Humans of Christchurch Ōtautahi
Community Organisation
Community Organisation
Thank you for using Neighbourly
“I’m originally from Egypt. My wife is Filipino, she got a job offer as a nurse. Then I decided to come to visit. So I visited, but I never went back.
I just like the environment, like the people. We came here, maybe, in 2005. I come from an Arabic background, so of course, the language was… View more“I’m originally from Egypt. My wife is Filipino, she got a job offer as a nurse. Then I decided to come to visit. So I visited, but I never went back.
I just like the environment, like the people. We came here, maybe, in 2005. I come from an Arabic background, so of course, the language was my first problem here. Even if I tried to understand, I can't catch one word. I had to study, and listen to news, music, whatever. I can talk to people, I don't feel shy.
In the beginning, I didn't have a business. I used to work for another shop. I used to study English because my English wasn't good enough. I used to work at night, study full time in the morning. Then after three years, I was able to speak and understand English, so I started my business in Ferry Road. My first shop opened in 2012 at Ferry Road under Sabry’s Souvlaki. Then my second shop was, I think, Redwood, then Wairakei Road, Hornby, Papanui then the city centre.
Around 2019, the first one was in Hereford Street. I love the city. I did get the chance to open in different areas, but no, I don't know. I just like the city. This location, High Street, it's very nice. I like the people. We got support from the office workers. I like my neighbours. I like the city too much!
Even the homeless are friendly to me. I know most of them, I support them with whatever they need. I just help them. You can't just fight or ignore them, you have to be part of that community as well.
We also have a bubble tea shop, Boba Time. But my wife, she handles it. I don't know what I think about bubble tea, because it's a different culture, but I know about kebab and souvlaki!
I have four boys, three born here. One of them is studying as a doctor. You have to spend time with family as well. My oldest kids live outside the city, so as soon as they come home, we make dinner, talk about family, you know, to be connected, we're close family, and we keep our culture as well.
What we miss, unfortunately, is the cathedral. This is the first thing I saw when I arrived. I went inside many times. It was amazing. Hopefully it will come back one day.”
“A lot of adults don't play."
"I was in the city for whatever, I think I was with a colleague. We had just been to the convention centre and we walked back to where we parked. There were some puddles, and instead of walking around, I jumped onto one of the blocks, and ‘boink, … View more“A lot of adults don't play."
"I was in the city for whatever, I think I was with a colleague. We had just been to the convention centre and we walked back to where we parked. There were some puddles, and instead of walking around, I jumped onto one of the blocks, and ‘boink, boink’ jumped over. She was like, ‘you jump on things and play on things, but most people don't do that’. I think it's why a lot of people get bored - forgetting how to play.
I started skating mid 2010-ish, right before the September quake. Because I'd been doing Aikido for so long, stopping Aikido and gravitating towards skating instead, that was quite a big thing for me. And then I started getting more into downhill.
My first skate trip was to Auckland. I linked up with some of the Auckland crew, and joined them on a trip to the Coromandel. There's also Longboard Girls Crew which has created a worldwide community of female skaters, so I linked up with one of the Aussie girls, Gemma, and joined her crew for my first overseas trip in 2014.
Since I started doing the Asia Pacific tour and all those races I would be away for roughly about a month every year, because I’d do a race in Australia for a week, and then maybe another event in a different place, the Philippines, occasionally China or Korea, or whatever. I've been to the Philippines heaps. It's cool because a lot of the guys there know me now, so I get treated as one of them, like part of the fam. I linked up more recently with the Malaysian skate crew, it's been really cool going back and experiencing Malaysia as an adult.
The female skate community is like that as well. If you do downhill skating or even longboard dancing, it's cool that when you find other people that do the same thing, you just instantly have this connection with them.
I decided to join the Euro Tour in 2019. God, I'm so glad I did that, who knew that COVID was gonna happen, right? The European Circuit is seen as the pinnacle, it has some of the most prestigious races worldwide and a well-established downhill skate scene. I remember when we camped off the side of the road in the Dolomites to skate. You skate at sunset, then you set up your camp as it gets dark. You wake up at dawn, skate, then when traffic starts to get too heavy, you pack up and you chill for the rest of the day.
