“It was organised through an agency and they knew what my qualifications were. They told me I had a job on a farm. When I arrived, I found I had to share one small room with my two boys and an outside bathroom with a whole lot of other men – and milk the cows!”
The next job was slightly better in terms of doing what she was trained to do, but she still has nightmares about it.
“I was employed as a microbiologist at an abattoir in Ashburton. I had to take samples from the animals that had just been killed and skinned. After having spent 18 years in a pristine lab in a hospital where everything is white and sparkling it was a nightmare to have to walk through rivers of blood. And the animals were still twitching.”
She eventually came back to Christchurch, found a flat and thanks to the support of local church goers, managed to set up a home for her two boys. As her savings steadily disappeared while she hunted for a job, Adela said she did often think about going home to Romania.
“I knew that it was impossible though. I sold everything to come here. In Romania talking to agents and reading information on the Internet, you get the idea that it is so easy to find a job, especially in my field. I saw everything as pink and beautiful. I thought it would be so different.”
Not one to give up easily, Adela visited every single employment agency listed in the Yellow Pages and sent off over 200 job applications. “I didn’t get called back once. Not even to come and talk. I think they just looked at my name and threw it out. At one time, there were four jobs going at Christchurch Hospital that I could have done. I called and said ‘let me show you what I can do’"
. But the hospital said ,q>“no”, she had to be registered. Adela then found herself trapped in a situation that many migrants find themselves. She couldn’t work without registering, but she couldn’t register without some New Zealand work experience.
“The only chance I had of getting a job was to retrain. I was going to go to the College of Education and train as a teacher. I was scared as that would have meant three years with no money and two boys to look after.”
It was at that point that Jude Ryan-O'Dea, (Migrant Employment Co-ordinator at the Canterbury Employers' Chamber of Commerce) stepped in. “She was one of the last people on my list to visit and she told me it would be a waste of time and money to start again. After talking to Jude, for the first time I began to understand why people didn’t want to interview me.”
One of those reasons was that Adela didn’t have any easily contactable and known references.
“Jude wrote a personal recommendation for me which opened a door. I also realised that I would have to start at the bottom again and work my way up, but I am at least doing something I love.”
Adela, who was qualified to open her own lab in Romania, now works as a medical technician at Medlab South in Christchurch. “There is good equipment and great staff and colleagues. The nightmare is over.”