q Captions by Ashlee Scholefield. www.able.co.nz Captions were made possible with funding from NZ On Air. Copyright Able 2015 MELLOW MUSIC Mangere East is a slice of the mighty township of Mangere in the multicultural South Auckland. It's been a Pacific Island stronghold since the subdivisions of the '60s. By the time I was growing up here, there were new people arriving from all over the world. You could see it at school ` Fijian Indians, Filipinos, Punjabi, Gujarati. It was a beautiful opportunity to get to know these people, to get to know the culture and their religious beliefs. I reckon the more different people you know, the more different opportunities await. So let me introduce you to some of the people from all over the planet who now call Mangere East home. We'll meet a woman born in Burma who helps refugees deal with the challenges of a new country. We are there to help them build a new life in NZ and listen to them, help them sort out their problems, and with their children too, cos many of the children are traumatised as well. A local woman shares a traditional Sudanese recipe. My grandmother, when she cook, she uses this stick, this pic, and every morning, if she start cooking, she will say, 'Nguen, can you go and grab pic there? I wanna cook. We'll discover the deep roots that drew a man all the way from America to Mangere East. This was a treasure, a true treasure. Where else in the world can I go to a place where every tree, every plant I could touch there, my grandfather planted that? And an artist weaves together his Tongan culture with the influences of his adopted home. The lalava is Tongan ancient techniques for binding. It's the old patterns inspire me because of the techniques of the past. I'm Niko Goulter, and this is my neighbourhood. 'NEIGHBOURHOOD' THEME SUBDUED MUSIC One of Mangere East's most famous sons was David Lange. He was living here when he became Prime Minister, and in 1984 they celebrated the election win right in this hall here. And in Mangere East, we know how to put on a good party. My father, David, is a fifth generation NZer on his father's side and half Welsh on his mother's side. He met my mother Tau'ua while volunteering in Samoa in the '70s. But the mid '70s was a bleak time for some Pacific Islanders in South Auckland, with unemployment, discrimination and dawn raids. And for artist Filipe Tohi, this was a good time to leave. But he returned, determined to build his Tongan culture into something the whole community could appreciate. EXPECTANT MUSIC The word artist I didn't understand, because in Tonga, everybody say, 'Oh, you can draw.' But, you know, you don't think about it, but until you come to NZ, and somebody say, 'Oh, you an artist,' but I had no idea what he's talking about. But usually everything I do, if I sit down, I do drawing. Yeah. My workshop is in Mangere East. At the moment I'm working on stone, steel and wood at the studio. The neighbours really enjoy seeing the work, because, you know, it's something different. Looking at the shape of the stone, sometimes get the feeling for the stone, just touching it. Because sometimes when you look at the stone, your mind's blank, but when you feel, touching sometimes, and then the idea start to emerge. EXPECTANT MUSIC BUILDS CHILLING AMBIENT MUSIC This plan is supposed to be, like, in stone, all round, like a mother and children's come together with small stones around it. This is andesite stone, volcanic, from Taranaki, New Plymouth. As a sculptor, you've gotta try to make things easier for you, because you're working with heavy stuff, so therefore, like, I designed this so you can move around by yourself when you want to move the stone from here to there. You got to design something. Because it's heavy, no one's gonna come and help you to do it, so you have to move it yourself. CHILLING AMBIENT MUSIC CONTINUES The whole process is like a ceremonial thing. You know, wear the gloves, to wear the mask. I find that every individual material just have its own right to work with, and, like, stone is very different from the other materials. You have to be connected to the stone, because the stone's gonna be here for a long time. The lalava is Tongan ancient techniques for binding. They use it for binding for canoes and house and also different things like spear and things like that. It's the old patterns inspire me because of the techniques of the past. I can apply these techniques to different materials, from stone to wood, even the steel. You know, that is really fascinating. And not only that, I can still apply to computer and things like that, so inspire me a lot. This is the model for the Onehunga sculpture Into The Landscape. So as you can see, when you are looking from the binding from this angle, you can see the square's going down; the other one here's going up. Using two pieces and putting together to create that form, yeah. AMBIENT MUSIC This is one of my sculpture, at Onehunga Library. It's one of the commission, and the name is Hautaha, means it's coming together. This sculpture represents the old techniques, the binding the canoes, and of course it represents bringing people together. Lalava is like a DNA. Basically, when you look at it, it's the way DNA work. It's going up and down. The two string, they're binding. And not only that, it's a language. You know, it's about genealogy. It's about that piece of string that link us to