My Journey to New Zealand

My Journey to New Zealand - By Carys

When I was eight I had to leave my country, which is Syria. My name is Emma and this is my story.

Syria is a beautiful place but one day it wasn’t so beautiful. I was fast asleep at night and then my Mum and Dad came rushing in with my sister and they woke me up and said to pack anything I can into a bag. I chose to bring my clothes, toys, food, devices, my fav books, my pictures of my family, pens and paper and a blanket and a sleeping bag. I wanted to bring my drawings but Mum said no because there wasn’t enough room.  

I suddenly heard bombs and guns and planes all at once. I felt scared. My sister was finished before me because she didn’t pack that much. Then we went outside and we saw bombs dropping on the houses in the neighborhood. We helped all the elderly people get their stuff into bags and helped them get away from the bombs. I helped my favourite neighbor and her name was Noeline and my sister helped Pat. We all started heading for the mountains. Now we are all called refugees. 

We all were sad to leave our homes. We are heading to Germany. It will take 707 hours and we will be walking 3,501 km. We saw lots of dangerous animals like big cats and eagles. Some of the kids were killed. We took weeks or nearly months to get there. We got to the border and there was barbed wire and we had to stay in a little refugee camp and it was so squishy in there. Then a few weeks later we went to France. It will take 190 hours to get there and we will be traveling 920 km. It took over a week to get there. We finally got to the border and we went to a refugee camp again. It's so boring in refugee camps. I wish we could go back to Syria. After a few months we left to go on a boat. It will take 1 hour and 30 minutes to get to the United Kingdom. We went to another refugee camp which is much smaller than the Germany one.

After a year my family and Noeline and Pat were asked to go to New Zealand we all said yes we were going to go live in New Zealand. I was so excited. There were two new languages there. There was English and Maori. We arrived in Wellington and then we went to Paihiatua to a refugee camp But we were only there for a few days. We then all moved to Otaki. Which is near Wellington, Plimerton and Porirua and that is where the rest of the family was living when we were in Syria. My family and Noeline and Pat were all living on the same street. I didn’t know any English but I still had to go to school. I went to Michael Kashour School but now I’m going to Waitohu school. I learnt lots of English in the past year. I’ve made lots of friends during school. Now I am ten years old and there have been no diseases until this year. Covid 19 has come to New Zealand and all over the world.