1 Captions by Florence S. Fournier Edited by Jake Ebdale. www.able.co.nz Captions were made with the support of NZ On Air. Copyright Able 2017. (RELAXED MUSIC) Oamaru lies south of Timaru and north of Dunedin on the Pacific coast of the South Island. It's a small town that had its glory days over 100 years ago, when the port was built to capitalise on the new trade in frozen meat. The freezing works is still a big employer in town today. I was born and raised in Tonga. My family moved here seven years ago when my husband came here to play rugby. We're a part of a growing Pasifika community here. Tongan is the second most commonly spoken language in Oamaru, after English. But it's not just the Tongan community that's finding a warm welcome here in Oamaru. Let's hear from some of the other people that are making this community more diverse and accepting by the day. In this episode of Neighbourhood, we'll meet a German family who have discovered the good life in Oamaru. The first person who can pronounce the name of the soup properly will get a free soup. Yeah, then the Germans come, and then I have to give all the soup away. No, no, no. It's only for our regulars. (LAUGHS) A woman from Indonesia passes her faith to her daughter. It's a very important gift from my mum to me before I left Indonesia. And then I will give this to my daughter when you are, you know, big enough and able to read the Karan. Cos you are still learning, eh? You're still learning? Yeah. We meet a young man who has turned adversity into a vision for the future. I have a real love for music. It gives me hope. It gives me assurance that I'm just like everybody else. It takes away all the pain. And a local artist takes inspiration from the place he grew up. Some of the stuff I'm doing is about the village that I'm from that doesn't actually exist any more, as it was. So, I spent so much time drawing it as a kid that it's there. It's all in there. I'm Api Fifita, and this is my neighbourhood. (UPLIFTING MUSIC) (RELAXED MUSIC) Tongan families first started coming to Oamaru in the 1970s, when a local engineering company brought in some workers on short-term contracts. Some of them stayed, and since then, the Tongan migrants have come to Oamaru, whether for work, to play rugby, or to join some of their other family members. Now we have a community of over 1000 people here. The number of churches is growing too, because when you're a Tongan, your life and your faith is bound together. (SERENE MUSIC) I born in Jakarta. I live in the country with the highest population of Muslim. And I've been to London, who has a mosque; Auckland, who has a mosque. Whatever you need to practise is there. But somehow, I wasn't that religious. When I come to Oamaru, everything was so difficult here to find. You know, you don't have mosque here. You don't have, like, halal butcher and all that. But then, somehow, I feel like I've found my way toward Islam. My mum gave me a Koran for wanita. This means Koran especially for women. Maybe she hopes that I, you know` this will be my guidance while I'm living in non-Muslim country. Do you wanna read it? OK. (BOTH RECITE KARAN) Whatever we do as a Muslim is in here, and whatever we have to do, whatever we cannot do, whatever we can do is all here. And this is very important, because this highlights all the stuff, important things about how to act as a Muslim woman. That will tell you everything's highlight about like, for example, when you are on period, when you just give birth, and why we need to wear hijab ` all in here. So, yeah, it's a very important gift from my mum for me before I leave Indonesia. And then I will give this to my daughter when you are, you know, big enough and able to read the Karan. Cos you're still learning, eh? You're still learning? Yeah. It will be from mum from me to my daughter. Yeah. (GENTLE MUSIC) Living in Jakarta, I met my husband there. After that, we got married, have children. I asked him, 'Do you wanna start living overseas?' like I did. And he said, 'Oh yeah, why not? Let's try.' (LAUGHS) Yeah. When I first come to Oamaru, I don't thinks that much` many Muslim here. I think the one that I know is only the people who work with my husband in freezing works. Oamaru now, the Muslim families about 11 ` 11 family. So since I came here, we used to go from house to house to pray. (CHANTS MUSLIM PRAYER) (REFLECTIVE PIANO MUSIC) Last year, we make our organisation. We are Muslim Association of Oamaru. And we agreed that we going to look for a place to pray. So, since January, we got our place to rent (CHUCKLES) to pray, so that's Alhamdulillah. That's a big thing for us. (CHANTS MUSLIM PRAYER) It's more reward when you pray together, rather than you pray by yourself at home. I can pray at home everyday if I want but, you know, we choose to come here to pray together, to be together. And that's, like, you know, feeling like having a family. Because I don't have family here; only my own family. So surrounded by them, I feel like I have my own family. MAN: Continue again. (RECITES MUSLIM PRAYER) I think it's important in the community for kids to learn their religion. We have a class twice a week, so they can learn how to read Karan. This is number six in Arabic. And then once they're able to read Karan, and then they will learn the meanings as well. They