the past. You know, it is about the DNA. The whole 3-D of how you look, you can walk around it. So, yeah, it's not just like this, but thousand ways of looking. AMBIENT MUSIC CONTINUES I'm so glad that I'm here, and I think, because coming from Tonga and bringing the knowledge of Tonga, it's grateful, because in a way, the work that I'm making now, it's kind of helping for the other Pacific Island or people in Aotearoa to be able to see. I make it here. It's new, and it is about the future of Aotearoa. AMBIENT MUSIC CONTINUES CHILL-OUT MUSIC Another Mangere East claim to fame is the Mad Butcher. His first shop opened here in 1971, and it's still going strong today. I think my mum would say isolation was one of the biggest problems when she first arrived here ` being away from her family, acclimatising to NZ weather. My mum could speak English. It's just that I think that the NZ accent would be hard at first. I think what probably saved her was that my dad's parents treated her wholeheartedly and welcomed her in the family like one of their own. They were very accepting and warm-hearted people, and that brushed off on us too. But not every newcomer to NZ is met with such a warm welcome, though, and some come from backgrounds with real trauma ` war, famine and even torture. Priscilla Dawson, herself born in Burma, is one of the people working here at the Refugee Centre in Mangere East, helping refugees settle into their new country. SOFT PIANO MUSIC I am very guilty of becoming too involved, because it is in my culture to help people. If I don't help them, the community wouldn't accept me. They would say, 'Who do you think you are?' But that's beside the point. I always help people, and I get burnt out because I help them too much, yes. I was born in Insein, Burma, or Myanmar as it's called now. I came to NZ in the year 1967. We came as political refugees. My father was in the wrong political party, so he decided it was best to leave. I have been married 43 years. I have three children and three grandchildren. My husband's name is Edward Dawson. He's a Kiwi. My husband is a great support in everything I do. He understands. He understands when I say, 'We have to go right now to go and see this family.' He'll say OK. It could be 10 o'clock at night, any time, Saturday, Sunday. 'Come on, we gotta and help this family,' and he says OK, and he drives. He's a great support, yes. INDISTINCT CHATTER I work for an NGO organisation called Refugees As Survivors, and that's at the Mangere Camp. And then I also work at the mobile team, which is a branch of the Refugees As Survivors that's in the community. I also help them interpret when they want to see counsellors or psychologists, yes. When the refugees arrive in NZ at the camp, some of them come with a lot of baggage. They have been traumatised. They have gone through lots of prosecutions and torture. So we're there to help them build a new life in NZ and listen to them, help them sort out their problems and with their children too, cos many of the children are traumatised as well. (SPEAKS BURMESE) (SPEAKS BURMESE) The children learn to speak and read and write English very fast, and they are left behind ` the generation gap. And I find that the children too get embarrassed with the parents, the way they behave, so I think that is the hardest part ` the separation, the generation gap between the children and the parents. (SPEAKS BURMESE) This is our new house in NZ. We are going to live in this new house in this country. This art group is for children, and the idea is for them to express themselves, to express their feelings, to have an opportunity to share what they feel, what they have experienced, if they want to, or just to spend a nice hour together if they don't want to share or say something. But it's` Yeah, it's just an opportunity, possibilities that is given to them. Every child likes to draw, and here they can do it safely. There's no bombs coming. Nobody's saying, 'Pick up your things. We gotta run. The army's coming.' In that classroom, they're so peaceful, quiet, and there's lots of crayons and things that they've never seen available to them. So the kids are really happy there. Normal children should be, yeah. CHEERFUL MUSIC We have a community garden at Mangere. It all started off with the diabetes team, who wanted, uh, healthy eating for healthy living, and I got involved with the garden. It's a good garden, cos when the refugees come, they look at the garden, and they can relate back home what they used to grow, and they're surprised that you can grow these vegetables here. It looks like an oasis, doesn't it? I mean, it's green. They come here in the evening, and they might pick some chilies to eat, or whatever is in the garden, they will help themselves. This young lady came to us two years ago. She was suicidal, and we helped her with a counsellor. And now, two years down the line, she has come out of that, and she's got a job, she went to Unitec, her English is upskilled, she's got a car. And if you see her, she's very happy. Her life has changed. I'm proud that I'm able to mix with everybody, what race, creed or religion, that I'm able to help them in one way or the other, and I'm satisfied with my job. It's very rewarding, and I'm satisfied, yeah. I haven't planned the future. I just keep working from day to day, and as I say, as long as I'm healthy and helping people, that's my