Memories

We lived in Natal from when I was (5 to about 10 – check dates) and had a lovely maid there named Doris. I remember we all spoke English but we were teaching her Afrikaans and in return she would teach my sister and I a bit of Zulu. We really loved her and she felt like one of the family. We trusted her so much that when we knew we were moving back to Johannesburg my parents asked her to come with. At the time I thought this was a lovely gesture of a non-blood family bond but know realise it was just because they trusted her and her work and did not want to have a different maid who they did not trust. They expected her to give up everything to move with us. She did not.

I remember when I lived in Johannesburg for the second time, we had a maid named Anna (I’m sure that’s her ‘English name’ but what bothers me now is that we never even knew her real name or even tried to ask/learn it. Lou learnt the proper Zulu names of the people who worked on her project which was at a minimum fifteen so why hadn’t I bothered learning one name?) Anyway, Anna stole jeans from us. We put them in the wash (the maid did our washing) and we never got them back. Once we mentioned to Anna that we had noticed they were missing they magically reappeared in our closets (they definitely hadn’t been there when we had looked the week before.) We knew she had a big family and I wonder now if she stole them because her family needed clothes, we had enough but they probably did not.

Where I work we have 2 branches, one in St Johns and one in Manukau. The Manukau branch is quite new and we are hiring at the moment. My nationality was brought up so many times during this interviewing and training process. Firstly, I was involved in the interview and the trial day of a girl from Poland. Since her heritage was brought up (she has a very strong accent) so was mine as a courtesy question and she was generally surprised to find out I wasn’t from New Zealand because I no longer have a strong South African accent. Have I lost the right to a South African nationality because I don’t speak like them anymore? To train the newbies they are sent to St Johns because that's where all the experience is where they can pick up and learn the ways of the business. So I am sent to hold down the fort at Manukau while their trainees are at St Johns and here I have met a few new people who I hadn’t yet known. They too were surprised to find out I was South African because I didn’t sound like it and requested for me to say the word ‘off’. New Zealander's say it “af” whereas South Africans really emphasise the ‘O’ as in “Orf”. This isn’t even the first time a single word and its pronunciation have been pivotal to proving my South African heritage. At my previous work I was often asked to say ‘off’, ‘jelly’ or ‘yogurt’ because I say it slightly differently. It got to the point where people would ask me to say it so they could have a laugh out of it. So my difference is only for your entertainment?

My name is Kaylin de Bruyn. Spelt K-A-Y-L-I-N space D-E space B-R-U-Y-N, say ‘brain’ as in a brain in your head (or is there?). This sentence has got to be one of the ones I have said the most in New Zealand. I have been called Kayla, Caitlin, Cailib, Kayden and everything in between because Kaylin is just not as popular here as it was in South Africa. But that is not a valid reason to get it wrong, at least try. I have only met one other Kaylin (hers spelt Cailin) in New Zealand but she is also from South Africa. A name is a part of identity and one I can hold onto no matter where I go.

Since my last crit where Doctors forms were brought up, I have had two events where a doctors form needed to be filled out and of course there was the question of nationality. I usually choose ‘European other’ or other and write ‘South African’ because I really don’t feel like a New Zealander - I am not welcome in this country. I probably wasn’t welcome in South Africa but was too young to understand. I just choose those options because that is what my mother said I should when I first arrived. But I want to know why a doctor want to know nationality or ethnicity a person is - it won’t make a difference to the visit will it? I understand there could be a connection to diseases from other countries but then ask about previous travel not nationality. Compare that to specific information gathering; I do online surveys for rewards and very often the question of nationality/ethnicity does come up. I understand why they need it - it is all part of grouping people for research purposes.

Blood donation sticker: I keep this because it was has such an insulting memory to me. In high school I went to the school blood drive and they told me I couldn’t donate blood because I had AIDS. I freaked out and started crying and the lady who said it called someone else to help. The second lady explained that it was because I come from a country infested with AIDS and that I hadn’t been in the country long enough (5 years) to be clear of it. Apparently AIDS doesn’t show up on all bloods tests so they couldn’t take my blood. She had to explain the difference of ‘I have a chance of having AIDS’ from ‘I have AIDS’ which the first lady said.

