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Orewa psychologist Andu Iordache grew up in communist Romania, dreaming of chocolate, bananas and the life he imagined people lived in Western countries. Forging a life for himself in NZ was not easy, and although he visits Romania often he considers himself a Kiwi. He spoke to Terry Moore.
Romania was a communist country when I was growing up and for kids, there was plenty of fun. My parents had come to the city of Suceava, in the north, from the countryside to work and I grew up in a block of flats, like many others around it. The children who lived in those apartments shared around 200–300sqm of concrete as a playspace. We played many games there – soccer in the summer and hockey in the winter. It was very interactive. You were forced to become streetwise. We had only two hours of TV per day, on one channel, and half of that was about the president and the Party. We had to sing songs about the president and the Party at school. There were often power cuts at school, but for us it was fun with candles. The government tried to save money by doing things like cutting off the hot water. It could be cut in summer for a month. Every food was rationed, bread, rice, flour. When we thought about the West, we imagined forbidden fruit – and things like chocolate or bananas, which were special for us at Christmas, and colour TV. Some people put a green screen in front of the TV to make it look more coloured. No one had money because everything belonged to the government, so we made our own fun. There were lots of jokes about the regime – a strong sense of humour was part of survival. Religion was pushed aside and the spirit of Christmas was instead focused on the New Year. But people still celebrated Christmas. There was only one kind of car and my father got his first car at the age of 44 after queuing for a very long time. Bribery was everywhere. You could bribe people with a packet of American cigarettes. The revolution happened when I was about 16. Suddenly we had the windows of shops filled with goods, and we had capitalism and democracy. We weren’t prepared for it, so it was a bit chaotic. There was a sense that you could say what you wanted and buy whatever you wanted, if you had the money. Before, it was only the elite and privileged who could get those things.
I was 27 when I completed a degree in library science, realised I didn’t want to do that, and went on to study psychology in Bucharest. While studying, I worked in many jobs: as a teacher, magazine editor and radio reporter. I worked for UNICEF as a volunteer in orphanages for a time. We took some orphans to the sea one day and had pizza. I remember that the tomato sauce was left on the table and the children finished all of that too, with bread, because they weren’t used to leaving any food.
I married Camelia and we wanted to come to Canada or New Zealand. We wanted to see a different reality and experience new things in a far away country. We weren’t economic migrants, we were cultural migrants. We loved it straight away and extended our visitors visas. I got a permit to work in mental health. I had about 10 interviews and was getting used to being declined because of lack of NZ experience. It was discouraging and I wasn’t that confident with English. I began to learn English when doing a BBC journalist course in Romania but learned most of my English in NZ. It was broken at first and I dreaded the phone ringing. My first job was as a Mental Health residential support worker for Te Korowai Aroha. During that time I also did honours in Psychology at Auckland University. Although I could only understand 40 percent of what was said in class, I got First Class honours and did a PhD five years later. A few years later I realised there was a shortage of skilled trades people here and I saw an opportunity to help people back in Romania. I convinced some people to give job offers to people they hadn’t met while I sorted out the paperwork. Once the first couple came through, it got easier. Altogether I brought maybe 30 people plus their families into the country and most are now citizens of NZ and doing well.
We lived in West Auckland until last year, when we decided to sell. We had a rental property in Orewa, nothing flash, so when we sold our home and paid off the mortgage, we moved in there. So now I can work for free, which is what I’m doing – working for Hibiscus Hospice as an intern. Hospice gives me supervision and it’s close to home. It’s a counseling role, with individual and group sessions, offering families, carers and the bereaved psychological and emotional support. Carers can feel that if they take time for themselves they are being selfish. They also want to spend as much time as possible with the loved one. But they need that time because caring for a sick person is exhausting – you become a function. We remind them to look after themselves. My PhD was on the dreams of hospice patients and I started that research at Hibiscus, immersing myself in hospice culture. The main themes that came out of that study was that there’s a lot of travelling, journeying and large numbers of family members in the dreams, including meeting deceased loved ones. I talked to over 100 people in six different hospices. There were interesting gender and cultural differences. Maori and Pacifica people had more positivity in their dreams. Women dreamed more about good things happening to them and men had more striving and difficulty. So now I’m at ease talking about those things with patients because I’m familiar with them. The Massey internship goes until the end of the year and includes assignments and a weekly log. I have exams to pass and I will then be a registered psychologist.
My 11-year-old son loves it here, he’s sociable and bilingual. We spent two years in Romania, going back frequently so he can bond with his grandparents and speak Romanian. I think of myself as a naturalized Kiwi but I still think there’s a cultural barrier. I see people with rejection sensitivity and I could have fallen into that at university with the language problem – it can make people think the system is not welcoming them, but you have to be open and keep pushing past that. You are not going to have it all fall into place for you at first, you have to reinvent yourself a bit. I miss the way of interacting that I have with people I grew up with but because we go back often I don’t feel we’ve missed an awful lot. I think we’re better off being from two places. Initially you’re from nowhere because you’ve left one place and not integrated into the other.
I used to hate Kiwi sausages but now I can eat a $2 fundraising sausage, no problem. In a proper sausage, like we have in Romania, you can see the meat. I once took all the skin off a whole pack of cheerios because I thought no one would eat that rubbery red stuff! In Romania we also have skinless sausages that are quite famous, held together with fat and very garlicky. Our tripe soup is good for hangovers.
I began working part time for Corrections while at university and as my business with the tradespeople wound down, in 2006, I became a probation officer and did that until last year. I became a practice leader, coaching probation officers and working in groups to help them deal with difficult cases. I worked with high-risk offenders and in child sex offender therapy groups, when they were released or given community based sentences. The idea is to motivate them to talk with us – if the motivation comes from them it’s likely to lead to real change. You look for evidence of change – not just the words. It’s detective work and can change very fast. I would say 90 percent of offenders are people who made a mistake, or more than one, not “monsters”. Most have crossed a line and are capable of rehabilitation. The high risk ones are a very small percentage. Corrections has a well researched system and programme for offenders that includes victim empathy, warning signs and high risk situations, to help them monitor their risk and give strategies to avoid further offending. There’s a lot of work being put into that to keep the community safe. There’s been a shift in thinking there, over the last two or three years. The safety of the public is balanced with the rehabilitation or restriction on a person, so it’s about assessing risk. To rehabilitate you have to trust and take a chance. The safety of the public comes first at all times.
Last year I started a business around a game called Hungerball. I invented Hungerball with a friend who saw a moveable football arena with a metal structure. We tried that, but we eventually went separate ways. I wanted to take the game to people, and for it to be about attack as well as defence. The inflatable structure we have is safe and you attack the other person’s goal while defending your own. It’s about risk and opportunity – decision making which is important for any game and for it to be fun. There are people from Australia interested and I have patent applications in the States, UK, India and China. It started as a hobby and it’s been hard balancing it with the internship. Ricki Herbert is on board and the game has sports and commercial sides –competitions and events. It’s quite magic, once you get into that arena – it’s threat and opportunity all around, which makes it high adrenaline. It reminds me of playing football in Romania, on the street with the other kids.
