Ake Kolo - Interview transcription

Date Recorded: February 2015

Place: Lake Macquarie

Interviewer: Can you tell me your name, and where you were born?

Ake: My name is Ake.

Interviewer: And where you were born?

Ake: I was born in Western Samoa.

Interviewer: Tell me about your childhood.

Ake: I have 6 children. In our family of six children.

Interviewer: So back in Samoa what was it like as a child? For you?

Ake: I was a child going to school every morning. Like what doing in here. And then when I grow up I finish my high school and that's it. Then decided of going somewhere to find a job.

Interviewer: And where did you go to find that job?

Ake: I decided to come to New Zealand. So I start working in New Zealand.

Interviewer: What a bit of background on your work and living in New Zealand. What happened in New Zealand when you went to work?

Ake: It's good in New Zealand when I was working there. Single. But when I have a family so I was off from work and never go back to work.

Interviewer: You met your husband in New Zealand and you married.

Ake: Yeah. I did marry in New Zealand

Interviewer: So, when did you leave New Zealand, what year?

Ake: I leave New Zealand to Australia in 1980.

Interviewer: So was that your decision to leave? Tell me about your decision to leave New Zealand and come to Australia.

Ake: The first thing we was thinking of, the job in New Zealand is not good where my husband was working and we have family, and we decided to come here, he have families in here too. To be with his family.

Interviewer: So when you emigrated from New Zealand, did you come straight to Lake Macquarie? Tell me about that, about coming here.

Ake: I moved here to Australia and settled in Lake Macquarie.

Interviewer: When you moved to Australia were there big changes in your lifestyle, the way that you lived?

Ake: Yeah, there was big change when I moved to here to Australia. My husband got a good job in the time in the BHP and then I stay with my children or take them to school when they are young.

Interviewer: So thinking about your culture back in Samoa. Tell me about your culture. Are there any activities associated with Samoa that you still keep, traditions or cultural activities?

Ake: The first thing is we are still keeping still carry on is like the women's groups. Like getting together, like weaving things and like knitting and sewing. And we have lunch together, seeing each other.

Interviewer: So when you first came to Lake Macquarie, what did you first think of Australia, your first impressions, first thoughts about Australia.

Ake: It's far away that time I can't remember.

Interviewer: So the hopes for yourself and your family, what were they when you were coming to Australia? You talked about your husband getting a good job, and you wanting a better life for your children so just can you tell me a little bit more about those things? About hopes that you had to come here. What did you hope coming to Australia would do for you?

Ake: Coming to Australia is helping me a lot, like of meeting a lot of family of my husband's side, and a lot of other Samoan people, and I meet a lot of other different Palangi people, a lot of Indians, and Filipinos and also of other community.

Interviewer: And so do you believe that coming here to Australia has been a positive, a good experience, and can you tell me a bit more about that?

Ake: It is a big change of coming here. Like as I think back in New Zealand, and then back to Samoa, in Australia is good in the way I am now, because I have growing up all my kids growing up in here and they have good jobs and they have a lot of experience of a lot of things. And same with us we are working a lot of other stuff like groups and church things.

Interviewer: And can you tell me about your social network so the people that you associate with, your women's group and the other cultural groups?

Ake: Our Samoan community. We celebrate Independence once a year, and we have a big feast like a big day for us, like doing everywhere in New Zealand, Sydney and here. We have like a whole weekend we celebrate. We have our kids, in our own language and our own custom and we have games and everything celebrating our independence. And then women's group. I loved to join that group because all the mothers are Samoan we all get in together and we're sewing, we're knitting, and we doing like we have lunch together and talk about other ladies and yeah, we have fun then.

Interviewer: So the other cultures. Can you tell me about people from other cultures that you mix with, that you socialise with? You told me about your Filipino friends.

Ake: Because I don't go into their group but they come and when we get together in church things to our group, like we have our group like Divine Mercy and other sorts of groups, and we're all together, and like in church we sing in church and they all in there, and after we all mix together and sometimes we invite them to our things and they all get in together and talk and that's how we know each other. Like friends every day, every week.

Interviewer: And is that, for you, having met lots of people from different cultures, is that a good experience for you? So tell me about that.

Ake: It's good, because we have meet a lot of people. It's good for me because I know them and they know how we're different now. Customs and different language, and we try to understand their language. They try to understand but the only language we try to mix together is English. We talk in English, but when they talk in their language we just listen and try to catch what…. It's hard to get it. Yeah.

Interviewer: Thank you.

This work by Lake Macquarie City Library is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License