As I've become a better skater I've become more confident, I feel it's helped me to really grow as a person. I think it's such a good thing for other people. I like teaching adults, because A) adults have a greater understanding and awareness of body movement, and B) It is that growth in confidence thing that I really love. When you unlock that and you see that spark, that's the most rewarding thing.
I feel like I'm in a really good place now. The older I get, the more I learn that I have to prioritize what I want to do, because there's so many things that interest me. It's boring to just be stationary.”
Elissa
part 2 of 2
“It’s only since I've been in my 30's that I've had proper conversations about being Māori. I started to question all of that stuff when I moved away.
I left New Zealand just before I turned 19. I went to Australia for a few years, to the UK for a couple of years, then back … View more“It’s only since I've been in my 30's that I've had proper conversations about being Māori. I started to question all of that stuff when I moved away.
I left New Zealand just before I turned 19. I went to Australia for a few years, to the UK for a couple of years, then back to Australia. People would ask me, ‘are you a native New Zealander?’ Or ‘Are you a Māori?’. I always thought that was really weird, because being Māori wasn't a positive thing growing up.
I came back to go to university in Wellington. I didn't do well at school so it was quite scary to be suddenly going to university. I decided I wouldn't work for my first year, but that also meant that I was going to be really hard up for cash.
I found out about this accommodation called Whānau House. It's subsidized by the marae at uni, the catch is that you have to help out at the marae. I didn't really know what I was signing up for. There were 14 people living there, a range of ages. All of them were North Island Māori and spoke te reo to some extent. Suddenly being Māori was everywhere in my life, and it shocked me into seeing everything that I'd been missing out on. I spent a lot of time at the marae, and started to learn about te ao Māori.
I moved to Germany and for the first time ever, I got homesick. I couldn't figure out why, I'd never felt homesick for New Zealand before. And then I got pregnant, and I just said, I've gotta go home. I can't do this over here. I don't want my son growing up without his culture the way that I did. I didn't live in Christchurch for a really long time when I finally did come back, I had a baby. I was a pretty different person.
I started learning te reo when Thomas was four months old. and then the pandemic hit. We were in lockdown and I was doing all my classes online.
There were words that Dad used that I didn't realize were Māori until I started learning, which I think is quite funny. The first one I realized was a Māori word was pōtae - hat. And I was like, I know that word. Dad used that word my whole life!
We finished our first year, and we made lots of friends and kept in touch over the summer, so we didn’t lose what we've learnt over the year. We started trying to meet up at a cafe or for games nights so that we could practice using our te reo outside of the class.
That’s how Kōrero ki Ōtautahi became what it is. Initially it was just a group of friends. It's about supporting speakers and learners so that they can take what they've learned and put it into practice. We need more support for the intermediate people to push them into being fluent, and being confident, to be able to use it in everyday situations.
The ideal for me would be to see Christchurch as a bilingual city; you can just walk into any space and choose either English or te reo Māori. There's plenty of places around the world that are bilingual, and people switch between the two just casually.
In order for te reo to not just survive, but to thrive, we need everybody on board, whether you be Māori, Pākehā, tauiwi.”
Celebrating Te Wiki o te reo Māori - 15–19 September 2025
“I'm pretty sure I've got an ADHD brain.
I've had my first three assessments, because I want to learn more about myself.
My whole life I've kind of been a generalist. I'm interested in everything. And marketing, it's a generalist kind of discipline. I probably… View more“I'm pretty sure I've got an ADHD brain.
I've had my first three assessments, because I want to learn more about myself.
My whole life I've kind of been a generalist. I'm interested in everything. And marketing, it's a generalist kind of discipline. I probably would have gone into something more artistic if I hadn't been steered towards things. My goal out of uni was always to find a company or organization whose values I aligned with and I was interested in. It's probably an ADHD thing, I struggle with work that I'm not invested in.
