Can I ask this, how were you expecting me to take it?
To be honest, I knew that I was bisexual and even if you took it badly,
I was prepared to just carry on with my life anyways.
Because for me, I wanted to be fully happy.
I’ve never asked you openly how you felt about it
because I was prepared just to live my life anyway.
And if that meant cutting everyone out of my life so I could be genuinely happy, I was going to do it.
My name is Mahe Pofele and I am a student
and I work as a quantity surveyor.
I grew up in a little suburb in Auckland called Glen Innes
and I now live in Mount Maunganui.
My dad’s from Tonga and he’s from a village called Leimatua and Matahau
Eight years ago I had broken up with my then girlfriend.
I knew then and there that I was bisexual.
I told my dad in the driveway of his old house
and then he just looked at me and was like, “It’s all good, I understand.”
But I’m unsure if he fully understands.
I believe that he thinks I can change it.
He would’ve been struggling to tell me
because he knows mostly I really try to be like a man’s man.
Play rugby, do stuff, most of the guys I know and hang out with are tough guys.
I think he was struggling with that part to be able to share with me.
I’d rather accept him to feel comfortable in who he is
than to force him into something else he’s not.
When Mahe was born, I was over the moon.
I was also quite young.
Seeing probably not the best sides of my father,
it kind of made me think about how I wanted to be with Mahe.
When I parted ways with his mum, my mother took a big part of raising him.
Being raised by my grandmother gave me a sense of stability
and I felt secure and loved.
That’s what I wanted the most, and I got that from her.
She worked very hard, very loving, very caring, made sure that I was looked after.
Pushed me hard to get educated and wanted me to get educated and make a better life for myself.
That’s where I get my drive to succeed is from her.
She taught me everything that I know now.
I saw an opportunity with the demand for quantity surveyors in the construction industry
and I followed the demand and that’s why I’m here now.
Working part time as a QS really has helped me.
I remember stories from Manaema when they came here,
even buying bread and milk was difficult because they didn’t know how to speak English.
It actually really upsets me a lot ‘cause
knowing what she was like and then going into a shop and then having to struggle
to ask for bread and milk...
it beats me up eh.
- I think the context of the struggle is
in Tonga, when you go to the shops, the bread looks different.
- Oh yeah, definitely. Well they say it all the time, mā Tonga is way better
- The bread looks different and so does the milk.
But also too, we can go to the shop and say
we can say to the shopkeeper, “I’ll be back tomorrow or back the next day to pay for the bread.”
and it’s okay.
But in New Zealand, you need to be able to work to get money.
- Oh 100%.
- And you’d be guaranteed that when they came here no one took them around the shop and go,
“This is how we do shopping, this is what we pick out, this is bread.”
I don’t really fit in in the queer community
and I don’t really fit in in the straight world.
I think that people’s position on bisexuality
is that you have a choice and it still feels that way.
But you can’t help who you fall in love with.
You can’t help that fact and that’s what you don’t choose.
We’re currently just down at the site of what was the Rainbow Youth drop-in centre in Tauranga.
They don’t know yet but suspected arson - someone burnt it down.
Although I didn’t come here,
it’s sad to think that this is possibly an attack on the community that I’m a part of.
Just makes you think, why are we so behind? Why are we not progressing?
The thought of it really pisses me off as well.
It made me think to myself that I don’t do enough for the community.
Even though I feel like I’ve had a rough time trying to fit in
it doesn’t mean that I still can’t help.
I might reach out and just see what I can do.
I feel like...
someone might see that I’m doing something and then take inspiration to help as well.
For me, the biggest thing is just to have you as a dad there all the time.
‘Cause obviously for me growing up with my grandmother even though I love her,
I never had parents so I just had her.
And she did all the things that a dad was supposed to do with me.
I guess it’s hard because I know you were going through your own stuff
and you got remarried and stuff like that.
Things that I see you do with Api and Foa and Kingston, I never had that.
And I struggle with that.
But I see...
that you are a good dad to them and that makes me happy.
I don’t know if I have what it is to be a father.
- None of us are gonna be great dads, we become great dads.
And that’s the key word. We become.
You can prepare yourself to be a great dad
but some of the stuff that we prepare for in life isn’t what we’re gonna ever use.
I don’t see a certificate saying, ‘You got a diploma to be a dad’.
And some of the knowledge that we use and study for we’ll never be able to use in the real life.
- You’ve obviously become a great dad because you have all these things you can lecture me on now.
Just imagine that, just imagine the scrapes and the cuts that I bear
to be able to get there.
I sit there and think about,
what would you become if I didn’t make the choices I made back then?
I just wanna say I love you Dad.
And thank you for doing this, it means a lot to me.