(UPBEAT MUSIC) Captions by James Brown. Edited by Shrutika Gunanayagam. www.able.co.nz Captions were made with the support of NZ On Air. Copyright Able 2017 (PEACEFUL MUSIC) The inner-city suburb of Grey Lynn has become a yardstick to measure Auckland's crazy house prices by, but there was a time 50 years ago when no one wanted these old wooden villas, and the low rents brought Pasifika families, students, musicians and artists flocking. The big Polynesian churches are still here, but most of the congregation have cashed up and moved further out, although you can still buy taro in the local dairy. My family left Botswana for England when I was 5, but I always return to spend holidays in my grandmother's village, a place where you might see more wildlife than people, though that never took away from the spirit of the place. Although Grey Lynn has lost that village vibe, I still think it welcomes the artistic and the offbeat, and as an actor, a dancer and a poet, I appreciate that. Now, let's meet some of the other people that make this community both creative and diverse. In this episode of Neighbourhood, we'll sample a traditional New York pizza pie. It just reminds me of when I was a kid and going to my grandmother's house and having the smell of the dough baking. I mean, it just puts a smile on everybody's face. A man from Uganda brings the rhythms of Africa and the Pacific together. (MAN SINGS IN SWAHILI) It's a beehive... of all these different traditions and talents and experiences, and it's exciting. A long-term local shares her love of Grey Lynn as it used to be,... So for me personally, working here in Grey Lynn, that was the hub of Pacific people when they migrated from Samoa to be the labour force of New Zealand, it is important for me to have a presence in Grey Lynn. ...and we'll discover the work of a trust that supports people who have no choice but to seek asylum. So seeing the journey of the children of asylum seekers ` that's really joyful, in a way, to see them growing up in freedom and having the ability to become who they want to become. I am Phodiso Dintwe, and this is my neighbourhood. (UPBEAT MUSIC) (PEACEFUL MUSIC) Grey Lynn Park is the green heart of Grey Lynn. Before European settlement, a creek flowed through here to the sea, a place for Maori to gather kai. My grandmother was always an important person in my life. I remember Christmases spent helping her tidy up the family compound, brewing beverages and collecting firewood to cook up the family feast. She had some health problems as she grew older, and there was always a long trip to the nearest hospital. As a young child, I might be left for a day and a night at a time, and she wanted to know I could look after myself. By 5, I could make the bed, cook a full meal and clean the dishes. I can't express how... grateful I am for that. (GENTLE MUSIC) I was totally ignorant about New Zealand. I had no idea where it was, anything about it,... but then I used to travel to places for my birthday. I'd pick a different spot and just went, bought a ticket, and then I looked at my ticket, (LAUGHS) and I was like,... 'What?! Wait a minute. What on earth is 12 hours on a plane?' Like, one plane ride away; like, where am I going? (CHUCKLES) LAUGHS: And why is it so expensive? So it was... it was just gonna be a short trip to visit my friends for my birthday, and then I came here, and I thought, 'Wow, what a great place,' and everyone speaks English. (LAUGHS) So it was really easy. (INTRIGUING MUSIC) I was born in a little town in New York called Little Falls,... which is about maybe three hours from New York City. My dad is full Italian,... and my mom is actually French Canadian and Irish. My background on the Italian side, my dad's side of the family are the Epolitos and the Nunnos. Yeah, Epolito means a lot. It was my grandmother's surname. My grandmother's always been an inspiration when it came to food. Just walking in the house, I mean, the smell of the pasta, lasagne ` whatever was going on ` pizza and the best meatballs and sausage ever. (LAUGHS) So when I opened up my pizzeria, I thought, 'I'm gonna name it Epolito's.' It's strong, and it's right from Italy, New York. So I thought, yeah, Epolito. I keep my dough simple ` flour, water, yeast, salt, and that's it. (UPBEAT MUSIC) Although it even seems like a simple task, it does get a little bit more complicated, you know, depending on the texture you want, what you wanna do with your dough ` if you want a bread dough, bagel dough, pizza dough. We had a little bit of an Italian community in Little Falls,... hence getting a job at the local pizzeria. We didn't just work at the counter; we learnt how to make the dough straight away ` stretching, old, traditional ways. You know, many of these people, they just pop it out in machines or even using rolling pins. I never use a rolling pin; it's always stretch, stretch, stretch. So, yeah, it's pretty much embedded in me, and I don't think I wanna make pizza any other way. Us New Yorkers, we love our pizza. We get one to two slices a day, every day. I still eat my pizza five days a week. This pizza, what I'm making right now... is