Studying In New Zealand: AN AFTERNOON IN MANGERE

Today, I digress from my disclosures about the problems at Massey and Auckland Uni, thoughts which have troubled and preoccupied my mind all throughout the 16 months of my doctorate life in New Zealand, to focus on more pleasant experiences. This technique, one I have perfected throughout my life, allows me to dissociate from those individuals obsessed with creating problems in my endeavours so that I can gain some perspective. It is also a technique that recharges my batteries after battling with ineffective systems, accurately characterized by sluggish, do-nothing bureaucracies that have failed to respond to breaches of academic policies.

This week, as I have done every week since arriving in New Zealand in 2012, I consciously took a detour to be in the company of someone who calms me. I spent an afternoon in a Mangere neighborhood, where I became acquainted with my new-found friend’s guard dogs, nibbled on pastries purchased at a bakery in my neighbourhood, and sipped Turkish coffee made with a press. I learned that the right equipment is absolutely essential to brewing Turkish coffee just to get the right rich flavour out of it. In between, we chatted amiably about odds and ends, his family history, land troubles, New Zealand settler history, took a brief walk to the Massey homestead, a massive Victorian house bequeathed to the Auckland Council, and about being rooted in the North Island. He, an aspiring writer, is attempting to chronicle the burdens of protecting lands owned by his Maori half in order to reveal the betrayals bestowed on his kin by the Pakeha government. That afternoon, though, we barely talked about his book project, preferring instead to putter around in his yard, pulling out weeds from his garden patches. He pointed out edibles and ornamentals to me, and encouraged me to taste the leaves of plants for identification. His face, stern, was deep in concentration as he flicked unwanted weeds to the side.

Mangere, as with Otara and Otahuhu, are Auckland’s Pacific Island communities. Like the neighborhood patterns of segregation in the US, these three districts are inhabited by a population of low-income families. Violence and vagrancy also partially define these neighbourhoods, but are not as obvious as in America’s inner cities. In comparison, Mangere, Otara, and Otahuhu are relatively clean and maintained, hiding the poverty of the families there.

In between exuberant bursts of energy I devote to revising and re-writing my thesis (which is all I’m doing on it, these days), I like to search for inspirations in books and around the community made accessible to me. This day was no different. After I departed my friend’s home, I trekked the long walk to Burswood through now-familiar streets. After four days of making appointments at the public library, the smells of feijoa and Chilean guava trees have become familiar. On this day, I was eager to view the Highbrook Reservation Park, a nice respite before the landscape merges with the industrial, commercial section of this district. I stopped at the bridge, which crosses the lagoon, where locals seem to like to fish. If I’m lucky, I catch glimpses of the lagoon’s inhabitants when they fly into the air, their precise form veiled by sprays of water as they leap into the air and reenter. A barely audible splat and concentric ringlets signify their submergence into the lagoon’s depths.

In the later afternoon, still hours before my evening run, I finish off Amanda Knox’s memoir and then slide into John Zilkiowski’s story about creating educational opportunities for youth in inner-city America and in developing countries. I find strength in the courage and tenacity of both protagonists. These digressions, with which I consciously pepper lazy hours in between those spent on my thesis, maintain my sanity and keep my chakra balanced.

The slight chill in my bedroom reminds me that autumn is just around the corner. I interrupt my reading to brew another cup of coffee. Easy motions allow me to reminisce about another place representing serenity. Although I can’t see these views of another lagoon along the Pakuranga-Panmure from the kitchen patio door, they are attainable on foot from my neighborhood. No one can ever deny that the New Zealand landscape is quite plausibly unmatched by any other place.