Andrea – Mt Roskill
“I gave my husband a big smoochie kiss this morning.
My daughter goes to Waikōwhai Intermediate – I make her lunch every day so she knows that her lunchbox is full of something that mum has made, and I just shouted my older daughter a nice smoothie here at the market, because she didn’t have any cash on her.
I grew up in Mt Roskill. I’ve always lived in Mt Roskill. So that’s 48 years of being a Mt Roskill resident, and I’m very passionate about this place. There’s a real amazing community here, and I now work in Mt Roskill. I co-manage the op-shop at in Richardson Road, which is run by Mt Roskill Baptist Church. So that’s my church. That’s my workplace. We have an amazing multi-cultural group of people that run the shop.
Our volunteers are amazing; multi-generational, multi-cultural. We basically have heaps of people from the community that come in. We’re able to help them with good priced clothes, cheap-cheap clothes. We’re known as New 2 U op shop, known as the cheapest one around. So we just really want to help our community, help them make ends meet, and I’m married to a Tongan-Niuean for 25 years, and got two lovely girls. What I think is important um, as a family these days, um is that you give your children a place ah, to call their own, so um, which is kind of just more than just a home; it’s a, it’s a community or a neighbourhood. So we have sort of several communities that we’re part of; one is our church, one is the actual neighbourhood community.
Our girls go to local schools, so we’re always bumping into people that we know. When we go to the supermarket, when we walked around the street, when we come to somewhere like here at the market. Just gives them a place where they really feel like they are known and valued, and appreciated and they can have a part to play. You know, they can get involved in things that actually help the community. My daughter’s been involved with Raise Up, which is part of the YMCA, and also the the Youth Caucus which sort of gives young people a voice at local council level. So that’s two things she’s been involved with and yeah just helping them find out who they are in a kind of a context of a local community really – it’s really important to our family as well as our, faith, and just family and friends kind of being part of that world.
The world is something that we need to care about, and people are valuable and you know, we’re kind of like, one big family. That kind of value that people kind of miss is actually part of what Christianity is. There’s so many other things that Christianity seems to represent, but that is basically what the Bible talks about; you know, one big world, one big family. We all are valuable.
I’ve been involved with a group called Roskill Community Network, which is basically trying a group of agencies and all sorts of people that just meet together once a month, and we try and look at, look at raising the potential of Mt Roskill. So yeah that’s just another way that I always feel like I’ve connected to something as well and my kids are always being dragged along to things like that too and now they’re just starting to take it on as their own. You know, sort of own it as well, so it’s been good.
From a personal point of view I was raised by a step-mother who was raised by someone. Her mother grew up in an orphanage. So there was kind of a lack of nurture, and so I’ve had to learn by drawing on other people’s experience and just helping other people. You know, just getting other people involved – I knew that it wasn’t a good idea to do it on my own, because I might not have all the goods. So it’s been one of those group efforts. Bringing people into the girls lives that have helped to grow them as well, helped to love and nurture them my husband’s really great. He’s from a bigger family and in a Pacific Island family it sort of comes more natural, you know, doing life together and raising kids, heaps of them, whereas I just stopped at two.
One thing I try and do with both my girls is connect with the in the morning and at night, so that might just be a hug, a question, how are you feeling, how did you sleep? And when they go to bed at night just kind of debrief what happened today; was there anything that worried you, was there anyone that was mean to you, was there anything you want to talk about? So at the end of the day they’re not alone with their own thoughts thinking, oh someone was mean to me so therefore I must be a bad person, or not good enough or something. So, just trying to make sure that they have something positive at the end of the day before they go to sleep.
Another thing I’m able to do which I’m thankful for, is work part-time so that I can be there before and after school, and I know for a lot of people that’s not possible, but that’s something I’ve been thankful that I can do is be there before and after school so they’ve got a parent there at home. I think, I guess what works is getting to know people in your community. We’ve become a society that we build our fences we kind of keep our neighbours out, but I think what’s going to really help is is letting people in. And then, you can group together and you’re, kind of stronger. I mean, like this community has been through amazing challenges, a lot of negative stuff, but there’s strength upon strength upon strength is happening in the community of Mt Roskill and even Wesley at the moment.
From a place that used to be high on crime, there’s still crime but you never hear. That’s not the main thing. It’s because people have got to know each other, got to bond, you know, work together, bond together, work on things together and we’re just so much more comfortable bumping into each other and hanging out together in places. So yeah I’ve really noticed that my children feel comfortable going around places. Because usually Mum and Dad knows somebody or are involved in something, and you know, it just makes it far more safer and they feel just more comfortable and can be themselves. Yeah, so community I guess would be the short answer to that.
We share parenting quite a lot. I don’t know whether that’s a Pacific Island thing. I think a lot of Pacific Island dads are more involved with their kids – they like to play sport with their kids and do things with their kids, and at home, well fortunately for me he used to run a residential boys’ home for at risk youth, so he’s very used to putting in a load of washing and arranging meals and arranging routines and stuff.
So that was a good score there for me. If he sees something that needs doing he quite often does it without, being asked or anything. So there is a lot of shared parenting and shared housework load. Sometimes he’s not so good at the DIY stuff, so I change the light bulbs and do the touch-up painting and stuff like that. So you know it’s yeah very fortunate that we’re very versatile, and blend together well for that.
We kind of be true to our vows. I think your marriage vows are only as good as your own mental health or your own capacity to think forever, till death do us part. We’ve had some hard times, but it’s always good to get outside counsel when there’s something that’s too hard to manage yourself. So we’ve had some outside counsel. We’ve had some some marriage training times.
It’s just been a matter of reminding ourselves, okay we made those vows so how are we going to, you know, at the moment I can’t stand you, so how are we going to get to till death do us part, so we’ve got, okay well let’s get some counselling, let’s get some help, let’s work, try and get through this before it becomes a big issue. So that’s probably the, you know keep, keep the little problems, work on the little problems before they come, become you know too, too massive.”
