UPBEAT THEME MUSIC Captions by Jake Ebdale. Edited by Ashlee Scholefield. Captions were made possible with funding from NZ On Air. Copyright Able 2016 INTRIGUING ELECTRONIC MUSIC Lincoln University began its life as an agricultural school back in 1878. These days, it attracts students and scientists from over 60 countries, which means that Lincoln, the town that has grown around the university, is home to a pretty diverse group of people. I was born in Montevideo, the capital of Uruguay. My family and I moved to NZ when I was 12 years old, leaving everything behind to build a better, more secure life. From the time we arrived in Lincoln, we became a part of this open and inclusive community, a community that provides a warm welcome to all newcomers. Let's find out what makes my neighbourhood so unique. We'll meet a woman who's devoted her life to ensuring that Pasifika kids get culturally appropriate education. WOMAN: In order to teach you, I must know you. So therefore, teachers should get to know the Pasifika children, their families and their communities really really well. A local artist reflects the influence of her travels in her work. Africa has played a huge part in my life. I went to an exhibition by the Shona sculptors, and I just saw a whole huge exhibition of their work in stone. And I` from that time, I just decided I need to go to Zimbabwe. We celebrate the Hindi Festival of Colour with a Lincoln family. MAN: We have invited a number of our friends who have children who are very keen to celebrate Holi Festival and play with colours. And discover the specimens that have captured the heart of a botanist from Germany. It is very difficult to choose a favourite. I have about 640,000 plants here and I can't pick one. It's like, you know, you asking me to pick a favourite child. My name's Camila Leal Rossi, and this is my Neighbourhood. SERENE MUSIC Both of my parents were born in Uruguay. They were my age around the time of the military dictatorship that took over in the '70s. Around 200 Uruguayans were killed or disappeared, and even more were illegally detained and tortured. Fortunately, I was born in a time of more stability in Uruguay and enjoyed a beautiful childhood, growing up in a small organic farm, where we grew our own food, produced our own milk, and we even had a wind turbine to produce electricity for when the power went out. I know that the memories from that environment will be with me for the rest of my life. DISSONANT ELECTRONIC MUSIC My parents always took us for walks in the neighbourhood and around the area where I grew up with, and they always pointed out names of plants, what they used` being used for, and, uh, just nurtured our interest of` for me and my sisters, an interest of plants. And they didn't know any fancy Latin names, so we just used common names and` and what they were used to call the plants in Germany. So, uh, I think this is how it started. I never heard much about NZ before I met my husband. And this happened in Germany. And I was working in the herbarium there and my husband was a postdoc in the same, uh, place like I was working. And so he came over for break` for lunch to the herbarium and picked me up and we went for lunch together, and, uh, he convinced me to come with him to NZ. So he's a Kiwi born in` in` in NZ. I'm working at the Allan Herbarium at Landcare Research. That's a very nice, uh, facility here out in Lincoln. Um, we have the` Landcare Research hosts the largest herbarium in NZ, and that's where I work. We have about 640,000 plant specimens here in this facility. It's a real privilege to look after this collection, because it's not only NZ heritage I'm looking after ` the whole entire collection belongs to NZ, and I'm only a custodian, and I feel really privileged that me, as a foreigner, is allowed to look after these precious plants. We have a set of 91 specimens collected on Captain Cook's first journey. Captain Cook brought up two botanists, Joseph Banks and Daniel Solander, and these two were prolific collectors. And whenever they stopped, they took all the plants back to England, where the plant specimens were housed at the British Museum. And we got a set of 91 specimens back from the British Museum in the late 1980s. These specimens are` uh, still, they have` they have historical value and they're historical specimens and very old, but we still regard them as a research collection, so are not` they are not exhibits or, um, museum specimens. Um, if you have the need to look at them under the microscope or to dissect one of these little flowers here, you are allowed to do so because we are a research institute and not a museum. So under certain condition, we will give you permission to look at the flowers and rehydrate the flowers. This is a plant which is already regarded as extinct ` that's the Adams mistletoe. Other taxa like this pretty, tiny little orchid, um, are