March 11, 2007
Family Matters
Yesterday we had the Pasifika festival at Western Springs in Auckland. It is the South Pacific's largest Pacific islands community event. It is a graceful bow to Auckland city's increasing Pacific islands population (at this stage, I guess we have about 6% of Pacific Islanders in overall NZ population, but it is set to grow, I read somewhere that primary schools have about 10% of Pacific island children).
The interesting thing with Pacific island people is how extended their families are. One of my colleagues mentioned the other day that a couple of relatives' children (from Samoa) were handed over to another family staying in NZ. The family back in Samoa already had lots of children and, I guess, the kids will have more opportunities (especially for education) here in NZ. I found the whole concept of handing over your children very fascinating (especially since some friends elsewhere in the world are going/have gone through adoption process the Western way). You hear about this kind of "adoption" very frequently, somebody's sister gave her newborn away to the priest's family in their community, someone grew up with grandparents or uncle's family, because their parents were too young or too busy building their lives.
I'm not sure how all this works legally, but I suspect that there's no legal adoption taking place, children just live a few years with someone else and they're completely accepted to that family. One of my colleagues has 2 girls and she would like to have a boy, but she doesn't want to risk getting pregnant again (you can't really choose what kind of baby is coming..), so she's just waiting for an opportunity, if someone in the family will have a baby boy, she will ask to have him and bring him up as her own. Easy! And from what I can see, there are rarely any hard feelings, children are brought up to know their birth parents and their "parents". Something for the modern Western families with their "nuclear family" obsession to be envious about?!?!
Continuing with the family theme, going out with the girls on Chelsea's (my colleague's) Hens Party was a great experience, because most of the women (including the bride herself) were new mothers. The party was crazy fun, but definitely had different vibes from any single female parties that I've been to!!! Cool dancing on the dancefloor (head turning performances!), eyes closed, shots swallowed, but you couldn't mention baby food or any of that stuff, because the discussion inevitably would turn to comparing pros and cons of certain brands, etc. In any case it was great fun!
And it was a nice warm up for the actual Chelsea's and Craig's wedding party yesterday! Yep, having different cultural influences definitely makes NZ an interesting place to live in. There's a lot to learn about things that matter. And family matters most of all, so it seems... So cheers to all the remote and scatered family of ours (remember, if we have asked favours from you and made your life difficult, you are considered family (family definition courtesy from Andrea).
And here's Kaj and Tai, two evil brothers!
Posted by gkligyte at March 11, 2007 07:28 PM