exactly the type of dough pizza that my grandmother made when I was growing up ` the sheet pan pizza. It just reminds me of when I was a kid and going to my grandmother's house and having the smell of the dough baking. I mean, it just puts a smile on everybody's face. What I'm putting on the pizza right now is fresh buffalo mozzarella, which I actually purchased at my community farmer's market today in Grey Lynn, which is a staple all throughout Italy, of course ` buffalo mozzarella from the buffalos. My sausage is a Sicilian style. It's got a kick to it. It's got crushed red peppers and also the unique flavour of fennel. My meatballs, I actually only use New Zealand beef mince, with a little extra surprise in there... what makes 'em juicy and tender, (CHUCKLES) but I'm not gonna tell ya. (LAUGHS) (GENTLE MUSIC) Having a pizza place in Grey Lynn right up the street, I couldn't ask for anything more. (LAUGHS) I feel really spoiled. I love my neighbourhood, you know? I've been in this same apartment, even, my whole time ` basically 12 years, since I lived here,... and I know everybody, and now to be able to walk up the street and, you know, do my favourite thing for the neighbourhood, I love it. I love it, I love it, I love it. Couldn't get any better. (PEACEFUL MUSIC) It was difficult for me to find friends when we came to New Zealand. There weren't many black people around. People found me interesting enough to come and ask if I was in the 'sponsor a child' videos or if I was African-American. It took me six months to make a friend and about a year after that to make another, but I know that the challenges I face are small fry compared with those who arrive as refugees or as people seeking asylum. (GENTLE MUSIC) My parents met when my mum was doing her OE. She first went to Norway and from Norway went to Iceland and was working in a fish factory in the early 1980s,... and they met at a hotel... in the west of Iceland. The first thing my dad said to my mum was, 'Do you have a dustpan and broom?' Because probably he was trying to clean up after the fishermen that had trashed the hotel. I think my mum wanted to return back to New Zealand, which is why they came back. I got interested in studying social work after volunteering as a home tutor to a Somali refugee. I guess the complexity of her situation and my inability to really help meaningfully... made me wanna look further into... working with refugees and, as a means to do that, being a social worker. Hi. How are you? Hi, Marian. Good. How are you? Good. Now, our call for winter blankets and clothes and stuff has been quite successful. Yeah, this is great. So I just thought if we could pop them in bags, and you could take them back with you. Yeah, sure. So, I started to work for Asylum Seeker Support Trust as a volunteer first. Generally, we provide support and advocacy for people while they're making their claim for refugee status. I come in for meetings, sometimes to meet clients here if it's more convenient, and to pick up donations and anything that comes here. It's coming into winter now, and we've got a lot of people feeling the cold, so we just asked for some winter blankets, shoes and jerseys and stuff. So the numbers from Immigration, I believe, are roughly about 350 people per year... seeking asylum in New Zealand, and of that, not the full amount are accepted or get residence. We differ from the support that goes to quota refugees, cos quota refugees are funded by the government to get resettled in New Zealand. We are not funded at all,... just get grants and... live off the smell of an oily rag, really. So, Zuhab is one of our long-standing clients, actually. Because of the situation in Pakistan,... it was not a safe place for Zuhab or his family. So that's why he came to New Zealand. So it began with immediate needs, and then we had this process with him bringing his children over, and so now what we're looking at is supporting him with his five kids. Obviously, that's difficult for a single father with five children. So, I just wanted to talk to you about getting a volunteer for your family. So maybe it's a good idea to get more than one person, cos you are quite a big family. There's six of you. (SPEAKS URDU) He reckons it's a good idea to have two volunteers, because kids, they have lost lots of friends back in the country, so sometimes they feel depressed. It will be a big support and a help to himself. Yeah. Because Zuhab's quite a long-standing client, it's been pretty cool to see him make those steps of resettlement in New Zealand. He just recently started a paint-contracting business. So to get to the point where he is able to start a small business and do that for himself is pretty cool. Yeah, it's really great when you get a win in the job. So if someone gets accepted, if someone gets their residence, the day that their family joins them, they're just moments that I really wanna hold on to, because, obviously, there is quite a lot of adversity that they face. (SPEAKS URDU) INTERPRETER: I was getting the threats from Taliban, so I moved from my village to Islamabad, but I kept receiving threats, and even for the