will learn as well about... how be a good Muslim. I haven't, like, practised so much, because my mum's been busy, so I have to do most of the things... Yeah, the chorus. Yeah. That's being a good girl though. We also tell them about the story of the prophet, different prophet. And then, in that story, they're also learning about manners, about sharing, about how to treat people. I feel really... wow. (LAUGHS) Blessing ` that's the word. I feel really blessing here. Yeah. Surrounding by all these people, cos they have, like, that certain knowledge. Because to be honest, my knowledge, you know, I'm still 'letter L' myself ` learning. So... Yeah. I'm very blessed here. Yeah. (CHANTS MUSLIM PRAYER) So, our next goal is ` within this year, if we can, raise some fund to buy, yeah` to buy a property, or, you know, to be a first mosque in Oamaru. Fingers crossed. (LAUGHS) Yeah. (RELAXED MUSIC) My husband was a professional rugby player. It gave us the opportunity to travel a lot. Before we moved to Oamaru, we were living in Japan for five years. It was a huge contrast to the tiny village I grew up in. I missed my family, and the food. But when I felt lonely, or the crowds were overwhelming, my memories of home always got me through during those hard times. (UPLIFTING MUSIC) I still miss home. I mean, I was 40 when I came here, so... It's funny the things you miss. You miss very ordinary things, you know, just like certain buildings, certain streets. In fact, the two main people associated with architecture in Oamaru are Forrester and Lemon. Forrester went to` actually he studied at The Glasgow School of Art as well. And Lemon came from Edinburgh, so they've kind of made it a little Scotland down there, in the old part of town, you know? Yeah, I used to exhibit quite a lot in Scotland, but since I came here, it's mostly been teaching, you know? I'm involved with a small collective of art-craft people in Oamaru. The collective in town was just an idea that one or two people had to have a place of premises where you can show stuff, you know? Well, I was born in a wee place called Lennoxtown, just about 10 miles north of Glasgow. Some of the stuff I'm doing is about the village I'm from that doesn't actually exist any more, as it was. So, I spent so much time drawing it as a kid that it's there. It's all in there. It just comes back, you know? It's like I'm trying to draw a person, even. You draw them, you go, 'No, that hair's not right,' and then you change it, and then you eventually get it. You eventually get it, you know? Cos the information's there. It's like your hard drive. You're doing a search, you know? And it's whirring away, and it comes out. (LAUGHS) In fact, I drew my school from memory, because there's a local history society, and they contacted me to say, 'Could you draw the school? Because there's no photographs of it.' There's not a single photograph of my school. So I'd started to draw stuff and, it started to come out, and then I'd send it back to people, and they go, 'Jeez, that's it, that's it!' You know? (LAUGHS) QUIETLY: Oh, it's funny. Growing up in Lennoxtown, it was great place. It was just a huge playground. Hills to the north, forests to the south. You were just surrounded by great countryside, and you just ran wild. (UILLEANN PIPES PLAY) I was a stereotype artist with the rucksack and the easel, the palette, painting landscapes and stuff. But played football, played music, you know? One of my pals was playing a record in the studio, and this track came on of the uilleann pipes, which I'd never heard before. And I went, 'What's that? I'm gonna do that.' (UILLEANN PIPE MUSIC CONTINUES) I'd play in, just, sessions in pubs or just in the house with friends, you know? Jacqui was playing the flute, and I was doing the pipes. That's how we met. She's from here, originally. That's why we're here. Anywhere in the world, there's music. There's music everywhere. And a musician will always relate to another musician. You're just the same kind of people. Musical instruments are beautiful things, and people play music and create music that's just visually, as well as orally, just fantastic. So that's where a lot of my ideas come from. I do a lot of stuff doodling. This is just play, you know, but stuff grows out of this. I think it's important that you... We forget sometimes to play as adults, you know? Even this ` this is just the wrong end of a paintbrush. I might just draw with a lump of wood or a reed pen ` just a bit of bamboo shaped into a pen. Sometimes I don't even take the trouble to fashion them; I might just dip it in a pot of paint. The actual thing that happens when the ink goes on the paper, it makes accidents happen. To be creative, I think you've got, sometimes, to just jump off. And it might be a disaster, but things happen that are good ` sometimes. (CHUCKLES) I've always drawn musicians, ever since I was a wee kid. Pop groups with the lead guitar and the bass guitar and the drummer at the back and` you know? And then it went to hippie, folkie guys with long hair and beads and bare feet, you know? And then it became old guys playing fiddles and pipes. (CLEARS THROAT) But the other thing is that when I used to go to the jazz things in Glasgow... I mean, if I go to your gig, I'm as much watching as listening. I'm not tapping my feet and clapping my hands and wiggling my head. I'm away. (IMITATES EXPLOSION) And I remember once a piper saying to me, he said` I said, 'That was great.' And he says to me, 'I could feel your eyes on the backs of my fingers.' (LAUGHS) I'm kind of... you know? I remember my pals saying, 'Are you not enjoying this that much?' 