“She feels quite secure – I’ve stocked up enough for a year at least.” Sangeeta said the number of Covid-19 cases started to grow in March. “Mum was stronger than I was.” Where she was, essential items such as food can be bought between 7-11am, chemists and medical services are open all day, and public transport is operating at half capacity. “I double masked, I didn’t take any transport,” Sangeeta said. “It’s also luck, you just don’t know.” It was hard leaving her mother, who does not have any other family nearby, she said. However, Sangeeta said other cities were worse off, with higher death rates.
‘’It’s the only recipe I do well. Friends have tried it and no one complains.’’ New Plymouth MP Glen Bennett, who spoke at Friday s book launch, held at the Western Institute of Technology, listed an impressive number of countries represented in the cookbook at an even more impressive speed. There was even a recipe for pavlova, which is a New Zealand dish, Bennett pointed out. His Edmonds cookbook was well-used, so this could replace it, he joked. The recipes have come from immigrants from all over the world who were either living or had lived in Taranaki. Police ethnic support officer Constable Sreejith Sreekumar came up from Whanganui for the occasion.
SIMON O CONNOR/Stuff
International students Andrielli Alves and Julia Lima pictured with Mayor Neil Holdom, Labour MP Glen Bennett, and list MP Angela Roberts were happy to be in New Zealand but missing their families in Brazil.
Although Julia Lima is happy to be in New Zealand, it has been a hard year being so far away from her family in Brazil. Lima is an international student at the Western Institute of Technology in Taranaki (WITT) and was one of many attending a barbecue at the New Plymouth campus on Thursday to celebrate International Migrants Day, which falls on Friday.