future. I just keep going. SUBDUED MUSIC This is Massey Homestead, which became home to Prime Minister William Massey. It was built in the 1850s out of native timber, red brick from Melbourne, to a British design, so you could say that even our local landmark is even a cultural mash-up. I had a typical Kiwi upbringing here in Mangere East until I was 9, and then we moved to Samoa, and that was the first time I'd ever been immersed in Samoan culture. I remember arriving there to no power, so everything was done the real fa'a Samoa way ` cooking with fire, no lights, lanterns, the whole deal. We spent a year there before returning home, and I remember being confused at the time, because as soon as I returned home, I felt like going straight back to Samoa again. You're torn between two beautiful countries and you've got love and pride for both, and it makes you feel a little divided of heart. Local resident Dale Harvey grew up mostly in the States, but his connection to this area runs deep, and he chooses to call Mangere East home. QUAINT MUSIC I live in Mangere East. My partner's got the house next door to me. This is the family homestead, and during the early years, my Grandfather had an orchard here. It was a 10-acre orchard, and he lived off of that, and it supported the family off of that and also supported the church. My mother and father met here in NZ, and this was during the ANZUS military alliance. NZ was getting ready to be invaded by the Japanese, and my dad was in the American fleet. His only war injury was to fall down a flight of steps, so they took him to Mercy Hospital, and the radiologist that X-rayed him was my mother, Faith, and that's how they met. This is Gil and Faith, bless their hearts. This is courting right here. Yeah, I haven't changed much. Still got a pot belly, mm-hm. Actually, I've got even a picture that my parents call the naked gardener, with me at maybe 18 months, and I'm out there butt naked out there in the garden, trying to lift a spade to dig a garden bed. I think I'd probably known I was going to be a gardener all my life, and my parents did too. My grandfather was such a great gardener, and he had such high hopes for what I was going to become that he put a lot of time and effort into me. This property has been in the family for three generations. My Aunt Beth had the property for a number or years, but she died early in life of a neurological disease that made her quite impaired, so she couldn't do much with the garden, and the garden was an absolute wilderness. It was just a thicket, absolutely a thicket of brush and plants and trees. It took us more than six months to cut it all down, and we were able to save everything. Probably, maybe, 500 or 600 of the better trees and shrubs were able to be saved, and of course underneath all of that, almost in suspended animation, were all the seeds from the gardens that had been for years before. So once we got all of the debris off of the gardens and started cultivating the land and composting it, all this stuff came up from English cottage gardens without us even planting it. By design and by education, I'm a community development officer. The community had already called it a paradise, and I made sure that it looked like one, and I opened this up so people could come in all the time, and we started having all these light shows for the community. We'd have special garden shows. And even now the property is open almost all year, and we have lots of weddings here, huge number of weddings here. Between my grandfather and me, we must've married half of South Auckland. We'd have so many special events here happening all the time. The garden is a labour of love, and we share it with people as often as we can. We work from here, our careers are built from this garden, and we continue to do it as a labour of love and open it to everybody all the time. We fit together. It wouldn't happen if it was just one of us, I don't think. It would happen because we complement each other very very well. It has developed. It hasn't been a planned garden. It has developed. It has talked to us. Nature has told us what to do. But with Dale's knowledge and my design side of it, it comes together. A lot of times when people come out here and they see how it looks, especially when it's really immaculate, they are staggered by, 'How could you get it to look this way?' And they don't really realise that a lot of it is just wandering about. I've had a chance to work through 17 countries, travelled through 17 countries. I love them all, every one of them really special to offer, and I've tried to pick up whatever the gift was that each of those cultures had when I was there and honour their name and the time I was there by bringing part of that here. So these gardens have got plants from ` other than Antarctica ` just about every continent around the world, and the heritage from this garden is very eclectic. GENTLE MUSIC One of the things I find that is so sad about NZ today, it used to be that everyone stayed put, They would improve rather than move, and gardening was all about sustaining one's life and beautifying one's home and making a higher quality of life. It wasn't tarting up your property to sell it to go to the next place. No, no, no, no, no. That's a house, not a home. This was a treasure, a true treasure. Where else in the world can I go to a place where every tree, every plant I