in critical condition. There are only a few population left. And, um, I would like to point out something like, um` This beautiful gentian, or gentianella, is also in critical condition. It grows on limestone only. And it has been recently described as a new species in 2005. It's very difficult to choose a favourite. I have about 640,000 plants here, and I can't pick one. It's like, you know, you asking me to pick a favourite child, if you have some. It's just, uh, every plant tells a story, every specimen is exciting, everything here is so amazing that, um, you can't pick a favourite. The collection is very well looked after here. All our rooms are air-conditioned ` the average temperature is 19.5 degrees. You wouldn't believe, but the first plant specimens ever found came from a tomb of a pharaoh, and it looked like good as new, like collected yesterday. So if you look after the plants well, then they keep forever. I always say to my mum and dad back home ` because they always want me to come home ` I always say, 'Well, but I have my dream job, and I will never find a job like this anywhere else in the world, 'because it's such a big privilege working here.' So I would love to stay here, and even if I retire, I might come back as one of our volunteers we're working with. Without a doubt, the biggest challenge we found when we first arrived in NZ was the language. I had no idea how isolating it would feel to not be able to communicate freely. Whatever English lessons I had done previously were absolutely no match for the Kiwi dialect. At home, we only speak Spanish ` mostly as a way of keeping the language alive, but also cos it's just easier for my parents. When we first arrived, we found that we missed the way that in Uruguay, people just hang out in the street day and night. So it was quite hard to establish those neighbourhood connections. Culture is such a complicated mix of language and custom, but understanding how it affects us is an important step in being able to feel at home. WOMAN: Living in a small, tiny village for a long, long time, and then all of sudden that we have decided to move to NZ, it's quite a, uh, big shock to the system. You know, the smells, the tastes, the feels of the place was quite different from where I was. I was surrounded with, um, uh, my family and the people that I work with in Samoa, and then when we came to NZ, it was more like just Bruce and I all the time, and I miss that important part of my life, of being surrounded by my 'aiga and my nu'u and all the people that I know when I was in the island. I couldn't work as a teacher when we arrived in NZ, because with the NZ system, that you have to go through the training again. So for me, I just couldn't go back to do training, because my parents depended on me and also my siblings as well. So I have to find a work, and I was lucky enough to get a job in a restaurant for two years. And Bruce said to me, 'Ruta, do you want to work in a factory for the rest of your life?' That was the question that really made me think twice, and it challenged my thinking as well. And then, for a while, I said, 'I think you are right,' and the only thing that I can` could do is just go back and do my training again. And so that` that was, um, the reason why I did it. And look where I am now. Yeah. POIGNANT ACOUSTIC MUSIC I'm an early childhood facilitator, uh, which means that I am providing and facilitating professional developments for early childhood teachers, both in the mainstream and also Pasifika, uh, services as well. WOMAN: Good morning, Ruta. Good morning, tamaiti. Good morning, children. Hello, Jane. Hello, Ruta. Good to see you. Lovely to see you again. There is a phrase, statement, that I often used to challenge teachers' thinking ` in order to teach you, I must know you. So therefore, teachers should get to know the Pasifika children, their families and their communities really really well. How? They need to, um, find out who they are, their cultural values that they walk and` and` and talk about when they are at their` at their own homes. So Maui came up with an idea. He decided to try catch the sun with a net. He decided to put the net over the cave where the sun hides at night. Cultural intelligence is about teachers understanding about deep culture of all those families that they are working with ` different, um, ways of` ways of being and doing. UPBEAT MUSIC So instead of our community coming to me, I go out and share this information to the church and also to, uh` we have a Pasifika early childhood, um, uh, network as well, so that was another forum that I'm using to showcase and` and inform our teachers about the new centre. We are going to build a new Pasifika early childhood centre right in front of your` of the building here. So we would like to invite you to, uh, share your ideas about what you can do in terms of doing some drawings. We can have