A New Zealand family in Kuwait are in limbo.
By Giles Dexter of RNZ
A New Zealand family living in Kuwait are anxiously waiting to hear whether they will be able to return home, after the Defence Force confirmed it would deploy planes to the Middle East.
As part of contingency preparations, consular staff and two C-130J aircraft will be sent to the Middle East in preparation for evacuation operations.
Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters has said the planes will take people “out of nearby danger” to less dangerous places, where they can make arrangements to come home.
Sinsemillia Magele moved to Kuwait with her husband Sage Magele and their two children Koulton and Malia-Lavalea Magele in May 2021.
Sinsemillia Magele and Sage Magele work as teachers. The children’s aunt, Pauline Toleafoa, is also with them, having moved in 2020.
But now the family were looking to return home.
Sinsemillia Magele said it’s like Covid 2.0, “with missiles and sirens. We just need to keep that routine going, and find ways to be calm, but also not ignore the situation that’s going on”.
“We’re just trying to keep normality as much as we can, stay in routine, try not to run to the window every time we hear bangs and sirens.”
RNZ spoke to Magele on Thursday morning NZT, or shortly after midnight in Kuwait.
The hour of the phone call was not a bother. It is when the sirens go off, and the missiles fly over. The family were wide awake.
“We can see it from our apartment building. The missiles come over us from Iran, and then they’re intercepted pretty much above our building. So we feel the shakes, the windows are moving, the booms are loud, and then you have the sirens going on in the background,” Magele said.
“So it is scarily becoming a little bit normal. This morning, when the sirens started going off, I was like ‘be quiet, just let us sleep for a little bit longer’. And obviously, that must be a tactic as well, just to keep us wide awake, I guess.”
The children were becoming increasingly nervous and wanting to return home.
“They are struggling. They don’t know how to help and they can’t really help. They want to get us out of here, but I think the whole explaining to them the airspaces are closed, like we can’t go anywhere, we can’t and it’s not safe to travel,” Magele said.
“We can’t move, it’s not safe. So they just can’t comprehend in their minds, they’re like ‘get out’. But the reality when you’re over here, like we can’t, and it’s not like the movies. They’re not going to send in a helicopter to land in front of our building, take us home, like it’s just the reality of being here.”
Kuwait’s Health Ministry has confirmed an 11-year-old girl was killed by falling debris.
Magele said the girl was from a sister school.
Keeping a routine has been paramount, especially for the children, she said.
The parents make sure they are logged on to school in the morning, have lunch, take daily workouts or throw a rugby ball around, take mid-afternoon naps and are in constant contact with family back home.
“Most of our energy at the moment is making sure that they’re okay, because this is a whole other world to them. Us moving here in the first place was crazy to them, so a lot of our time and energy goes into reassuring them that we’re okay.”
Prayer and scripture have also been important, particularly from Toleafoa.
“She’s always making sure that scriptures are getting through to us, and her family back home are fasting and praying daily for us. So that gives us definitely a big sense of comfort.”
Like other Gulf states, Kuwait has a large expatriate population. Magele said the community was “spiralling” and the family were trying to shield themselves from that.
“We’re New Zealanders, we’re Māori, we’re Samoan. We’re also there for our community because they’ve helped us through everything here,” she said.
The Government is yet to confirm where the two planes will be deployed, although Defence Minister Judith Collins said the location would be selected “taking safety and other practical factors” into account.
Operational security has meant there would be limits on exactly how public the information will be made, with regard to when and where the planes would be deployed.
Magele said some tourist companies in Kuwait were “making a lot of money off this” by taking buses of people into Saudi Arabia, but she saw that as too much of a risk, especially if they still could not get a flight out.
The largest share of New Zealanders registered on SafeTravel are in the United Arab Emirates, which Magele said was either a 12-hour drive or an hour-and-a-half long flight, although again, there were no flights at the moment.
“If evacuation support becomes available, we would absolutely want to return home. Without a doubt.”
Kuwait has been good to them.
The children, now 13 and 10, have grown up as “global citizens” and the country has provided them many opportunities.
But a recent shake had put things into perspective.
“You know what? There was, the other morning, it was about 6.20am and there was just a huge bang. And I jumped up and said ‘this is not the normal life I wanted for my children’. This is not normal. This is not what I want for them, not coming from New Zealand, Aotearoa, not coming from Samoa. We don’t want this for our kids.”
– RNZ