Living in Harmony-Swaziland, 2012 , TRMC event

  The Tauranga Multicultural Council gave our family a rare opportunity to talk about our country of origin. I am saying ‘rare opportunity,’ because it really was- we have never done it before and we came up with the title “Home Away From Home.” This write up is being done by me (Zanele), so which obviously means it’s my perspective and my version of the story.

Our journey to New Zealand started when Ernest - my husband-to-be at the time, mentioned that he would like to go and work in New Zealand. I had somebody ask me, ‘Where does Ernest want to work when he finishes medical school?’ I just said ‘New Zealand,’ this person it seemed, knew where New Zealand was and I had no idea at all, so she was like, ‘why does he want to go to the end of the world?’ I took a globe and looked for New Zealand, sure enough; it was at the end of the world! Fast forward, a few years later, we got married, had a child and my husband said, “Let’s go to New Zealand!” We did all we had to do and arrived in Invercargill mid-January 2005.

Ernest started work as soon as we arrived, so I was home with my daughter who was about two and a half years old. Our first impression was that there were not a lot of people in the place; we would hardly see anyone even just walking past our house! We realised we had to go to the shops to see people. We also looked for a church to go to and we saw one at a prominent location in the city and went there one Sunday and it became our church for the four months we were there. My girl was getting bored at home and I was not used to staying with her at home, so I got her a kindergarten not far from our house, she was ok there and went three days a week. I got myself occupied with a bit of sewing; I bought a sewing machine and joined a club to learn how to use the machine, so that kept me occupied. In the process I learnt quilting which I had never done before; I was always just sewing clothes for myself and other my family. A lot of the people we were meeting were very friendly and that made us really love New Zealand.

The fact that we didn’t meet people from our country did not bother us much at first, especially while in Invercargill, but we did Google and discovered a family from Swaziland in Palmerston North, they have since moved to Australia. We were just happy meeting the local people who were fascinated to meet someone different from them and having all the questions they can think of about foods we eat and where we live. It was not until we moved to Auckland that we realised people mostly are classified according to cultural communities, even some churches were by culture or country of origin. This challenged the way we looked at ourselves as a family and as Swazis. While for us as adults it was not a big issue to brush aside the discomfort of being in a group who were all about where they came from, it certainly would get to our kids sometimes and they tended to just play by themselves. The big thing would be the language, when reverting to mother tongue from English; our kids would mention that they wanted to be with people who spoke only English. We would just encourage them that there’s nothing wrong with people speaking their home language. I do remember though, a time when I felt so tired of being the only different person in a group where I thought I was accepted as I am, I just broke down and told my husband to ‘take me home, I’m tired of being a stranger among other migrants!’ He was really shocked at my outburst, but understood and just tried to cool me down.

If I would be asked how I look at people, especially in New Zealand which is not my country of birth, but my country of choice, I would say: I am blessed because in all of my upbringing, I have never been classified according to a specific place or my skin colour. All my life, I just knew that I am a Swazi. People who would come to our country too, most of them would learn the local language and be part and parcel of the community. In Swaziland, we have a lot of people who come from other countries, of course not as many as in New Zealand, we even had refugees mainly from Mozambique for a long time, some from DRC Congo and some from Burundi and other pockets of Central Africa. This has meant that when I am asked about racism, I just simply tell people, “I have no ear nor eye for racism,” all this means is that, I don’t know how it looks and how it sounds and that’s the way it is for me. This has allowed me to talk freely to anyone and as long as they can hear what I’m saying, all is good. We even have a Kiwi grandmother for our kids now who just loves my family to bits and we love her too. For our children, if they encounter some racial or colour conscious kids in the playground or anywhere really, we affirm that there’s really nothing wrong with their skin colour, that is how God created them and shouldn’t wish they were different. I genuinely love people and love listening to their stories, so that has helped me to interact with lots of people since I become interested in them and ask questions, given that most people like to talk about themselves, it sits well with me.

New Zealand is our country of choice for us, so we reckon we can live here miserable, complaining about the cold, the humidity( I personally don’t even feel any), the traffic, the people, whatsoever, or we can enjoy our lives in this beautiful country, which reminds us of home in many  ways .I am sure you can see from the list above why we feel at home here. The brain drain to Australia can be compared to the brain Swaziland experiences to South Africa. A lot of our professionals are swallowed up by South Africa J. Interestingly, even the attire and dances have some similarities. Currently, we are trying to learn a bit of Māori phrases and greetings because that’s what most people do in our country, to learn the local language.