Sisters Avi and Eva sit down with their daughters and talk about white men who travel to Indonesia, the fetishisation of Asian women, and leading parallel lives in Whangārei.
Watch the video version of the episode here
Sisters Avi and Eva sit down with their daughters and talk about white men who travel to Indonesia, the fetishisation of Asian women, and leading parallel lives in Whangārei.
Sisters Avi and Eva did not plan to both end up living and raising their whānau in Whangārei. Growing up in Indonesia, as two of five siblings, they were similar in age and had a close relationship.
Eva, the eldest of the two sisters, started working at a company owned by her later husband Colin. When Colin's friend Tim travelled to Indonesia, her sister Avi was picked to be a guide for him, with Colin secretly hoping they might take a liking to each other.
In the end, Avi and Tim immigrated to Aotearoa in 1995, with Eva and Colin following in 2003. Both sisters have two children; Avi has daughters Cinta and Aimee; and Eva has kids Cindy and Tom. Cinta and Cindy join their mothers in this conversation.
Being the daughters of Indonesian women who married Pākehā men is a large part of this episode.
Avi talks about observing the ways white men behave in Indonesia: "In Indonesia, when you are an expatriate, some of them like to play with women."
Her daughter Cinta explains feeling hyper-visible and conscious about the way her father is treated in Indonesia: "Whenever we go over, walking on the street with Dad, everyone's kinda coming here and crowding around Dad because they're, like, 'Ooh, rich white man.'"
Since moving to Aotearoa, Avi and Eva have done a lot to create and involve themselves in a community of immigrants, and of Indonesian immigrants, specifically.
Avi spends a lot of time volunteering with WINGs, the Women's International Newcomers Group in Whangārei. Both sisters have made a concentrated effort to bring Indonesians across the North Island together to form a community.
Cindy and Cinta live and work in Auckland, and return to their family homes in Whangārei and Tutukākā when they can. They talk about the close relationship their mothers share, and Eva confesses how important it is to have her sister so close.
"I feel really blessed to have Avi here. If she weren't here, maybe I would have a best friend or something, but it will be different how we talk, how we let go of our feelings, everything different."…