LIVING LIKE A KIWI

By Michelle Miller, M.D.

Between July 2021 and July 2022, I spent the year in New Zealand, practicing as a locum GP in Masterton. This rural town in the North Island is about 2 hours away from Wellington. The further out I get from my year in New Zealand, the more dream-like the memories of the experience become. I am commonly asked if it “was as wonderful as it seems” to live there. My answer is “mostly, but it wasn’t perfect by any means.” I always mention the long travel to get there and back as being a deterrent to moving there permanently. It is a small country near Antarctica, so it is difficult to send and receive mail or packages. It took over 2 months to receive a package from my mother-in-law that her local post office assured her would only take 2 weeks! Amazon doesn’t have a New Zealand website, but I was able to order from the Australia one for a few items I could not find in town.

Of course, the trip there was long with multiple layovers. I dreaded the long stretches in a plane, with a 3-year-old at the time, though I think he held up better than I did. It took just over 24 hours between the different flights and layovers to land in New Zealand. Luckily, my son found any turbulence to be hilarious. He would say, “The plane is having a rocky ride.” My circadian clock did not appreciate the time difference. New Zealand is 16 hours ahead of Florida. However, it was nice to spend the time in a managed isolation hotel room with a great view of downtown Christchurch for two weeks due to firm COVID-19 restrictions. The added stress from the pandemic was part of the reason my family and I decided to take the position in New Zealand.

Many things in New Zealand were opposite to how we were accustomed. For light switches, down was on and up was off. Driving on the left side of the road with the steering wheel on the right side of the car was actually easier to handle than the light switches. All outlets had switches for electricity to turn on; a device had to be switched on at the outlet, not just plugged in. Luckily, the main language is English. However, mixed with a beautiful accent and some jargon, I was often confused and had to ask for clarification.

Although, the medical jargon came quickly. Instead of asking for “refills”, it was “repeats”; instead of “mono”, it was “glandular fever”. A common phrase used over there is “sweet as,” which means the equivalent of “cool”. Many words were spelled differently, with extra “o’s” and “u’s” added in, like colours and oesophagus.

Driving was intuitive but different. I heard the speed limit was the actual max speed, not 5-10 over like many Americans drive. There were devices that regulated it so no drivers were pulled over for ticketing. Instead, ticketing was mailed to people based on the car tag registration. My husband disputes this but I never saw anyone pulled over for speeding and was deterred from speeding due to those signs. Merging was very easy; people actually “zipper” merge, as you should. Whereas, here, you have to merge over to turn up to a mile early on Capital Circle during busy times. Traffic circles were common and people actually know how to use them, unlike here where you are playing chicken with others to see if they will actually yield, or if they stop when they should enter. Gas is called “petrol” and priced per liter so it was a bit of a sticker shock going to the pump there. Even though distance and speeds are per kilometer, people will still talk about “miles per gallon.”

The grocery store where we shopped had a small “American” section. Not surprisingly, it was all junk food. The items included lots of candy (e.g. Nerds and Reese’s), Pop-Tarts, Cheetos, Soda (e.g. Cherry Coke and A&W Root Beer), and something called Calypso, which I had never heard of, but is apparently a flavored lemonade drink popular in the Midwest. Their bakery had Texas Muffins, which is just what they call jumbo muffins. Their dairy section sold Tasty Cheese, which is their name for cheddar. Kiwis (the lovely nickname for people from New Zealand, based on the native bird, not the fruit) love their ice cream, especially a flavor called Hokey Pokey, which is vanilla ice cream with honeycomb toffee. Honey was regulated to be 100% honey; additives were banned so no additional high fructose corn syrups were allowed in honey there. Beef and chicken were common items in the meat section, but so were lamb and duck. Ground beef was called mince and sold for around $16/kilogram. That might seem like a lot, but it is really just about $4/ lb. (2 pounds is about 1 kilogram and 2 US dollars is around 1 NZ dollar.) Milk jugs were in liters and were rectangular shaped to fit into the fridge doors better.

My family would often walk the 15 minutes to the local park for our son to play. My husband would then walk to the local grocery store and meet us back at the park for us to walk home together. This was at least weekly, if not twice weekly, for the grocery run. We would also walk around the neighborhood and local trails with trails nearby local sheep farms. We even had a local trail within a 5-minute walk of our house, with several local stray cats to play with. Besides being active with our family, my son started preschool in New Zealand and loved it. There were no worksheets, but learning was more hands-on. He learned to use tools, real ones, not Fisher Price. We have a beloved photo of him in a hard hat using a hammer and hand saw. We brought home several Kiwi books that we bought over there as well as some stuffed Kiwis (the birds, not the people or fruit). We enjoyed traveling around the country and going to local zoos and wildlife centers.

For my locum GP position, I had it in my contract that I was not on call after hours or weekends. However, in New Zealand, a GP must sign off on a death certificate and attest to seeing the body to notify the funeral home if any medical devices needed to be removed prior to cremation. I was called in to do this early on for a patient that passed after only being his GP for 2 months. Meetings were only during business hours, so never prior to clinic time, or during lunch or dinner. In addition, I had a Friday off every month that my family used for weekend trips around the country. We stayed at many local motels, most of which had playgrounds or were part of a farm. I have never seen so many sheep or alpacas in my life and couldn’t resist buying an alpaca blanket to bring back. We, of course, went to Hobbiton, the location where the Lord of the Rings movies were filmed, even though my son doesn’t know about the series.

I would recommend to anyone considering traveling to New Zealand to make this trip sooner than later. I am so glad my family spent a year there; however, we will not be heading back anytime soon. We have agreed to return when our son is older. It is unlikely he will have many memories of our time in New Zealand, but we talk about the trip regularly and have lots of photos and videos.