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After months of searching for a Winnie the Pooh teddy her dad used to own, Nadiah Najib finally found an exact replica for sale more than 18,000km away in Christchurch.
Najib, 39, from Amsterdam, desperately wanted something to link her to her father, Nik Najib Hussain.
Her search led her to an online business for second-hand plush toys.
Ali Leckie and Jo Kepple, the duo behind Aroha Bears & Friends, initially had no idea why Najib wanted the teddy.
When a delay meant they could not ship it to Amsterdam as planned, they decided to refund the $125 she had paid.
It was only after they sent the money back that Najib told them the significance of the bear.
“We realised then how important it was that she should get that bear. So of course we had a wee cry about that. It was just so beautiful,” Leckie said.
They decided to send the teddy as a gesture of goodwill.
Najib said her father was “a very sentimental man” and would carry his teddy around and hug him in bed. He died last July, aged 76.
Najib had her own Pooh Bear teddy when she was young. In 2009, Hussain spotted a Winnie the Pooh teddy at a car boot sale and bought it for himself.
“I think he remembered all those memories from the 90s when we were growing up,” she said.
She wanted his teddy so she had a link back to him and online searches led her all the way to the Aroha Bears & Friends.
Leckie and Kepple had named the teddy Winnie the Pooh – “because that’s what he was” – but Najib asked the pair if they would give him a Māori name.
Najib said: “Because he’s from Aotearoa, it only felt right that he carry a Māori name.”
So Leckie and Kepple named him Hoa, meaning friend.
Said Leckie: “We said to him – I mean, it’s really weird, I know – but we said: ‘You’re going to the other side of the world, it’s a long way away, it’s going to be dark for a long time, but when you get to the other place, you’ll have a new mum and she’ll give you a big cuddle’.”
Najib has since sent the pair a series of photos of the bear settling into Amsterdam life – eating dinner, visiting a delicatessen and posing in front of the city’s iconic canals.
She also shared a photo of herself cuddling Hoa on a bridge over a canal.
Najib has never been to Christchurch, but says she wants to visit so Hoa can return to his old home.
“He does miss it. He said that Europe is very cold and dreary.”