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Follow your heart and keep on learning When Titirangi woman Aysun Arabaci came to live in New Zealand in 2008 with her new Kiwi husband Andrew, she was not only following her heart but thought she would likely continue the medical career in which she had excelled in her native Turkey. But as with many people, life does not turn out as expected and today Aysun has turned to creative pursuits to maintain her health and happiness, leaving her high-powered career behind. Today Aysun is involved in numerous crafts – crochet, knitting and sewing, often for charities. She remodels her clothes to create modern and unique styles from pre-loved items. She paints, walks, plays tennis, dances and grows herbs which she uses daily in meals and drinks. It was especially tough for Aysun as she had very limited English when she first arrived. “It was upsetting not to be able to use my (medical) talents and skills,” she says. “But every difficult situation has a silver lining and it gave me the opportunity to learn other things. I’m always hungry to learn and want to expand my knowledge all the time.” As a young woman Aysun studied medicine in Istanbul at one of the oldest and best-known medical faculties, then worked as a hospital GP for more than 18 years until she was invited to start a new health programme called Check Up that aimed at preventing people getting sick rather than treating them after they became ill. “The health authorities had big trust in me and gave me and my team the chance to set up the whole programme as I wanted it. It was a regional role and we worked with a lot of farmers producing oranges and vegetables. We trained them not to use too many chemicals and hormones on their crops, and followed up with them,” Aysun says. This programme lasted five years. “It was very successful but we had to stop the programme because neighbouring towns and cities wanted the same unit with the same quality but the health ministry said it was not (financially) possible to achieve the same quality everywhere. “So they stopped it and I was sent to study haemodialysis for a year and afterwards came back to the hospital and ran a unit with other doctors for five years. It still is working very successfully.” It was about then Aysun met Andrew through a mutual friend. He was on holiday and invited her for dinner. She admits she understood little of their conversation. “I asked him to speak to me in French as I know a bit of that.” The next day Andrew left Turkey to return to New Zealand for a family event but the pair kept in touch and when Aysun got a computer, they could communicate with each other. “I was not very much into technology, but I learned.” In 2007, Andrew invited Aysun to New Zealand to meet his family and friends and see him in his environment, a bush-surrounded home in Titirangi. She stayed a month before the pair went back to Turkey to meet her family. “We got married in Turkey one year later, and came here.”
Aysun had planned to take up medicine here but was told to sit all the medical exams again. “If I passed all the exams, I then needed to sit language exams and the threshold was so high, even Andrew said it was unlikely he could reach it. I started to learn English and I knew all the medical terms but was struggling with day-to-day English. “When I became confident with my English I decided not to go back to studying medicine here. I’d been working in clinics for 18 years and I didn’t want to sit medical exams all over again.” Aysun Arabaci’s deck herb garden – now While in Turkey, Aysun had part of her every day healthy life also been interested in art and design and Andrew encouraged her to try artistic pursuits. “I tried hard but somehow I missed my original background and decided to study public health at Auckland University. After graduation every job I applied for, I didn’t get. If I went for some simple, unskilled role, they said I was over-qualified. I might have scared people off.” Aysun had started growing herbs in pots on her Titirangi deck. It was pretty much in her genes. Her mother’s family were from Crete (her father Turkish) and she says they were all natural healers. “All of them, on my mother’s side, knew the properties of all the plants and they were knowledgeable about nature as well, passing the information and knowledge from one generation to the next. “When I was a child, my mother would take me to gather plants and tell me all about them – which was used for what, how to recognise right from wrong, how to use them for good health. “When I was trained as a medical doctor, I was able to check them scientifically and it was then that I understood just how knowledgeable my mother was. I didn’t know as a child but as an adult I really appreciated it and kept learning.” Wandering the Waitākere bush, Aysun tried to find plants from her own country and when that didn’t work out she went on a voyage of discovering native New Zealand plants and studying how Māori had for years used them for healing a range of ailments and how others were used as preventative measures. Continued on page 18 >>
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The Fringe AUGUST 2020
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