One of my last memories from South Africa to do with the move was going to the place (don’t know what it was called or where it was) to get our passports ready to leave. It took ages and I was so scared and my mom was too, I could sense that. We took the photos we needed and gave our fingerprints. The Passport literally becomes a manifestation of one’s identity. The photo I took looks like an alien (ironic much?). For some reason my head was tilted down so it looks like I have a massive forehead and this creepy half smile. While still in New Zealand (we were permanent residents by then) but we had to get my sister and my passport renewed because a child’s passport only lasts 5 years. We got new photos and I was so happy to finally not look like an alien. This is the passport I currently have because I am allowed to use it until it expires (which is when?) even though I now have New Zealand citizenship. We got our citizenship in (year?) and we had to go to a ceremony. They encouraged us to wear ‘traditional’ clothing from our native countries. Problem: as a white South African we have no traditional cloths… So we wore bright colours and I borrowed a leopard print dress from my sister. Going back to the passports; my sister got married in January this year (2017) and went on honeymoon to Rarotonga. They were originally going to go to Australia but on a South African passport you need a visa to visit Australia because of the increase of immigrants (Making immigration laws stricter). She didn’t want to get a New Zealand passport because it would have to be in her maiden name because she wouldn’t have had the wedding certificate and hence the proof of name change yet and she didn’t want to get a new passport in her maiden name. So she travelled on her South African passport in her maiden name but can now apply for a New Zealand passport in her married name. We did have the option of having dual nationality and having South African and/or New Zealand passports but my parents made the decision to just have a New Zealand passport because it has a higher value to it - it makes travel easier. I didn’t understand the concept of dual citizenship and at the time didn’t really care about it enough so just let my parents make that choice for me.

Didn’t sleep the night before we left South Africa because we were at the neighbor's house since all our stuff was packed up. My sister and I were sharing a double bed and she kept kicking me. Then when we flew I was so excited I didn’t sleep on the plane (12 hour flight for the first half) then we had a stopover in Singapore where I snapped at the lady looking through our bags because she took away my toothpaste. I then slept on the airport floor for 4 hours before the next flight.

I remember that people had to come and pack all of our stuff for us because they had to make sure we wouldn’t take anything that would effect the New Zealand ecosystem. When they were packing my beads they tipped the container upside down and I ran to my mother crying because I thought they would all be mixed up when I opened them. I remember making my beads my first priority when all our stuff arrived in the country. I rummaged through every box until I found them.

When we moved over my parents literally dropped everything. They moved over without jobs and used the money saved for my sister and my university funds to buy the plane tickets. Once we arrived in the country we stayed with my Aunt who had moved over about two months before us until my parents found jobs and we moved down to Hamilton. The immigration laws have become so much stricter so we would not be able to pull off anything like that now.

Last year (2016) in the second semester I was looking into the extinction of animals due to beauty including animal testing, uses of furs and skins ect… It was suggested to me to look into the Huia bird, a bird native to New Zealand. I found out the bird was extinct because its feathers were used by the Maori in the hair and cloaks of chief and warriors and the Europeans were using the feathers on their hats as decoration. I printed images of huia and their feathers on t-shirts as a statement in recognition of how organisations like PETA and SAFE wear specifically printed shirts when protesting to protect animal rights. I presented them for a group crit at uni and majorly offended a Maori student who said I didn’t understand the full importance of the bird and its feathers and therefore had no right to depict them as I had because it was just another white person trying to take their culture. It caused an uproar with all the students with arguments between them that lasted the entire semester and some students being excluded from other’s crits. I had people I had never met come up to tell me I was racist and that I should leave Elam because I didn’t deserve to be there. I got completely alienated. I then spoke to two other girls from South Africa and one of them has a Maori boyfriend. She told him about what happened and he said the Maori student was over reacting so there are different levels of understanding and interpretation. I decided to go ‘back to my own culture’ and wrote a poem which was an apology in Afrikaans. I was then told that Afrikaans is a racist language (because of Apartheid). So I was even more of a racist than before no matter what I did. To this day the Maori student treats me with icy disdain.