Finding new hope
Pita holds up his phone to show the four video clips he has taken of food he makes at the City Mission’s Thrive Café. He even used a selfie stick to help get the angles right.
The phone, so tiny in his huge hand, shows sausage rolls, baking, and best of all himself with a big genuine eyes-wrinkled smile doing thumbs up and looking proudly straight into the camera. It’s a roll-call of achievement.
“We can use that with your story Pita,” I say. He’s deaf and stares intently at my lips to understand.
He nods.
“I’m happy,” he says out of the blue. He points at his chest and lifts his chin confidently. “I’m happy,” he says again and the big hands wrap mine in a warm handshake.
Pita was in The Press newspaper and on Stuff a few weeks ago, starring in a photograph for the story about how we have launched social enterprises to give our clients like Pita real-life work experience.
It was a nice photo. They say a photo can tell a thousand words but in Pita’s case you really need the words to understand how extraordinary it is that Pita at 57 is working in a café making food for others, is enjoying being with workmates, is enjoying being happy, has a warm home,
and has a future he looks forward to.
We asked Pita if we could share his story to show how work and our efforts can put meaning back into a life, and can transform that life.
He said yes immediately because he might inspire others, especially other struggling deaf people, and help them find the new hope he has found.
“Pita was born deaf and into a large North Island family. It was a hard upbringing, especially being deaf in a family that didn’t use sign language.”
He told his story from a chair in one of the sunny upstairs rooms at the City Mission where he has come for courses and company. With us was a sign language translator who you sometimes see on TV on Government announcements.
Pita was born deaf and into a large North Island family. It was a hard upbringing, especially being deaf in a family that didn’t use sign language.
It got much harder one day when aged 6 he arrived back from school to find his house surrounded by police who had come to get his father. All the children were put in foster homes but the others ran
away as soon as they could leaving
him alone.
At 6 his family was scattered and blown to the winds like seeds from a Glenn Innes thistle where they lived.
Pita could understand little of what was going on and he says those next few years were the worst years of his life, and that’s saying something given what followed.
He ran away many times to try and find his dad and was moved from foster home to foster home and then to boys homes – prisons for those too young to be jailed as an adult.
His first full prison sentence was for fighting and it was as a fighter that he made his name in a gang. The local president was a relation and encouraged him in at 18. Two years later Pita got his patch.
“It was hard to communicate and there was lots of fighting and I spoke with my fists back then. In gangs, fists are number one and because I’m deaf and I didn’t have hearing aids I’d just punch someone if I thought they were being cheeky, and I might have made a mistake.”
He was an enforcer. “I was very tough, I was a real hard man. But it just wasn’t good, it wasn’t a life, it was horrible.”
Pita always seemed to be the one who went to prison whether or not he had done the crime.
Pita is clever and very self-aware. He knew then the gang was not true family and ultimately it would be a dead end for him.
One day when he was 23 he walked in to the gang headquarters and said “I’m out”. That had serious consequences but he is glad he did it.
It ended some of his troubles but there will always be plenty more when you have a start in life like that. When a man has a reputation, a drinking problem, lacks formal education, lacks any family structure and struggles to communicate, problems find him.
It would be fair to say that until five years ago Pita was in prison almost as much as he was out, often on drink driving charges. He worked at what he could and where he could, usually on the fringes of casual work, such as pulling engines out of crashed cars, carpentry, milking cows, shearing, whatever anyone wanted.
In prison he took courses and once did a cooking course at ARA but couldn’t attend the graduation because he was back in prison.
All the time he was adrift from his family in a way that seems unimaginable. Pita tells how one day he stepped off a bus in Opunake when he was 20 and a woman called out “Pita, Pita”. She told him he was her son. “I looked at her and I didn’t even recognise her.”
It was the last time he saw her for 37 years.
Another time in prison and he was told a brother he hadn’t seen in many years was also in the same prison and wanted a word. His brother told him his father had died. Then Pita was taken back to his cell, devastated.
He has been coming to the City Mission since July 2017 which says two things. One that he was open to being helped and also, honestly, we at the Mission probably took too long to try and do more
with him. He would sit mostly silently in the dayroom in the day programme and we gave him occasional food parcels and he spent a couple of nights in our emergency shelter in 2018 and 2019.
What changed is the Mission changed. Our day programmes have become learning programmes.
“Looking at Pita’s whole life and everything he has been through, I’m surprised he didn’t give up,”
In the last few years we have accelerated our goal of not just helping people like Pita in an emergency but also boosting their self-esteem, life skills and work skills. We believe the best gift we can give is independence.
“Looking at Pita’s whole life and everything he has been through, I’m surprised he didn’t give up,” says our Learning Development Programme team leader Lana Shields.
“He seems very strong willed and he has a flame of hope in him that needs feeding and supporting. He has just never had the opportunity.”
Pita started going to our courses, such as computer skills, and we started to get to know him better. We discovered so many ways he could be helped to live a fuller life and rejoin the community.
Lana discovered his past cooking experience and he jumped at the chance to volunteer to help prepare lunch for the other day programme men. He was a natural, showing lots of skill and preciseness with his work. That led to regular volunteering shifts in our new tiny hole-in-a-wall Thrive Café and this will become a paid position for Pita.
As regular work patterns developed he has flourished. He walks differently and attempts to talk much more (one of our amazing volunteer tutors is helping with this). He is more open and has
more pride and confidence.
“Everyone has seen the change in him. His shoulders are up, he is smiling all the time, and he has so much to look forward to going forward. He has this job and he is reconnecting with his family,” Lana says.
One day we helped him contact a brother over Skype who he hadn’t seen since he was 21. The brother told him his mother was living in a rest-home and reconnections with his family
are growing which makes him very happy.
Pita’s story is still unfolding but he is acutely aware of that and knows what path he wants to take.
“I’m happy. Before I was just really sad for such a long time. I love the City Mission and what you have done for me.
“You know how people write a book? And then sometimes they will write the next episode in the book? I feel like that is coming. It is like a second part to my story.”