Refugees’ ‘long journey’ home ends in Blenheim

Marlborough’s first refugee family is set to arrive today, in what will be the ‘‘culmination of quite a long journey’’.

After arriving in New Zealand shortly before the borders closed in March, the Colombian family of five had been at the Ma¯ ngere refugee resettlement centre in Auckland since.

Yesterday, Red Cross support workers and volunteers prepared for their arrival by getting the new family home ‘‘warm and welcome’’.

Red Cross refugee support volunteer Gretchen Bristed said it would be ‘‘amazing’’ to bring them to their new home for the first time after such a long journey.

Along with three others, Bristed’s role as a refugee support volunteer would be to ‘‘wrap around’’ the family for their first six months.

‘‘Getting them settled into their home, getting their children enrolled at school ... English language lessons and doctors and bank accounts and all the things you would do for anyone new arriving in your town,’’ she said.

‘‘They’ve lived in a refugee camp for some time and haven’t actually managed their own lives – they’ve been told where to go and what to do.

‘‘Suddenly they’ll be running their own household and setting up their own appointments and budgeting and so on.’’

The volunteers would meet with the family at Marlborough Airport this morning, but were unsure how the newcomers would want to spend their first afternoon in Marlborough.

‘‘They could be exhausted, or they could be raring to go and do things, we just don’t know,’’ Bristed said.

‘‘The advice we’ve been given is rather than jam them in a car and drive them to Picton is just a walk around the block for a start, so they can start to feel that they know where things are.’’

Down the track she hoped to show the family the Wither Hills, the Taylor River and Picton.

‘‘We’ve got so many lovely things to do, we’ll just have to be careful not to overwhelm them.’’

The family’s arrival marks Blenheim’s first time as a Red Cross resettlement location for refugees.

Following the Government’s decision in 2018 to increase the annual refugee quota to 1500, up to 100 refugees were set to relocate to Blenheim in 2020.

Pre-pandemic, the settlement