family, threats. I came here in 2013, and I brought my kids just one-and-a-half years ago. So I feel much, much safer and quite peaceful here with my kids. So, seeing the journey of the children of asylum seekers ` that's really joyful, in a way, to see them growing up in freedom and having the ability to become who they want to become. What do the kids do in the school holidays? Play, visiting different places. Yeah. Sleep. (CHUCKLES) Sleep. I like everything here. I like school,... study and playing ` everything here. I'm definitely very passionate about this job. I feel so lucky to be in the position that I am. I think meeting these people and hearing parts of their stories and being a part of their journey to resettlement in New Zealand is such a privilege. (LAID`BACK MUSIC) (MAN SINGS IN SETSWANA) (SINGS IN SETSWANA) (CONTINUES SINGING IN SETSWANA) BAND: # I know they see monochrome. # I've been real since I've been grown. # There's no expansion there to see, but I guess you see what you wanna see, # and I know you can see... Music is an integral part of my cultural heritage and my identity. For me and many other Batswana, it's well entwined with the love of dance we grow up with. I mean, why would you play music that doesn't make you want to move? (BELLS JINGLE) My country, Uganda, has more than 40 different ethnic communities. On average, each ethnic community has about five different dances. So at each and every stage of life,... there is dance, there is music. Probably I had passion for dance and music,... and that passion translated into habit. When I was joining college ` university ` I was admitted for Bachelor of Arts degree in Dance. All my friends were kind of pursuing mass communication, medicine, law, and then me, who had a dream of becoming a lawyer, a very good debater... during my middle school and high school, I was in dance, something that is really, really not highly kind of cherished in academia. And so after the year one... of my study, I realised that there was more to dance... than just dancing. I realised that my country, Uganda,... probably needed more people in dance scholarship and dance research. So it became a commitment. It became a responsibility, OK, for me to go and, you know, study and go and serve in the dance and music sector. (GENTLE MUSIC) I came to New Zealand, because I received a scholarship to pursue a PhD in Dance Studies at the University of Auckland. One thing that really, really intrigued me about New Zealand is... this idea of appreciating diversity. So my coming to New Zealand also... be out there, interact with more people, work on programmes, collaborate, you know, on projects, take classes, have conversations with people. We are going to travel with the movement, and then let's see where and how we are progressing with this. Ah-yah! (POUNDS DRUMS STEADILY) CHANTS: 'Ah-ah-ah! Ah-ah! Ah-ah! (SHRIEKING) 'Ah-ah!' Yeah, the project that I'm working on at the moment is called In Transit, and it's a play that talks about... the experiences, the opportunities, the possibilities, and so on and so forth that people from the African continent... encounter when they live, you know, in New Zealand. (LAID`BACK MUSIC PLAYS) And I'm one of the collaborators on that project, and my role is to facilitate... dance and drumming and music workshops for dancers and singers and actors. (RELAXED JAZZ MUSIC PLAYS, BELLS JINGLE RHYTHMICALLY) (EXCLAIMS, SINGS IN SWAHILI) And because the diasporic experiences that people have here are not only limited to the African diaspora,... we also have ideas from these collaborators from Samoa and Tonga and other countries. And the idea here is that, as you know, that when we do dance, we sing. # Yeah. (THEY HOLD NOTE) # Ohhhhh, oh-oh-ohhhhh. IMITATING: # Ohhhhh, oh-oh-ohhhhh. They're so excited to just, you know, get stories about, you know, what is going on elsewhere, of getting techniques and interacting with all this knowledge, because what is so interesting is that we have a number of commonalities, OK? The only thing that we haven't had an opportunity to do is to meet and try to see how similar we are. (PEACEFUL MUSIC) It's a beehive of all these different traditions and talents and experiences,... and it's exciting ` one of the best projects that I've worked on in my recent history as a creative. 10 years' time, I want to establish a research centre... in East and Central Africa in the field of dance and music that will draw on talents, you know, in the form of collaborations ` collaborations from New Zealand, from North America, from Europe, from other places, inside Uganda, from Australia... and see how we can bring this knowledge out and then share it. (PEACEFUL MUSIC) Such disorder in the land of water. We keep flowing for ourselves, our sons and our daughters. Water's truth, and we've been bending it for the future. Like everyone else, you're only really honest when it suits ya. My blood curdles at the hand of my brothers, I fear, not others. I would seek healers, but they fell at the hands of the mothers. We used to hate the fire and all it represents, and now we hate our hands, cos they're the reason we're