Tomorrow we leave for New Zealand and there is no other place we could visit that has quite the same significance for me. My family left Lower Hutt situated in the south of North Island in 1993. I made my one and only other return in 1999 while studying at university. Without going into details, due to unforeseen circumstanes I spent the sum total of six days in New Zealand on that trip. It was not the homecoming I had in mind at the time and it has left a feeling of unfulfilment behind ever since.
In the intervening years Manijeh and I married, served in Haifa for thirty months and eventually established ourselves here in the UK, having recently moved to Cambridge. Life gets to be a very busy affair when you leave student life behind and its easy to see why its taken so long to finally arrange this trip. It might also have something to do with the number of international weddings we’ve attended in the mean time, including adventures to Mauritius and Australia. Ok, so we’re big international travellers, but there is a something of a story behind that.
When Manijeh and I were starting to become acquainted in the summer of 2000 and before we had really formed affections for each other, we took a walk together, grabbed an ice cream on a nice sunny day and sat on a park bench to get to know each other a little better. Not one to beat around the bush, M asked me about my plans in life. At 20 years old I perhaps something of a clearer idea than most about what the forthcoming years would hold. Some time spent in service to the Baha’i Faith, a career in IT and some considerable time spent travelling before settling down in my late twenties, getting married etc etc.
Well I got three out of four right, much to M’s pleasure (and mine of course), and having someone else to do the travelling with is much more fun anyway! But I digress, going back to that feeling of unfulfilment, one specific part of those travel plans I didn’t specifcally tell M about on that fateful day was how much I wanted to go back to NZ. Thankfully, it wasn’t something I really had to make explicit. M likes to joke she married me for my passport, but kidding aside for anyone who knows Manijeh well, she’s the keenest lover of natural history I know, so unsurprisingly she was just as eager to visit as me. So while the distractions of life and our other worldwide expeditions have delayed this much anticipated journey to the Antipodes I have through the years lived safe in the knowledge that one day I’d get to go back home.
I was born in England of New Zealand-Iranian parentage, and have spent the majority of my life living in the northern hemisphere, but somehow for me New Zealand will always be home. This trip isn’t just about seeing old friends, family and doing some touristy stuff, its almost like something out of Back to the Future, a chance to look up the thirteen year old Vince and see how he’s doing. I can’t wait to find out!
PS This is not me at 13 in case that wasn’t obvious, but it’s the only digital pic of me in NZ I have to hand 