'I-I'm loving them.' I'm in heaven, you know? In the past, I might have done something that's exactly like playing a fiddle or whatever, but now it's more about some of the wildness that's in the music that I like. So the trick is to be able to gesture and describe in a way that's... saying something about what things feel like, rather than just what they look like. I think with art, it's something you have to do. It's not that you plan to do it. I think when you don't do it, you're not right. It's just such an integral part of you. I'm just made that way. It just has to be done. Each year, we hold a Tonga Day in Oamaru, where we have the opportunity to share our culture with the other Tongans, and with the wider community. Even though my girls have lived in Japan and New Zealand, we have made sure that they have been brought up very strong in their culture. I think it's very important for them to know who they are. My parents had split up when I was 3, so I never actually remember them being together. My father is a Pentecostal Christian, so, um... and so is the rest of his family. Growing up, it was normal. Yeah. It was just a part of who I was. Well, at the age of 10 or 11, I found myself attracted to boys instead of girls. I started getting real down about it when I'd hear my dad speaking down about homosexuality and how wrong it was. And as I got older, I started to understand it a bit more and I thought, 'Oh my goodness. This is me.' You know? 'You're speaking about me.' And I'm sitting here, like, not knowing what to do with my feelings or how to talk about them. So, it was pretty difficult. Yeah. (POIGNANT MUSIC) When I was confronted about it by school peers and family, I would say, 'No, I'm not,' just to try and keep it safe enough for me to try and get through. At the age of 12, I met this guy through the church that my father was running. He was the projectionist. You know, a lot of people were sort of like, 'You know, this guy's a 33-year-old man. 'What's he doing hanging out with a 12-year-old kid?' You know? '13-year-old kid.' And a few of my friends had raised suspicions and whatnot, but I kept giving him the benefit of the doubt, telling everybody that he wasn't doing anything. But that was just to keep it under the rug, because he'd buy me a lot of things. He abused me for three years of my life, from the age of 12 to 15. It took about three years after they caught him to put him in jail. But he went to jail. And, um,... I'm still trying to recover from the effects that it's had on me. You know, post-traumatic stress; horrific anxiety; a bit of depression as well. Just a lot things that happen when you come out of abuse like that. The community here was pretty good to me when that stuff had happened, so I was very thankful to have such loving and caring people around me. I've got a support page on Facebook that I created ` 'The Gay, Lesbian, Transgender and bisexual support Oamaru'. And I created that a few years ago as a base for people who had been feeling like I had when I was younger to see that there is support in Oamaru and that there are people who will accept you, and it's OK to be who you are. When I came out at 16, I was so out that I started wearing dresses... a lot and putting on lots of make-up and looking really, really, really trashy. (LAUGHS) LAUGHS: No, I did. I looked so bad. I look back on it now, and I'm thinking, 'Oh no! What was I doing?' I had just thought that since I was a homo, I may as well be dressing up as a woman and being flamboyant as hell. Right. It didn't take me until I was about 18 to realise that, no, you don't actually have to be like that. You can just be yourself. (CHURCH BELLS RING) It's lovely to have everybody here. And it's really my pleasure to introduce Harley, who's going to play the piano this afternoon. My mum got me into playing at the rest home. I went and played for the old folks when I was young, and they absolutely loved it. And it made my nana and my mum very proud. After that, we went through a couple of other rest homes and performed for them too, and they just loved it as well. (PLAYS JAUNTY TUNE) I started the piano when I was about 3 years old. My father's mum taught me a bunch of old hymns on the piano when I was younger, and I just took it up and started playing myself after that, and have been playing ever since, really. I have a real love for music. My father's side were all very talented in music. And that's where I believe I got my talent from. It gives me hope. It gives me assurance that I'm just like everybody else. It takes away all the pain. If I'm feeling stressed out or if I'm feeling a bit down, I'll just go and play my music, and it makes me better. Yeah. And I believe that no matter what happens to you, we're all human beings, and no matter what gets thrown at you, how you go through life, I believe that you can get through it with the right people and the right support and the right mindset. (APPLAUSE) Tongans are all about big family celebrations ` like