Levi | Māngere, Auckland

“I’m homeless. I’m struggling in life because of that, but I’m thinking in the future, I still put my head up high, and still think ahead and think of the future.

No matter what happens I lift my head up and walk tall and think of the future, because there’s a chance for me out there in the world, even though you’re supposed to have your qualification with you, before you go to the world, but ah, yeah Because I ate the apple, I sin. I’m a Samoan. I was born in Samoa. I’m from Upolu, Western Samoa, and my English is pretty good. I didn’t know how to speak English when I first arrived in New Zealand. As the years went by, I managed to hear a lot of English speaking, and I copied it and here I am. I have good English speaking and I arrived here in New Zealand in 1980, and this is Year 2021, so I’m 49 this year on June. But I still look young. I like to look young. I’d like to live another 100 more years, so I can enjoy my sex life with my woman, and have heaps of women. Beautiful women, that is. Today I’m going to go now and have a party. I’m getting paid today. I’m getting my benefit every Tuesday night.   I get $490. So I’m going to have a party tonight and then move out of my lodge, because this old man named Jim wants me to stay there for a long time over at his house, because he likes my company, and I enjoy staying with Jim. A lot of people like me, so I wouldn’t go anywhere else where people don’t like me. I’d rather people like me than don’t like me.  

Home means next to your father and mother’s home, your brother and sisters. You feel comfortable and you feel like ‘happily ever after’ sort of family gathering. You have Christmas and you have New Years. You have birthdays, and you have college degrees, and you have university degrees. I call that home, because it involves all that drama, all that nice feeling, all that goody-goody stuff. You’re getting all those presents and everything. That’s what I call home. Where you’re comfortable at. 

I never want to move away from Ōtara, because they’re my bloods for life. I’m a bloods. I’m a BFL.   Ōtara is where it all began or where the bloods all began in Ōtara. So, that’s where I call  home as well, and my hometown, Otara.”