Bruno Saia is a Brazilian journalist who came to New Zealand in search of a new lifestyle and that’s what he has found at the Waimea Weekly newspaper.
“I am doing what I am experienced in and what I love to do”, he says.
He studied journalism in Brazil and his career started in 2004 as a reporter at the university’s radio station.
After graduation he moved to São Paulo, the biggest city in South America, where he started a job at a specialised cosmetics business magazine.
At the same time, he was part of the editorial staff of the sports section at ‘O Estado de São Paulo’, one of the most traditional newspapers in the country.
After a while, he went to ‘Agora São Paulo’, one of the most popular Brazilian newspapers, where he worked in the economics section, specialising in writing articles about working relationships.
His experience in a big city opened the doors to Bruno when he decided to move to a much smaller town where he spent most of his childhood.
At the local newspaper ‘O Imparcial’ he had some of the most important experiences in his career as a reporter.
He wrote about the people, sports, politics, economics and he specialised in crime stories.
All those subjects required great responsibility and lots of hard work. He did this for three years.
Bruno arrived in New Zealand in April and instantly fell in love with the place and the people.
He is now one of the reporters at the Waimea Weekly. “Writing in English instead of Portuguese, as I did in Brazil, is a big challenge, but I’ll do my best to tell all the stories about the people in this amazing community”, he says.
His work partner is the reporter Susan Johnson, who also chose for a career change.
Susan trained as a nurse in Christchurch, ‘hundreds of years ago’ before her love of travel took her overseas, first to the North Island ‘in those days that counted as overseas’, Sydney and on to the UK which became her base to explore Europe.
“I was appalling bad at speaking a foreign language so had to live in England, I learnt to say ‘hello’, ‘goodbye’ and ‘how much’ in 3 different languages, that seemed to get me by.”
A hint of what was to come was 8 years as health nurse at a newspaper printing company in Docklands, London, “I could write a book about my time there, one memorable moment, trying to find the top of a finger in the press hall so the surgeon could re-attach it. Yes, I found it and yes, it was stitched back on.”, says Susan.
From there Susan went into private practice, apparently working in some very special places but as she signed the Official Secrets Act she can’t tell us about it. “I might write another book about it though”, she says.
About four years ago she returned home and spent some time travelling around the country looking for the right job and the right place to live, ‘dog grooming on the Coromandel Coast, retail in Tauranga, until it all fell into place in the best place on earth.’
Susan likes to know all about each member of ther community and telling their stories is what she loves the most.