could touch there, my Grandfather planted that, my Nana planted that, my Aunt Beth went on holiday and found that? You know, every place I go in this whole yard is an inspiration to me, it's a treasure to me. GENTLE MUSIC FADES I think most NZers already know something about Samoan Culture, but the aspect I'd like people to catch on to is the way Samoans share. My mates and I would spend most of our time at the old Mangere East Library. We'd hang out, have some fun, play games, and then we'd all pitch in and go get some lunch from across the road at Lim's, come back and eat it behind the library and just sit there and laugh until it was time to go home again. Didn't matter how much or little you had, you always had something if you were together. It's like a village mentality, I suppose, but that's what I love about it, and that goes for all Pacific Islanders. Same goes for lots of African cultures too, and one of the clearest ways they demonstrate it is through sharing a traditional family meal. SOFT, EXPECTANT MUSIC My name is Nguen. I born in 1961 in Southern Sudan in Malakal. I came to NZ in 1989, and the good things in NZ, people are friendly, even the neighbour. I have a neighbour. The first thing when we came, they came and say hi to me, and every morning, I don't have a car, she help me. We go to the shop even although we don't understand each others, but I have to point to what I want. When I came to NZ, my first child she was 16, and then the second one, she was 13, and then the third, she was 8 years, and the younger one, she was 3 years. I went to English classes, and one year I did a healthcare assistant course, and now I am working as a healthcare assistant, looking after old people. That's the job I'm doing. Southern Sudan during the first war, I was 3 years old, and then we moved to the Northern Sudan. When I come back to Southern Sudan, I was in high school, and then I had my first child in 1981, and then '83 when I had the second child, and the war broke up again. We moved from Malakal to Bor, and then after that we went to Ethiopia, and then we live in Ethiopia for about seven years in refugees' camp. And then after that, then the war start again, and then we ran to the border of Kenya, a place called Meru, and from Meru the war also they still fighting, and then we went to Kakuma Refugees. And then I stay in Kakuma Refugees for seven years, and then I came to NZ. Life in the refugee camp is really hard, it is really tough. In the morning you have to get up early in the morning to cook, like, early in the morning around 5. At 7 you can't do anything, because a lot of dust. It's really windy and dust. What I love about this, cooking this food, it reminds me back home. When I cook this food, yes, I remember home. I'm making acob, and I will make acob from the corn flour. Have to mix` put the dry one and mix it together to make it hard to become acob, and acob is look like` look like couscous, and then we eat it with the fish and okra and spinach. Life was really hard, because my husband, he was in the army of Southern Sudan. We were fighting against the government, because we want our freedom, and then they separate. The time when they separate,... (SIGHS) and he been captured, he been tortured in the jail... (SPEAKS INDISTINCTLY) SOFT, SOMBRE MUSIC It's all right. Because this` Because it was a really terrible time for me. I lost my dad also. In this year, I lost my dad and my four brothers. It's very important, because the children, we are now we in a different country, and then if I keep, like, cooking my traditional food, they will not forget their tradition, and then they will know where they come from. This stick is a special stick back home. We use it for porridge. Back home in the village, we don't have blender, but we use this stick. But we love it, because it's our traditional stick. We call it pic. Yes, I think it is made traditional in Sudan. All Sudanese, they use these sticks. My grandmother, when she cook, she use this stick, this pic, and every morning, if she start cooking, she will say, 'Nguen, can you go and grab pic there? I wanna cook.' HOPEFUL MUSIC Today my grandchildren, they are coming today, and my sister-in-law, cos I'm cooking today this special Sudanese food. No, we don't cook it every day, just we make it special, if they are coming. They ask,... '(SPEAKS SUDANESE LANGUAGE)' ` because in my language, that means 'grandma' ` 'We need Sudanese food.' (LAUGHS) They love it. And then I'll make it. NZ is a great place for children to grow up and also my grandchildren. When I came to NZ, I've come from the war background, and my kids, they had a good future in NZ, so I had grandchildren in NZ, and he changed my life, yeah. GENTLE MUSIC FUNKY MUSIC This is my lovely wife, Nikki. This is my lovely wife, Nikki. Hi. She grew up in Mangere East too, so she knows this place just as well as I do. This place symbolises how amazing NZ really is. There is a melting pot of people from all over the world who are proud to come here and call themselves Kiwis, but hold on to part of their culture that we can all share in. Mangere East is a suburb made up of so many different cultures now that it's a really interesting place to live and to raise a family. Come to Mangere East and hang out some time. Captions by Ashlee Scholefield. www.able.co.nz Captions were made possible with funding from NZ On Air. Copyright Able 2015