Susana Lemisio was made a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit in the Queen’s Birthday honours for her services to the Tokelau community and early childhood education.
She came to New Zealand in the 1960s as an 18-year-old “and it was a shock to me to see for the first time the tall buildings and all the cars and trucks”.
In the early days when she sorely missed Tokelau, her family and familiar island foods “big time”; the Catholic church was a great support.
The monsignor at Ss Peter and Paul’s parish had noticed many of us coming to services and he organised for us to go to night school.”
Two or three nights a week, after a full day of work assembling television sets at the Rola Company plant at Wingate, Mrs Lemisio would join others from Pacific nations, China and India at night classes at Petone Tech, mainly to improve their English language. Continue reading
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