Lesi | Otara
“I’m Polynesian-Fijian. I’ve done my family tree connection and I’m from everywhere in the Polynesia, apparently. So, I’m quite a mix, so who I identify with and call home is Fiji.
There’s a lot. The very recent challenge is going to the gym every day for the last two weeks. So, I decided to look at my life and just thought, I have a son, I’m a single mum, and I decided that I needed to get more active and in order to do that I needed to cultivate daily habits, and one of those daily habits was making sure I attended a gym. So I joined this MMA gym, which is on my way home, and I go every day Monday to Friday.
The challenges associated with that is just being patient with my results, and in the effort now so that I may be able to, say in three months time, six months time, a year down the line, seek more constructive results, but the result so far in the last two years; I feel more energetic, I feel more in love with life.
It helped when a sparring partner, a girl that goes to the gym as well, was looking for a sparring partner, so she just turned up out of nowhere, and fell in to my lap, and that sort of helped me on this journey of going every day. She’s always texting me; hey, how you going, and encouraging me to go along, so are the team and the trainers. The gym I go to is The Stables. It’s an MMA fitness centre. So it’s a gym for all ages, and it’s just a fun environment to work out and sweat it out; all the stress, frustration and all in between.
I’m a single mum. Due to the domestic violence surrounding me and my ex-partner it has sort of catapulted me into a career path in nursing. Dealing with domestic violence is always painful, especially when it’s so close to home, and it just made me appreciate the men in my family more. They never hit me, they’ve always respected me, and I guess through that situation I’ve become a stronger person.
My son’s two years old, so I’ve been going through domestic violence since before he was born, so I’m a survivor of domestic violence. In April of this year, I was stabbed 13 times. So, you could see some scars and I was in hospital for a week, and I went back to Fiji, spent some time with my family, and I guess that’s one of those really big challenges where my whole family fell apart. You know I lost my ex-partner and this idea of family, and this concept of family, and you know, I’ve always thought Mum, Dad, family, kids, but obviously that’s not what’s happened.
I blamed myself for a long time, saying that it was my fault I was being hurt and it was my fault I was in this domestic violence relationship. Now my goal is to become a registered nurse. I’m in my first year of study, and what propels me forward is just my son and making sure that I have a career, so that I may be able to provide for him. The fact that I’ve had so much family support through all this… I’m just blessed and thankful every day that I’m still here, and that I’m able to do this interview.
My background; I grew up in Fiji. I’m a small town village girl from a small island called Fiji. I had the best lifestyle growing up. I sort of grew up in a sustainable community, so most of our food was 10 feet from our table, and everything is fresh. So, if I’m hungry, at breakfast; we get it from the banana tree, we get it from the pawpaw tree, we get the pineapple, the watermelon, and I guess that was the lifestyle, and everyone that lived around you was your family. So it was like a huge village, and I’m used to my neighbours being 10 km down the road, whereas in Auckland you fart and you can hear it next door.
I immigrated to New Zealand when I was 11/12, and that was a complete culture shock for me, you know, coming away from my family and everything.”
