Mother and daughter team up

For the Goundar family, helping others is something that runs in the blood.

At least, that is the way Renuka Gounder and her daughter, Shastika, explain their enrolment in the same course.

Renuka and Shastika are currently navigating their way through their second year in the Bachelor of Nursing programme at Wintec.

The Goundar family moved to New Zealand from Fiji in 2008 and mother and daughter agree they went into nursing as a career which will allow them to help others, something they both enjoy doing.

In fact, Renuka goes so far as to describe nursing as her dream career which had not been possible to pursue in Fiji.

“It was one of the reasons we moved here – I wanted to experience nursing in New Zealand.”

But with living together as well as studying together, Renuka and Shastika admit they get little privacy. On the plus side, they are able to help each other with lecture notes and discuss class assignments before working on them.

Studying with teenagers straight out of high school is something Renuka admits she finds a bit of a struggle – but at the same time she is learning from it.

With the already difficult transition of moving from Suva to Hamilton, combined with multiple visa problems, both mother and daughter are the first to admit the past three years have not always been easy.

They believe the support of their family is what helped get them through. Renuka said they are now fully settled in.  “We really enjoy it here, it is different in so many ways to Fiji.”

Both Renuka and Shastika are scheduled to graduate in July 2013. Renuka is considering working in a retirement home, while Shastika has her sights on going to medical school and becoming a surgeon. She believes the nursing degree will be the stepping stone she needs.

And they both say that graduating is something they are looking forward to.  As Shastika puts it: “That will be one proud moment for dad.”