Solo mother longs for a home
She came to New Zealand chasing the Kiwi dream, but her happyever-after ending has been crushed.
"I want to have a home. It doesn’t need any luxury. When I feel tired, I’ll think of it.’’
As Auckland single mum Lihua (Lily) Jiang plays a wellknown Chinese song she sings along to on a mobile app, she bursts into tears. It’s just another day of taking her three young children to school, doing domestic chores, visiting Work and Income, checking out accommodation options, and if there is time, looking for a part-time job.
Her life is nothing like what she had imagined when she came to New Zealand from Guangzhou, a city in southern China, in 2007 to join her boyfriend.
The couple got married not long after their reunion and had three kids. Four years ago, the husband went back to China ‘‘for career opportunities’’, and never came back.
The desperate Jiang hoped the man would return to his Auckland family, but all she got was a divorce. A WINZ-arranged motel room in Manukau is the third the mother and children have lived in since the beginning of the year, with the previous two being at Papakura and Papatoetoe, after they had to leave a rented flat that was no longer available to them.
Despite the instability, the family feels content. They don’t have to sleep in the car, go to the toilets in malls or take showers at public swimming pools, as proposed by the kids when they saw mum struggling to find a permanent place for them to live.
In their temporary motel residence, Jiang puts the two single beds and a double bed together to make a big one for the four of them, after one child fell onto the ground while asleep.
With a simple living area, a small kitchen and bathroom, the motel room seems good enough to call home, but they want to secure something permanent.