Imagine packing up everything you’ve ever known, getting on a boat with your mother and eleven siblings, then sailing over fourteen thousand kilometres. One quick stop, and then you’re on another boat trip around fifteen hundred kilometres long before you end up here in New Zealand, which might as well be a whole new world. That’s the story of how my grandpa came all the way across the world from a little island called Malta, located in the Mediterranean Sea. It’s the tenth-smallest country in the world, but it’s also within the top ten most densely populated countries, which goes to show just how geographically small it is considering the population now is in the mid 500 thousands. My great-grandmother (Maria, but she was known as Mary) immigrated from Malta with all twelve of her children back in the 1960s. They didn’t know much of or any English when the thirteen of them left Malta, so it was a struggle to pick up the majority language of the country they now found themselves in. Last year I discovered the transcript of an oral history interview my great-grandmother did, discussing her immigration, her life, her children, and so much more. Reading about her experience in her own words might have made me cry a little (a lot, I won’t lie) and it made me very proud to say I’m a part of her family. Immigrating that far with so many children couldn’t have been easy, but my Nana Mary was a determined woman. Because of her, I can proudly say that I am one of about 222 Maltese people (googled it) living in New Zealand today. 

Emigrajna ghal-kull rokna tad-Dinja u hadna maghna l-kultura Maltija…..il-lingwa Maltija, il-valuri morali u

u l-ikel Malti li qatt ma jonqos mal-Maltin.