Rob | Manurewa
“This weekend just gone. I go home quite a bit, back up to Mangonui, so me and my two grandsons went home and did some fishing, diving and a bit of hunting, went home to visit whānau.
These days mainly with my grandchildren. Every weekend I spend with them, so that’s time for me to unwind, and have fun with my grandchildren and share things with them, and take them to the movies, just go for a drive, go to the beach, and go visit like museums, go to the movies. So these are the fun things I like to do with all my grandchildren. Otherwise me and my wife on Sundays, we have time to ourselves, and yeah just sit down and watch the TV or maybe go to a movie or two, but otherwise I look forward to every day. People die so you understand as you get older that you’ve got to unwind and have fun, otherwise life is nothing without it.
Well recently my cousins wife passed away about a year ago, so he’s down quite a bit lately. I went to go and see him three weeks ago, and I said, let’s go out for a drink. I don’t drink, but he does, and so it’s just, I guess for him, and for myself, just trying to make him look at other things besides what he’s doing, and it made him happy. It made me happy, too because I hadn’t seen him for awhile. My life’s all around family, that’s where most of my fun is, and as for my friends; well, my friends are my friends, and that’s about it for them.
Well, I grew up in the Far North. I was there for about 12 years. I grew up in the bush and on the water, all my childhood was basically there. When I was about 13/14 I moved to South Auckland where my parents lived. I stayed there, well I left home about 15. Unfortunately I was an ex-gang member, drug-dealer. So I did that for about 12/13 years, and when I was about 30, Christianity turned up in my life and changed the aspects of my life.
Today, for me, my greatest treasures are my grand-children. I have 26 grandchildren, and I love all of them. Fortunately I love them more than my own children, but at the end of the day I’ve realised now why my grandparents always loved us more than they loved our parents, and now that I’ve got one great-great, I’ve got to the point where I’m starting to love her more than I love my other grandchildren. At the end of the day I treasure them all, but the most important thing in my life I treasure, is life itself, because you don’t know what’s going to happen every day when you wake up, and I want to make sure that every day that I wake up, that I’m going to have a good day, and you know, meet guys like you, otherwise, you know, life is boring. I like to keep myself occupied, I just love the people I meet; my friends who I work with, and especially my wife who I’ve been married to for 36 years.”
