Ep 33: Tanya Jenkins – migration, and the rich lessons of a long-distance traveller

The bar-tailed godwit weighs just 300grms. From New Zealand, each year, they double their weight to fly to the Yellow Sea, then to Alaska. In Spring they return – a non-stop flight of eight or nine days; 11,000 - 12,000kms! Sometimes people can be born and grow up in a place but never feel entirely at ease there; instead, feel a belonging when they arrive somewhere else. It’s happened to me; certainly happened to my father.Tanya Jenkins left Holland when she was just 19. On the world map New Zealand looked the furthest away so she headed here thinking she’d make her way back slowly. Except that this is the place where she felt at home. It’s been said that everyone in New Zealand can trace back to someone who travelled here, whether recently, as a migrant or a refugee, or centuries ago, in a waka, a double-hulled canoe, across the great Moana. Seen that way the Māori framing of whakapapa – of each of us having lineages and connections, even belongings, to other places and people – offers a richer way of seeing how we all can fit.Tanya talks here about what New Zealand offers – in space and clear air and possibilities – and her work in environmental education, especially the rich lesson of the bar-tailed godwit: that tiny, profoundly impressive, migrating bird on the longest non-stop flight each year between Alaska and New Zealand – belonging here and belonging there.