Wanganui Collegiate story

by Cachella Smith for the New Zealand Herald

During the challenging time of Covid-19 lockdown, Wanganui Collegiate’s international boarding house forms one of the biggest isolation bubbles in the country and unite as one big family.

The 108 people in lockdown at Whanganui Collegiate may be part of one of the biggest isolation bubbles in the country.

Among the international students, staff and their families is residential tutor Cachella Smith. She writes about the experience.

As a 22-year-old student from the UK, the one thing I didn’t have on my travel bucket-list was a global pandemic.

Like the next traveller, when accepting a gap year position at Whanganui Collegiate School, I was searching for the typical cliches of freedom and discovery, only to be faced eight months later with the foreign concept of a lockdown.

Picture a bubble; smooth, fragile, determined to pop.

When Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern asked the New Zealand population to prevent the spread of Covid-19, to isolate, and to form familial bubbles, Whanganui Collegiate School accepted this as a challenge to redefine the common noun.

For Collegiate, and now for me, bubbles are characterised by strength over frailty, power over child’s play, and most importantly versatility over uniformity.

When announced, the lockdown threw at me the prospect of not seeing my little brothers for an indefinite period of time, of hearing about people I know becoming sick in the UK and not having the option to be near them or the option of a supportive hug from Mum and Dad.