birthdays, weddings, family reunions ` when our loved ones all come together from near and far. (SPEAKS IN TONGAN) This year, my siblings and I are planning a family reunion in Tonga that will bring most of us from overseas back to the Kingdom. We love family celebrations that strengthen our family bond, and we want to make sure that our children feel those connections as well. We want to have just a house with enough land, somewhere not too warm. We always had a garden back in Germany so we start having a garden. We brought the Icelandic horses with us, so they needed room. So we started fencing differently. Everything was one big paddock when we came. It's getting cold ` they're getting their winter fur already. (IMITATES HORSE NICKER) In Germany, we would have never been able to go as self-sufficient as we have been here. We wouldn't have been able to afford as much land. Yeah, come, Nietzsche. Come. Yeah, come. No way, Jose. A lot of the things we already did in Germany on a far smaller scale. And when we came here, we said, 'Look, you know, now we've got the opportunity of actually making it really work.' (SPEAKS GERMAN, WHISTLES SOFTLY) I started the bakery seven years back. We have five kids. Danny is 19, and he started the butchery at 17 by himself. And Julie started the cafe when she was 16. Can I have an oberlander, please? Yip. (BAG RUSTLES) Auf Wiedersehen! Four, you know, really, strangers to New Zealand coming in from overseas. We're for 18 years, and we've established ourselves within the community. We don't actually have cafe food, as such. We've tried to actually give people a real meal. You know, it's plain, but it's real food. We cook like our parents or grandparents would have cooked at home, so it's all made absolutely from scratch with as much organic, locally-sourced stuff that we can find at the moment. We come from the village where we both grew up, and we knew pretty much everyone. After 18 years, I've kind of got the same network going again here. It's something that, you know, we're really happy about. Like, with the soup we're cooking today, we're actually thinking of doing for the cafe too. And the runner beans are just ready, and I wanted to actually try to challenge people and say, 'The first person who can pronounce the name of the soup properly will get a free soup.' Yeah, then the Germans come, and I have to give all the soup away. No, no, no. It's only for our regulars. (LAUGHS) Because it's gonna be schnippelbohnen soup. Yeah, the soup comes from our region, because runner beans have been a staple. They've got a very hardy kind of runner bean that even grows where we come from. And because it's quite stringy, you know? Runner beans tend to be stringy. That one, you have a little device for cutting them really fine. So that's where the schnippel comes from. Schnippel is a small slither. It's a slither. So it would be 'slithered bean soup'. Yeah, look. Everybody has to help here. On the farm, you know ` the kids grew up here when we were just running the farm. Everyone had chores, right from the moment they could actually run around. And everyone` All of our kids can cook. I find it funny when you are getting old and you're suddenly longing for things you had when you were a kid. When did we actually start making this soup? Like three years ago? Three or four years ago, yeah. Cos it took you a while to even convince us to grow the beans. I didn't like it as a kid. But suddenly you think of the smell and, 'You know what ` I'd like to try that again.' And it was good, so you grow into it. We've got the beans, and you want to get, kind of, the smoky flavour in there. And we get the bacon off our son's butchery. Yes. The potatoes, of course, which come out of the garden. Well, we used to make butter, and we used to make cheese, so we had to stop all that now with the cafe. But we still have got enough cream from our old cows at least for soup ` or in the coffee. And of course, you know, with soup like that, it was a good, hearty soup. And it's nice to have some good, hearty bread, so we've got our own bread from the bakery, which is very traditional. You'd have a dark rye bread with that soup. It goes really nice with the flavour and the texture. Look, it's always very satisfying to actually know that pretty much everything there, you've grown yourself. It comes through what you've, kind of, created. (GENTLE MUSIC) People asked us, 'So, how did you come to Oamaru?' Cos Oamaru wasn't the flavour of the month in 1998. And I said, 'Look. I've got a feeling if you're actually just traveling around, 'looking for the ideal place, you're becoming like an old bachelor, you know, who gets too choosy. (LAUGHS) 'In the end, you're never gonna be happy anywhere.' I think there are so many nice places in New Zealand that, you know, we choose this one, and that's it. Tongan families are drawn to Oamaru because we know our children have a bright future here. Oamaru has given us a very different way of life to what we would have had in Auckland. To start with, we can afford the rent here. In some ways, this place is like Tonga. It's safe. It's laid back. It's close to the sea. And it has the sense of community that I love. Captions by Florence S. Fournier Edited by Jake Ebdale. www.able.co.nz Captions were made with the support of NZ On Air. Copyright Able 2017