Leish | Manurewa
“Well, I could tell you about the person that I fell in love with when I was young, but that would be a waste of time. So my first love experience would be when I was pregnant with my daughter.
That’s how I learned about true love. Not any of this puppy love stuff, and you know, just falling in love with everything that a male has to do. It was actually listening to my daughter’s heartbeat for the first time in my first scan. Made me fall in love for the first time, that’s my story.
For me (love), it’s contentment, security, safety, a sense of fulfilment and peace for love, especially with family love. I believe everybody needs family, whether it be blood-related or by choice. Everybody needs family, to know what love it. Physical-wise, butterflies, heart beats faster, definitely, I don’t know. It’s just like having; you know how Māori wear cloaks, Korowai? It’s just like having a Korowai over your whole being, when you, when I experience love for the first time, or even in general really, is just having that Korowai around you all the time.
My background, I’ve lived in Māngere all my life. My dad was definitely working. My mum stayed home and looked after us and took care of the school stuff, and everything else like that. Sometimes Dad used to work seven days a week, make sure that we had a very comfortable life. Back in those days, life was a lot easier. We were used to growing up with steak on our plates, bacon in the morning, just all the luxuries in life that people don’t get to experience these days; so definitely hard-working parents. My mother was the rock in our family, and our dad was the backbone in our family, definitely good working values that we learned from them. School was very important in our family, so most definitely we saw school through.
Life wasn’t easy, though. My dad did have a few anger issues that he had to deal with, which he did deal with, and my mum, she was constantly there. She was the, she was the strong point in our life, you know, emotionally, definitely our support system.
We value Māori values most definitely, especially with our parents; we were brought up with respect. Respect our elders; be nice and kind to everybody out there in the community. Yeah, that’s what my upbringing was pretty much like. Went to Nga Iwi Primary School. So yes, definitely witnessed a lot of good and bad things from there. I went onto Bader Intermediate, learned to grow up pretty fast there, and Māngere College. Learned to do naughty stuff, as all teenagers do. Then from there, growing into an adult, still staying in Māngere, seeing the changes that the community and the whole world has been through is very hard to witness. So, now with kids of my own, I’m very protective and very sceptical of how things are in the world. I’m definitely trying to teach them good values, but also to have a good backbone.
I’m definitely proud of my children. My daughter’s actually a teacher now, she teachers at Finlayson Primary School. Oh, Finlayson School, not a primary school. She teaches in the bilingual unit there. This is her second year of being an actual teacher, and she loves her job. So I’m very proud of her. She went to Auckland University, did her degrees there. My up and coming daughter, she’s a teenager. She’s just at her exams right now, which is why we’re sort of in a hurry. She’s sitting her last exam of the year. I’m very proud of her. She’s already got her credits for next year, so she tells me she doesn’t have to work hard, but that’s not acceptable in our family. We strive for excellence regardless. So, she still has to study and still work hard. I’ve got my 10-year-old who’s at Finlayson Primary. She’s in the total immersion unit there for Māori and she’s doing well. She’s come out of her shell, so I’m happy with her, and now I’ve got a two-year-old son who’s a right little bugger; keeps me on my toes. Totally different from my three daughters, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. I love them all and I’m proud of them all. So yeah, good things for us, hopefully, fingers crossed. Definitely proud of all my kids, I do hope for the best in their future. Whatever they do decide to do, I will back them up 100 per cent. They don’t need to go to university, just as long as they’re doing something after they finish their school years. That’s all that matters for me, is that they’re happy and they can stand on their own two feet once they leave Mummy.”
