just about higher than any other virtue. He was, uh, very creative in the sense of admiring art and collected art, but he` he was not artistic in the sense of being able to do it himself, but he married my mother, who did. (LAUGHS) Armin put the fashion-model picture as a background because my mother was a fashion designer, and my mum's portrait is a wonderful rendering of an absolutely wonderful, social, kind, uh, giving, artistic, uh, person and great mother. Mum and Dad have never ` this might sound a bit corny ` b-but have never really left, because they're here. There are times when I kind of wonder whether I should do something or not or whatever, and I'll go in front of my Dad's portrait, in particular, and just` it will be talking to me. I-It's just such a strong rendering of` of what h-he was and what he still is to me. NOSTALGIC MUSIC My parents emigrated to Canada, uh, when I was 2. First of all, they wanted to leave Norway, because four years after the war was over, there was still rationing in Norway ` still, sort of, effects of the` of the war ` and cos they had a little baby, uh, so they felt, 'There's gotta be a better way.' This is really the official arrival in Canada, uh, in July of 1949, Um, this slide` picture is taken on the train, uh, from Quebec City to Montreal. And, uh, I've kinda` I've looked back at that picture many, many times and thought, 'Well, happy they did that.' My mum and dad had established, by far and away, the most exclusive and illustrious fashion house in Norway. When they decided to` to visit Canada, initially, they left the business in the hands of my mother's assistant. But it was really taking a-a huge leap into the dark, uh, from a very secure, solid business into, you know, starting from nothing. Both my mother and my father were quite driven in business. They did everything they possibly could for us to, maybe in some cases, get what they didn't have, uh, i-in Europe in the '30s and '40s, which was a tough time. And, um, I almost feel that their example drives you forward, and you wanna make that sacrifice worthwhile. RELAXED MUSIC I met my wife, uh, in 1973. I was travelling in Europe, and she was on her traditional OE, and we haven't been apart since. In '96, we decided that it was time that I came to NZ, which was not a difficult decision at all. We'd seen a business concept in Canada. We felt that it was just a natural thing to bring to NZ. CraftWorld is, uh, located in the Westgate Shopping Centre. I couldn't create anything that we have in our stores, uh, myself to save my soul, but I do appreciate creativity and creative talent, uh, and quality. Uh, these are all things that my mum and dad strove for all their lives, and I think that they'd be proud to see that we've carried that forward. CUTLERY CLATTERS, PEOPLE CHATTER I'm from the rich and vibrant Punjabi culture, and Punjabis think of food all the time. When we're having breakfast, we plan for lunch. At the lunch table, we talk about what to cook for dinner, and when we're having dinner, we're thinking about what to have the next morning. Shared meals play such a big part in keeping family bonds strong. And sometimes something as simple as a shared lunch can be all that it takes to make new arrivals feel at home. My name is Eszter Szilvagyi. I was born in Budapest in Hungary. I met my husband while I was studying in Italy. I was finishing my degree in Architecture. I was looking for a room, and he was already living in that apartment, and the funny thing, I was not going to check out that home, because I thought, 'Oh, already three people living there,' and 'Oh, I don't want to share with so many,' but getting desperate... (LAUGHS) finding a room, I had to. This one is, uh, when I first met my husband. This is in Rome. We are having some nice time together. When I first met my husband, he was already talking about Dubai and the Middle East, so, actually, when I finished my studies, my husband found a job in Dubai, and I had to follow. Our wedding was in Dubai, and we did not have a photographer, so I particularly like this picture, because it's just, like, natural. My brother took it, and, uh, it's one of the few ones we have. In Dubai, we lived almost 10 years. This one was when my son was born. He was born in Dubai, and our doctor is Hungarian, so I always like to remember that. CHILDREN LAUGH Both my sons were born in Dubai. Obviously, having children, we realised that Dubai is not a place you can stay forever. We heard some experience from our Italian friend about NZ ` how nice, outdoor lifestyle you can have here and how beautiful nature is and good opportunities. In the beginning of our relationship, I told my husband, 'I would follow you to the end of the world,' and from my perspective this is it; he is testing it. But more seriously, I thought, 'Why not? We` We could try.' Now I work in Westgate in a multi-cultural office being in the design team for next year's development ` shopping mall extension and some apartments. Today we have a shared lunch, which is a celebration of our multicultural office, and everybody can bring a dish of their origins. Today I am making Pogaca, which has flour, butter and turo. Turo is the Hungarian version of cottage cheese. Pogaca can be served any time of their day ` easy to share, and you can have it with drinks, and usually we eat it when we get together, and like` like a starter type of thing. I learned this recipe from my grandmother. She made it several times and made it more simple and better and better to be delicious. Everybody in my family says that I'm like my grandmother. She's very ambitious and a very strong woman. She's a doctor ` still working even if she is 89. Hungarian food is, uh, mainly about, like, uh, meat dishes and soups with lots of vegetables, and in general we can mix and experiment things together, so it's not so strict like Italian. My husband would get crazy if I try a new ingredient, so that's why I stopped, and it's easier to do this way. UPBEAT MUSIC PEOPLE CHATTER UPBEAT MUSIC CONTINUES CHATTER CONTINUES Today I made a traditional Hungarian dish. It's called Pogaca, made of turo, which is, uh, close to the cottage cheese, and some flour and butter. Social activities with my workmates is something new to me. I really like this office, because actually they` I feel like they care about me, and even, like, just a small question in the morning ` 'How was your weekend?' ` is new to me, because in Dubai, it was only like work and work, and, uh, my friends were outside of, uh, work, and, uh, the first time when here I had the question ` 'A-Are you staying on Friday for drinks?' I thought they are joking. I thought it's a test that I'm drinking alcohol, or, like... I really f` uh, felt strange, and then I started to participate, and I think it's a really nice way to learn about the others and to have, like, a relaxed time together and not just talk about work. I think the best thing in NZ for me is being so close to the beach and to the sea. Also to have children is really good here ` just feeling safe and, uh, sending them to school alone, and these kind of things you don't really have any more in other parts of the world, so... (LAUGHS) I think it was a good decision. TRANQUIL MUSIC In the next couple of years, Westgate will be totally transformed. 5000 new houses and apartments will bring in a whole new influx of people to the community here. These days, when I go back to India, I love it, but I can only be there for about a month before the traffic and the chaos overwhelms me. But when I get back here, as soon as the plane touches down, not only does it look beautiful, but it feels like, 'Yes, I'm home now.' This is home. Captions by Antony Vlug. Edited by Imogen Staines. www.able.co.nz Captions were made possible with funding from NZ On Air. Copyright Able 2015