Well my attempts so far at being a regular Blogger are rather dismal...so this will have to be long again!
After working at Waiheke Island and Tauranga and spending 2 nights in Wellington Daffy, Magic and I took the ferry across Cook Strait and drove down to Christchurch. It was a stunning day.
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| The Kaikouras on a gorgeous drive down |
I was very quickly fully immersed in Christchurch and ended up working 15 days in a row (!) with just Easter Sunday off then 2 more days work to finish. In that time I gave 11 lectures or talks and provided counselling to 13 new families.
I stayed with Sonia and Rohan and their children Jamie and Jordi...
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| Sonia, Rohan, Jordi and Jamia and their dog |
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| Magic invites Jamie to visit in the camper |
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| Daffy at home in Christchurch |
with number 3 due any time. Sadly the baby didn't come while I was there as we had hoped but we had some wonderful moments together including celebrating Sonia's 40th birthday! Sonia was my 'right-hand-woman' when I was setting up Plum Garden in Wellington and they moved to Christchurch just before the February quake. Despite being late in her pregnancy Sonia gave me so much love and support, feeding me when I came 'home' late and tired. Rohan transformed himself into a magic campervan Genie mechanic and went over Daffy with a fine tooth-comb, cleaning and tweaking and fixing and replacing this and that so that she just hummed all the way to Picton!! Thank you soooo much you two...and for the short but brilliant times with Jamie and Jordi.
The Earthquakes of course have been central and dominant to all the conversations I have had in Christchurch. (I felt only 2 while there, with a bigger one today just an hour after I left!) Really, it is one thing to see it on our screens, and quite another thing to see it in reality. I was in the position of being invited into peoples homes and lives and saw the effects of the quakes on their houses, work, families and psyches.
When you first walk down the streets you see maybe 2 or 3 houses boarded up, a few chimneys removed, a few garden walls down but the other houses look o.k. I quickly realised the if even 1 garden wall in a street is down or the road is a just a bit bumpy then that means all the houses in the street are damaged. Homes that looked so benign to a first glance had interior walls with latticeworks of ripped and cracked plaster, doors and windows jammed, cracks running along tiling and mouldings looking like fault lines themselves. And these were the less affected areas! Many had to have truckloads of liquefaction removed from their properties and streets. Some patches were just left there.
One of my old friends, Margaret, has deep fissures behind and in front of the tiny sleep-out she is now inhabiting. Her house behind is totally broken, walls and ceilings ripped, outer brick and concrete cladding separated from the house by big gaps. It is uninhabitable. She said in the June earthquake she was in the garden above the house and watched the whole house severely shaken a meter either way.
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| Outer claddings separated from the houses |
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| This 9 inch wide fissure runs along the front of a house and is so deep they can't find the bottom |
If you walk around the outskirts of the Red Zone the buildings look like they have been bombed. In many areas, especially Redcliffs and Sumner, driving on the roads is like being on a boat in choppy water. Daffy (the campervan) has rear airbag suspension and rocked along like a plucky tugboat on Wellington harbour in a southerly! Perhaps the most shocking was to be on Sumner beach where you can look out at the dazzling sun on the surf (like a normal day) then turn to the shore and stare at the cliffs above that have fallen leaving houses ripped and dangling off the edge.
There are long roads of double-stacked shipping containers set up to keep falling rocks from the cars.
So many businesses are closed and gone. Everywhere there are buildings fenced off, huge empty spaces where buildings used to be, signs about temporary locations for libraries, banks, churches, schools and shops) orange road cones and holes in roads. Lyttelton had only about 4 businesses whose buildings were not damaged. People have put potted flowers, sandboxes, cafe tables and stands for free food and library books on these empty lots.
I heard so many 'near-miss' stories. Like a mother and children sitting on the couch reading a story and the house falling down around them. So many said 'if I had been in that spot where I was just before...' Many families have had to move to temporary accommodation more than 4-5 times already. One poor solo Mum and her children had moved 11 times! Many children have of course returned to the parent bed and some are still afraid to go outside or to the toilet alone. Yet many other children just took it in their stride. One boy walked home through devastated Sumner and the first thing he said to his distraught Mum was 'I got 40/40 in my French test today!'
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| Clock stopped in Sumner at the time of the February earthquake |
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| Front wing fallen off |
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| Many sandcastles showed complexity and hope of rebuilding |
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| Sumner beach in all her glory |
So alongside this brave new world I have been exploring Christchurch and learning the best ways for me to give talks and counselling when on the road. I can see more clearly now that I need to do a big introductory weekend intensive when I enter a community, one that gives parents and teachers of all age-groups the core elements of the 'Plum' approach. From this foundation I can then give specialist talks on specific age-groups and be able to provide counselling to those who have attended that first weekend.
What doesn't work is giving those core lectures over and over again to different groups and giving one-off counselling sessions to those who haven't attended any talks and know nothing of this approach. It has been an incredibly positive 6 weeks, with 21 lectures and talks and 26 new families in 3 communities, Waiheke, Tauranga and Christchurch. I have loved it and learned so much. In Wellington I normally start 1 or 2 new families per week and build them up slowly and carefully to the new ideas and changes over 3-6 sessions. It has been very challenging to be seeing 2 new families a day, and having only 1 session to try to turn their family situation around. As you may well imagine I am exhausted!
So that brings me to what is next. I will have 5 days in Wellington but will see only a couple of old clients due to my tiredness, then will be off to Hawkes Bay to teach the teacher trainees at Taruna for a week. After that I have nothing booked at all. My instincts are shouting to me that I must have a big rest, so I am currently trying to find a warm rent-free place in Hawkes Bay to go to ground for the winter, so I can rest, get healthy and begin to write the book. During that time I will decide when to set up visits and lectures to the other communities in New Zealand that want me to come. The rough plan would be to be in the North Island for the rest of the year, then perhaps the South Island again next summer, as Christchurch wants more and I didn't have enough time to get to Dunedin, Southland and Motueka/Nelson.
I must say, despite all these wonderful sights and experiences, I still miss Wellington quite a bit and ponder on how a new Playgroup space could be created. So tomorrow it's back on the ferry over Cook Strait and back to Wellington. I think I won't give up coffee till after that!!!
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| Magic at home! |
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| Sailing out of Picton back to Wellington. I sat on the deck in this spot most of the way!
And now let's play...spot the camper! (Kaikoura Coast)
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