Reunite Tracy and Dawid

Hi,

On 25 January 2020 Tracy Venter, my wife, flew to New Zealand with her intentions to start a new life for us. I (Dawid Venter) was supposed to meet her a month or two thereafter, but Covid-19 arrived and brought an abrupt end to our hopes and dreams.

We have been separated ever since.

It's now been close to two years and three months since last we saw each other. When she left she was 40 years old. She is now 43. We've missed birthdays, Christmas celebrations, anniversaries and when my brother passed away in April 2021 we had to endure this tragedy in our lives while being apart. I just lost my last direct family member, and she was all by herself without any support.

Being split from your loved one is soul-crushing, with many tearful moments throughout. I ended up on medication to deal with the mental onslaught of constant trauma. Before this the longest we had been apart was one week, and we’ve been together since 1994. We had been in the dark as New Zealand completely shut their borders, unless you were a critical worker, which we weren't/aren't, there was no way of getting into the country.

After many attempts to reunite, we finally had our residency approved, which we are extremely excited about.

Unfortunately we’ve depleted our savings over the last two years. The cost of living in New Zealand is expensive and the money we had saved to restart our lives in a new country, which was a lot, had to be used for accommodation, food and other important expenses. Survival came first. With that we had to pay for extended emigration costs such as our residency, VISAs, our NZ agents (which there are still outstanding amounts for all) and various other costs. It came to many, many thousands. I had part-time work, but it was generally for us to keep afloat.

Now that we can finally officially get together, we don’t have the funds left to pay for what remains of our residency and VISA costs. To add to that we have to fund our plane ticket too.

This journey has thrown many curve balls and valuable lessons our way. It has taught us to be humble and to appreciate all our friends and family. It also made it very clear that we would need a little help to get us over the finish line. As such we’re humbly asking for help.

We need to raise R25,000 ($2,500 NZ) to pay for the remainder of our expenses so that I can get to my wife, who I miss dearly.

Each and every little bit helps. Thanks for reading.

We would appreciate it if you shared this with other friends and/or family.

Thank you.