some, like, Samoan designs on the walls. That is so good ` some Samoan designs on the wall. Perfect. Probably, like, all the flags of the cultures, of all of our cultures. Mm. It was awesome to have the children's input, and I believe in any programmes that we are offering as well. Children will come up with unique ideas ` uh, ideas that we never thought about it. So, do you have young children at home? Young sisters and brothers at home? CHILDREN: Yes. Oh. So do you think that when they see this, um` uh, playground, will they be happy to play in it? Yes. Well, it's, like, a bigger area for them to play, more fun, making new friends. Cos, like, there's just, like, heaps of things to do. I think the best part of my job is working with children, teachers, communities, and also I'm passionate about what I'm doing in terms of reaching out and, um, uh, working with our` with families so that they will be able to be successful in their journeys. (SINGS IN SPANISH, PLAYS UPBEAT TUNE) There was always a guitar in the house when I was growing up, so it's no wonder that I've been writing music since I was very young, both in English as well as in Spanish. My music is highly influenced by my Uruguayan heritage. I listen to a lot of music from Latin America. (SINGS IN SPANISH) It feels like music has been a way for me to explore my cultural heritage and begin to understand what it means to belong somewhere. I think a lot of artists have found inspiration in that journey. PEACEFUL MUSIC Lincoln is a very special, old-fashioned type town ` it's something quite rare to find these days. Very friendly. It's got diversity now. As time goes by, I'm meeting` I'm` I'm seen to be attracting the right people that I originally put the studio here for. So they're finding me. It's been a slow process but, um, it's working. My name's Lucy Mhoma and I was born in Dumfries, Scotland. Well, I s'pose from immigrating at 14, that sort of showed me that there's, you know, a bit more than where I was born, and helped me to realise there's a whole world out there. Africa has played a huge part in my life. Originally, when I was studying sculpture in Sydney, I went to an exhibition by the Shona sculptors, and I just saw a whole huge exhibition of their work in stone. And I` from that time, I just decided I need to go to Zimbabwe. So I did my thing in` in Zimbabwe, in the bush, with the sculptors ` whole families full of mud huts, carving stone. It was absolutely` It changed my life in terms of community, in terms of knowing that if whole families can sculpt stone, then what's the block, you know? There's endless possibilities for sculpting. It's something you can` It's tangible. You can walk around it. I mean, it's` it's just` it's` it's` And stone especially is a such a durable medium to work with. You can never put it back, so you've got to` you've continuously got to be open-minded to change, which is a good thing in life in general. POIGNANT ACOUSTIC MUSIC Taking my children with me travelling is really about sharing my passion, in that travelling helps to open your mind, and` and by learning about different walks of life, different environment, different everything, helps you see more than yourself, I guess. And I've got quite a few paintings. I probably won't have many more, but one or two. In an abstract way, I'll use these. Yeah. What comes to your mind as a most prominent memory of being with this village? Probably catching the fish. Just, like, how lucky we are to be in our place with, like, proper food and electricity and stuff. Mm. You didn't take anything for granted. I felt very honoured, actually ` I was asked to be artist-in-residence of Prebbleton School. And it was earthquake recovery and funded by the Red Cross, so the important thing for me was, 'Now what shall we do?' Mosaics obviously have a symbolic` mending and making something beautiful out of something damaged. So small 5- to 7-year-olds and I worked on those, and we did sponges with huge panels all together and that incorporated the environment in` under the ocean. We only used... GIRLS: ...sponges. Sponges! It was all done with sponges. And that made it really bold and very soft so all the colours blend together. Did it help you feel more relaxed? Did you enjoy it? Yeah? I just enjoyed, um, being able to make it. I enjoyed how it looked at the end. I feel happy and I feel proud that I've made it. And, um, I also feel happy that, um` that all the colours blended in and made the building look better. I` I see art as a therapy in itself. Without them realising, just by working with artistic activities, it helped them by communicating, working together. Colour itself is therapeutic. And this is under the Earth, and those are all the little shells. GIRL LAUGHS Fossilised shells. It's really sparkly. Yeah. It's lovely in the sun. I would like to have a very low-maintenance base. My material values have` have