From Mob member to National Youth Worker and Pastor
Wayne Poutoa I was born in Aotearoa (New Zealand), my parents having migrated from Samoa to give us kids a better education and a better lifestyle. But sometimes things don’t go according to plan. My father was very militant. He was a “wharfie”, who worked for years on the wharf in Wellington. He used to come home and all of us kids would be sitting at the front door, by the hallway, seated cross legged with arms folded, waiting for him to arrive home. I remember looking underneath the front door and seeing the shadow of his feet. He would creak the steps and open the front door. We would still stay there when he walked in. Then he would go through every room and wipe the windowsills to check for dust to make sure that the whole house was clean and that everything was spick and span. And if it wasn’t, we got a hiding. So, we lived in fear quite a lot. My sister and I come from a blended family. When my mother first met him he already had four kids, so there were eight of us. Anyway, things didn’t go really well for us. I remember one time that my stepbrother and I went to the dairy. In those days you could buy a bottle of Coke and could take the empty bottles back and get some money for them. We used to build trolleys out of pram wheels and load up and do a bottle run then go to the dairy and cash in for the money. But what we started doing was we would go to the front and cash the bottles and then go to the back of the dairy, steal more, and put them back in the trolley and go to the front again for another cash in.
But we eventually got caught and the police took us home. I remember saying to the police clearly, “Please don’t take us home”. But they did and I remember my father talking to them. We were in total fear. The cops knew the situation, but they couldn’t do anything. They walked away. And then we walked into the house and my father tied our hands behind our backs.. Then he just smashed us. He belted us with everything he had. That’s how we grew up. So it wasn’t rocket science as to why my mother wanted to leave him. Sometimes she would make the attempt to leave. My brothers and sisters would hide me under the bed. Although all this violence was going on, I did not want to
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