tormented. Who'd have thought the comets ` and the comets bring the flames ` it would cease to bring strain, except to illuminate our shame? What's in a name? Shame by any other name would still mean the same, so we're singing. # Let the water cool us down. Oh, please. # Let the water cool us down, yay. # I've been performing spoken-word poetry and rap for about six years now, but I didn't find out until my mum got back from Botswana earlier this year that I'm not the only poet in the family. She was telling everyone what I was up to and discovered that there's about 10 uncles and cousins that are also poets. It made me feel like I truly am a child of my people. (GENTLE GUITAR MUSIC) I was born in Grey Lynn in 1962 and have lived in Grey Lynn all my life. I attended St Joseph's School, Grey Lynn and St Joseph's Church, Grey Lynn, and that's where our family still worship today. The church is very important to us as a family. My mum has strong connections to St Joseph's, as we all do. It's important to us as Samoans... to go to our church and to worship. My dad passed away 20 years ago. At the funeral, my brothers... and nephews and my husband all wore one of Dad's shirts,... and when they were carrying the coffin in the church, it was wonderful to see them all wear something that was part of my dad, and that was a very special moment. The shirt that I managed to keep (CHUCKLES) is a shirt that everyone had been looking for afterwards, and of course I'd nabbed the shirt, and I have it till this day. So it's very special to me, and it is one of my treasures. And this is the shirt. So this is a shirt that my mum made. She bought the fabric in Ponsonby Rd, and she said it cost a few shillings a yard. What's so special about it is that Dad really wanted the detail of the two girls here,... and also this beautiful image at the back. So it was quite a tricky shirt for Mum to sew, because as you can see, there's that lovely panelling up the top there and also along the base. And Dad wore this on special occasions, to church socials, and he loved dancing in it. You couldn't buy Hawaiian shirts like you can now, you know, Pacific shirts. So a lot of the fabric had to be sourced and made. So Mum used to make all our clothes. So my sister and I, we were dressed like twins, even though we are 18 months apart. (LAUGHS) So, yeah, sewing was the thing. If you wanted something, you had to sew it. (PLAYS CHEERFUL MUSIC) One of my dad's other passions was music. # 'Savalivali' means 'go for a walk'. # 'Tautalatala' means 'too much talk'. Both Mum and Dad were in the Grey Lynn Choir, and Dad would have loved us to all have been singing like the Partridge Family. We always had to get up and do an item, which we were always reluctant to do,... but we were forced to do it, and we did it. # Take it easy ` faifai lemu. I do wish he was around to see us perform, to see us sing and play ukulele,... and every time we sing, he's never far from our mind, you know? # Take it easy ` faifai lemu. # (PEACEFUL MUSIC) I think what's kept us all here, it is family, it is people. It's the community that... I live and work in. I now work at the Grey Lynn Library, so I feel like I've come full circle ` the child who grew up here and now the adult who works here in Grey Lynn. So, today we're going to have some stories, do some finger rhymes and sing some songs. Here at Grey Lynn Library, we run a children's programme three times a week. READS: 'Under the watercress, in a creek called Cannons Creek, 'there lives a tuna... 'with a magic throat. I do love presenting children's programmes in particular. I'm really passionate about children and learning, and I love music as well, so it's a wonderful combination of things that I really enjoy. # Oma, rapeti. # Oma, rapeti. # Oma, oma, oma. Well, my love of libraries first started as a child, when I used to run from St Joseph's School to Grey Lynn Library after school, and I just loved it. There were these amazing librarians who really encouraged me to take books out and to read. There was a club that helped people like me,... you know, feel part of the library community. Oh, patipati. (TINKLY MUSIC) So, for me, personally, working here in Grey Lynn, that was the hub of Pacific people when they migrated from Samoa to be the labour force of New Zealand, it is important for me to have a presence in Grey Lynn. What I do love about Grey Lynn is that people know each other. It is still friendly ` a friendly place to live and work. I don't think I would live anywhere else, to be honest. (GENTLE MUSIC) I'm planning on doing a research trip back to Botswana soon. I want to research and document the extraordinary dance cultures there. What I learn will be a part of my teaching here and give me so much more to pass on to the community groups I work with. As nations become more culturally diverse, stories from Africa are needed now more than ever before. We each need to listen and be receptive to teachings from others. Ke a leboga ` thank you. (UPBEAT MUSIC) Captions by James Brown. Edited by Shrutika Gunanayagam. www.able.co.nz Captions were made with the support of NZ On Air. Copyright Able 2017