gone since so many things, are, uh, important in the world, I s'pose. And I think my` my future lies within still travelling to communities and helping kids, especially in schools, through my art and, um, doing what I can to help them. GENTLE ACOUSTIC MUSIC Now, Uruguayans adore food. We like nothing better than getting together with friends and family and having a meal and talking for hours. Empanadas are our favourite. My mum here, Laura, is the queen of empanadas, and as you can see, I'm learning the ropes myself. I love the way that some traditions hold strong, no matter where in the world you might live. UPLIFTING MUSIC WOMAN: Our temple is a big part of our life here, and our house, obviously. MAN: Being Hindus, we worship every day in the morning, after taking shower. We offer flowers and fruit, present them to the deities. We thank our holy priest, who we call Guru, for their blessings, for what they have given us, and we pray for happiness and welfare of people we know. My name is Surinder Tandon. I was born in Delhi in India. And I'm Archna Tandon. I was born in India as well in a state called UP. RECITES HINDU MANTRA: # Hare, Hare, # Hare Krishna, # Hare Krishna... # My parents and Archna's parents and uncles, um, organised a meeting, uh, in Delhi. And we met` I saw Archna and, you know, we` and the family and, uh, she was able to meet other` our members of the family. We had a chat in another room quietly and, uh, yes, I said, 'Yes, yeah, I like to` I like you,' you know. I proposed. So we` we shared suites there and then, and noticed, uh, Archna's mother started, uh, crying, you know, had tears that Archna would soon be leaving for NZ, you know. So, you know, um,... It was` ...very very emotional, immediately. (LAUGHS) It was too soon for them. (LAUGHS) I didn't know very much about NZ before coming here. Um, he did give me a book to read... (LAUGHS) ...after the first meeting. (LAUGHS) I got it from the NZ Immigration Office when I got the residency. LAUGHS: 'Get To Know NZ'. I'm making gujia today. It's a special sweet which we make for Holi Festival. Start off with making the stuffing for it, which is milk fudge, from milk powder. So we put milk powder` that's 2 cups of milk powder in there. And 300ml of cream. And � cups of sugar. And we mix it all up and microwave it for 10 minutes while stirring in between. Yeah, gujia was shared between friends. And, uh, yeah, you visit friends, you eat those. And it was specially during this time only, cos, um, in India, with festivals, you have some special sweets which are only, um, available during festival time; that particular festival would have particular sweet attached to it. You can say it's sweet samosa. Instead of, um, stuffing savoury vegetables in there, we have a sweet stuffing of milk fudge and nuts in there. Holi is celebrated in India in a very big way. You know, like, right from small children to adults, uh, everybody will have bought food colour mixed with dry powder, and the children would have got bucket full of water balloons ready to go. And then the ladies in the house would have prepared treats, you know. Yes, a lot of Indian women have, um, this gadget now, especially for making, um, what we call puris. We call it (SPEAKS INDISTINCTLY). It's in the shape of gujia, and then we put stuffing in there and close it... and it seals. And then we can prick it with a fork so that it doesn't open when we are frying it. OIL SIZZLES Yeah, this is the last part of the process where we fry the gujias now, and they'll be ready to serve. UPLIFTING MUSIC We` We have invited, uh, a number of our friends who have, uh, children who are very keen to, uh, celebrate Holi festival and play with colours. Yes, um, the number of families` And most of them live in our neighbourhood, so, yep. Yeah, it will be lot of fun, then. Mm. Delicious. WOMAN: Mm. Delicious! Happy Holi. Happy Holi. (CHUCKLES) It's festival of colours and sharing col` love, and it's a vibrant festival. LIGHT-HEARTED MUSIC There is a story that, uh, the Lord Krishna used to play with colours with his girlfriends ` gopis ` and also with, uh, his beloved, called Radha. So that's, you know, signifying love between people. LIGHT-HEARTED MUSIC REFLECTIVE ELECTRONIC MUSIC I will always be very grateful for my experience as a migrant. I've never felt anything but love and support from all the communities that have welcomed me here. People seem genuinely interested in finding out about where I'm from, and I'm thankful to say I've never felt any sense of negativity about my ethnicity. I hope we continue to be an accepting nation; a nation where people from all over the world can come to build a new life and find a new home. That's my story, and I'd love to see it happen for others. Captions by Jake Ebdale. Edited by Ashlee Scholefield. www.able.co.nz Captions were made possible with funding from NZ On Air. Copyright Able 2016