An Immigration Story – New Zealand Wants You!

I struggled with what to write here.

On the one hand, our visit to New Zealand was one of love and levity. We spent the first week with wonderful old friends Glenn, Lisa, and their kids—extended family, really—who just moved to a town on the North Island near Auckland. It was lovely just living in one spot for a change, walking through the same town each day, visiting the library, the coffee shop, the pharmacy, the community garden, and being with the same people (well, besides ourselves, of course) when we woke up in the morning and went to bed at night. Thanks, dear friends, for sharing your home.

Our second week was a road trip, sorry, actually a quest, to visit as many Lord of The Rings sites as we possibly could. We wandered through Harcourt Park, where Peter Jackson filmed scenes of Gandalf and Saruman strolling together through the Gardens of Isengard. We hunted for the rooty tree on Mount Victoria, where they depicted the Hobbits’ first encounter with the Nazgul. We toured the Weta Cave special effects studio, hired to turn ordinary people into dwarves and orcs. We bussed into Hobbiton to marvel at its perfectly manicured diminutiveness and have a cup of ale at the Green Dragon Inn. And folks, we actually trekked twelve miles along Mount Doom—known to the locals as Mount Ngauruhoe and the Tongariro Crossing.

That was a lot of fun!

It was not the evil eye of Sauron this time…

On the other hand, our visit was one of foreboding. It was not the evil eye of Sauron this time. It was not even the sad fact that we caught a nasty respiratory infection on the plane coming over. Although, with the news of Coronavirus spreading, we wondered incredulously if we’d become a statistic ourselves. And, if we did survive this fever, painful cough, and general ickiness, was it a good idea to continue to China’s neighboring countries like Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia and risk getting another one? Or get trapped by a quarantine?

No, what really scared me, and I know this because my pencil becomes possessed and starts flying in a blur across the pages of my journal when I hit on something close to my heart, was that the New Zealand prophecy was coming true. 

People warned us: If you go there, you will never want to come back.

This warning was absurd…

Now, when we left Virginia last year, this warning was absurd. Nowhere in the world could be beautiful or comfortable or inspiring enough to lure me permanently away from the family we have in The States. Nowhere.

New Zealand is beautiful. It has oceans, volcanoes, rolling grassy hills, fern palm forests, hot springs that pour into turquoise rivers that turn into frothy white waterfalls, lone trees that stand epically on lone hills. If you’ve seen the Lord of the Rings, you’ve seen New Zealand.

It is also comfortable. People are friendly. And there aren’t that many of them. They speak our language and do things in familiar ways, only with less of a frantic pace and more often in bare feet—really, just like the hobbits, some people don’t seem to use shoes. 

(Quick digression here: there is a bit of a stick with relations between Maori and later settlers, but I wasn’t in the country long enough to know how that story will play out. A great book by Christina Thompson called Come Ashore and We Will Kill and Eat You All gave some hints, and I do believe that New Zealand is managing its complicated past with more grace than the USA.)

Inspiring? Well, N.Z. has universal healthcare that seems to work well and a level of environmental conservation that is exciting. I hear their prime minister is doing good work. The dark chocolate they make here is really fine.

Blindfolds off…

No, it wasn’t learning about beautiful and inspiring New Zealand that put the prophecy into consciousness. It was engaging in a series of conversations while staring at up-side-down southern constellations, reading a smattering of frustrating articles, and listinging to some insightful podcasts about our own government’s actions—specifically about Guantanamo Bay, the use of torture, and the seemingly endless cycle of destruction caused by the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force—that had us asking:

How do we live in a country with the kind of politics we thought only existed in scary places? 

(Before we get accused of partisan politics and a targeted indictment of our current president, please note that everything we just mentioned has existed through decades of past presidents from both parties.) 

We left home intending to become global citizens, which, at the time, meant opening my eyes to what is happening in this wide world of ours. I suppose we should have anticipated that gaining such perspective includes turning the lens back towards home.

It was like having a blindfold torn off.

All the good stuff…

I guess that once we were away from all the things that make the United States our happy home—our family, our friends, and our students; our house, our garden, and our neighborhood; the classes, the parks, the art–away from all the things we love, we were able to see some deeply ugly truths about our country. 

Do you run from that? Move to a different country that is comfortable not only for day-to-day living but for your political conscience? Besides, isn’t it better to somehow speak out? Isn’t that the kind of American ideal—the kind of moral ideal—we hold dear?

Not moving…

We aren’t moving to New Zealand, despite what the soothsayers proclaimed. We are, however, troubled.

If you are concerned and conflicted, too, can you please write about what you are doing to make your voice heard?