Nickie Muir: Far North a killer place to be

Nickie Muir.

Ciao bella, I'm sure going to miss you. And you are bella, beautiful beyond the postcard paradise that New Zealand often pretends to be.

You're the real thing. People often say here: "Yup, we live in paradise" and you really do.

If I'm honest, I didn't want to come to the Far North for a job for two years and uproot my family.

I'd heard some war stories from teaching up here and had more than one warning not to do it.

If I'm being really upfront, for the first few months, I really wished I'd listened.

If government is the face of paternal concern, then I often think of the Far North as the quintessential neglected child. She'll give you a really hard time at first because she's convinced that:

a) you don't really care and
b) you're going to leave anyway or
c) you're only here for what you can take and then (see b).

The problem is that she's been justified in this belief so many times before.

Every new health or education consultant who rides in, rides out on a sparkly Toyota magical pony with silver bullets and dishes out their lab-tested advice that has nothing to do with what local practitioners experience every day, are testimony to this.

Boxes will be ticked and careers made but the outcomes here aren't shifting fast enough for many to put much trust in politicians or institutions and so it becomes hard to get the community buy in to make sustainable change.

And there have been some stellar successes: the fight on rheumatic fever being just one.

Those health and education practitioners who stay and fight in their community's corner really are the taniwha of their professions and deserve all the support they can get.

I get why they do it. Once you're here: you know it's worth it.

Calling Kaitaia, where my girl has had two happy years of great schooling, "the murder capital" of NZ really is annoying, and not just because it's statistically wrong.

So for the record, here are some real "killer" things about the Far North that the Guardian article forgot:

• Killer beaches. The long stretches of pink, icing sugar white and black sands with no humans on them - all to yourself.
• Coca Cola Lake (who knew?).
• The fattest oysters on the planet. Often free.
• Fry bread with creamed paua inside. Genius.
• Killer kids. Kids who rock up to the beach armed with nothing but a sugar sack and get themselves a kina picnic. Kids who can speak on a marae, hunt and butcher a pig and look after younger kids. A kid who said I make poor life choices in clothing and that the novel 1984 is irrelevant post-reality TV. (Good point. Hell is here already see: Geordie Shore.)

Kids who are some of the funniest, delightful, frustrating, haututu hard-case learners I've ever had the privilege of sharing a classroom with.

Kids who deserve better health and education outcomes not labels from afar.