As a kid, I'd get told off for walking barefoot outside in the grass, because it was like, ‘oh, no, you're going to make the inside of the house dirty.’ I don't know if people who knew me when I was in school would actually recognize me now, because my interests are so different. As a kid, I did a lot of reading, drawing, did a lot of crafts, and had those things reinforced. ‘oh, Elissa doesn't like going outside, and she doesn't like sports’, that kind of thing. I think a lot of stuff has been masked or gone undetected because we were pushed as kids and given way more structure.
I've always lived in Christchurch, my parents are first gen immigrants from Malaysia, they moved here in 1988. I didn't really relate to people who were Chinese Malaysian, because they were growing up in a different culture to me. Going back to Malaysia as a kid for family things, we weren't really allowed out to explore by ourselves because we were told it wasn't safe.
I feel like I grew up in a very typical Asian household. You do good at school, you go to uni, you get a degree, get a good job, I was never given the space to be like, ‘What do I want to do?’
Aikido was the first thing that made me go, I actually enjoy movement. I was terrible at team sports. I started when I was 10 and I did Aikido for about 13 years. I was a third degree Black Belt and I was teaching some classes.
When I was like 21, 22 - It was a first relationship - I had a big breakup. I lost my sense of me, and maybe this is how I started to learn about myself more. I had to discover what I enjoyed doing, and had to think for myself again.
I did parkour for a bit. That didn't stick, I was pretty useless. I tried pole fitness. It was really fun, but too expensive. I started to discover that I like individual sports that you can do on your own and also with other people. That was when skating started to take over.”
- Elissa
Part 1 of 2
“I was born in Afghanistan, I moved to Pakistan when I was a one year old as a refugee with my family.
I grew up in Pakistan and finished my school there. I learned English, I did computer classes, learned sewing and also I did makeup classes. I moved back to Afghanistan to continue my … View more“I was born in Afghanistan, I moved to Pakistan when I was a one year old as a refugee with my family.
I grew up in Pakistan and finished my school there. I learned English, I did computer classes, learned sewing and also I did makeup classes. I moved back to Afghanistan to continue my studies, I did my bachelor in business and I got married.
Because of the situation, we couldn't stay there anymore, so we moved to Indonesia. The first year was very difficult for me. As refugees in Indonesia, you're not allowed to work, no study, nothing. Most of the people don't understand English, so you have to learn their language.
I was trying to find a way that I could learn the language easily. I started watching dramas on YouTube. So then I learned Bahasa from that and a friend, and she learned English from me. Then I was speaking five languages. After a while, I was working as an interpreter and for a short time, I found a job at an international school as a teacher.
We were on the shortlist to go to America. You know, sometimes God wants to put you somewhere. We got a call from the sponsor group that wanted to help us come to New Zealand. How is it possible? We waited there for six years through UNHCR. I can say we were lucky. I have been here for one year, and with the sponsor group, we are like a family now.
I first went to Share Kai for the Ōtautahi Welcome Dinner. I said, ‘this is my place’. when I am among the people and talking with people it gives me energy. When we went there, we met different people. Now I have lots of friends from different countries.
When we heard that there's an opportunity for the Riccarton Sunday Market, I said, I will do it!
My food stall is called ZJ kitchen. Z is for my husband, and J is for Jamila, for me. The story for the ZJ is that we are a ZJ family. When we got married, we decided that when we have kids, we'll put the name starting with Z or J. So now I have two sons, their names start with Z, and I have one daughter who starts with J.
I believe that food is something that everyone needs every day. What I do means a lot to me. When I'm at the market, if someone eats the food they ask, do you have a restaurant? I tell them about Share Kai.
I am one of the leaders at the Cooks Collective, we run the Share Kai Cafe which is open for lunch on the first Friday of every month at WEA. We talk, we laugh and we enjoy the food. I hope one day everyone knows about Share Kai.”
- Jamila
© Neighbourly 2025
Loading…