Huva – Glen Innes
“I shared my last meal just last Friday over at the Marae in GI – the Glen Innes Marae, they have a shared community lunch/dinner thing happening over there.
Some good people down from the Faith Baptist Church; they just go there and they make a feed for the community and it’s open to everyone. So the last time I shared a meal with people is over there. You just get all walks of life just come in. So it’s pretty diverse; people sharing a meal together.
It’s community-building. There was an Asian lady there inside the Marae, and that just struck me as odd, because you’d really never see an Asian lady at the Marae, unless it’s for a powhiri or something, but she was there with her kids and they were just sitting down next to some Islanders, just everybody sharing a meal, having a laugh, just talking about stuff – life.
I was born and raised in Tonga. I moved over to Auckland when I was about nine. I grew up around South Auckland and East Auckland. What do I do? My passion is music, really. I work in retail. I work in everything, actually. I just like to move, try new experiences.
I feel at home in the hood. When I say the hood I mean Glen Innes, Panmure; where my people are, really. When I go out to what I would call more white areas, it’s different – just get a different sense for the people – different stares. Life; my everyday experiences inspire me. You only get one life, so you just be unapologetically yourself, really.
I would say Auckland is a pretty great place to live, compared to a lot of other places. So, we’re on sort of the right track, but we just need to restrict less things. Whenever an issue arises or something, and people hikoi and stuff, it’s all about placing new laws, and that just feels like restriction, to me. What I feel like we really need is empathy. You just need to take life as it is, and not try to bend it to make it a little bit safer, and you’re sacrificing freedom in that process.”
