Hine | Northcote
“Well, I turned 66 on 21 January.
The best thing, and yesterday, I’m a bit biased here, but I listened to a Christian programme, and the man spoke to my spirit, to my heart. American. At 17 he came out of a drug background, and he was summarising life, I suppose, and I heard, I think I got the guy, the humour. He talked about hatched, matched and dispatched, and in life they throw things at you. They grow water at you. They throw rice at you. Well, in America they do, and then they throw dirt at you at the end, but he talked about in a person’s life, the hurt and the dirt, and I guess my journey is about the mask, and when I say the mask; those things that I’ve built up for protection, and this is what is, I found useful listening to some of the Christian programs, identifying at my age, the giftings, the core, the purpose.
I’m taking part in a research project for Massey University. The reason, well how they got hold of me was through the community house, Onepoto Awhina here in Northcote. My mother was the first chairperson. So, my mother was community-minded, and me, well I’m just being myself. She used to say, you’re just like your father, and I don’t know if that was a compliment.
We moved to Auckland, Northcote, when I was eight. Although I’ve lived out of Auckland, away from Northcote maybe three or four years, that’s the reason that I’m taking part in this project, the impact of immigration on this, and it’s under Professor Paul Spoonley at Massey University, and the person interviewing me is Zimbabwean-born, doing her PhD I think in English. So, she’ll be at home tomorrow, and they’ll take some photos, I’ll play the piano, and sing a song called Trees. My father went to war, World War II, and he came back, not diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress, so; I think that I shall never see a poem lovely as a tree. It’s a nice song. It’s only composed in 1938/39, but I’ll play the piano to it. I’ll sing, and then I’ll play one of my faster Christian songs I have decided.
I like the dramatic, I suppose. The drama. Action movies a little bit, but it depends. Well, it’s about the heart I observe.
Went to school here. Went to Auckland Girls’, and I didn’t learn te reo, my Māori language, which I’m going back to, hopefully this year, because when I went to Auckland Girls’, although Māori language was an option, I learned French, German, and some Latin, because Māori was not, in my mind, posh enough. I did an English degree at Auckland Uni.
Since I haven’t been working, and I stopped working in 2000, through restructuring in a Government department. In terms of life, people; I observe people, what makes them tick. I see people that work really hard, and what’s happening in the city, and so-called affordable housing, and how difficult it must be for some families to put food on the table, to pay for the rent.
I guess it is about the people. That’s what the Māori says; He aha te mea nui o te ao, what’s the most important thing in life? He tangata, he tangata, he tangata; the person, the value of a person. If I was to quote the Christian part, well you know, in spite of everything that man’s capable of doing, man was still made in the image of God, a loving creator. I find that hard. I struggle with it myself but you know, that’s where I suppose I come from.”
