What I learned from the president
Many of the men who come through the shelter evade eye contact and display a lack of what I would call self-worth.
This is understandable as many have had very challenging childhoods and often they have been institutionalised by the state in foster care or by the justice system in custodial care.
It is difficult to explain the look of lack of self-worth when absent from a person, but easy to explain the opposite as I have seen it many times before.
I have seen it when you get foster parents who really care about their foster children and I have seen it in adopted children who have been placed in the ideal family environment and allowed to grow into well-adjusted adults.
I also saw this look when a couple of years ago when I went to Braemar Hospital for a shoulder operation. I woke up after surgery in a two bed ward with a hell of a headache and a painful shoulder.
About 10 minutes after I woke they wheeled another patient in, I did not really see him as he was covered in sheets. After a short while we started to talk and at this stage we had a curtain between us.
I told him what I did and he said that he worked with youth.
About half an hour after he arrived he stood up and came around to my side of the curtain and introduced himself and shook hands.
As he walked away I noticed the large gang insignia on his back, when I inquired about the tattoo he explained that he had it done in prison with a guitar string when he spent some time there a decade ago.
Things clicked and I realised that he was the president of a local gang.
Neither of us could sleep so we talked for many hours about family and about the changes he was making but also about the changes he wanted for the youth that had fallen under his wing.
During these hours intermittently we would get visits from the young gang members and the prospects.
The look in these youth eyes and the way they carried themselves you could see that they had mana they had an air of self-confidence that was radiant.
I have no illusions that gangs have caused havoc in New Zealand and continue to do so, but I have also seen the good that they can do when they want to, and the recent stories of the Tribal Huk in Ngaruawahia may have been a good example of this.
If a gang leader can manage to create an environment that is conducive to our young people having a sense of self-worth then our education and youth intervention systems should be able to create the same so that people do not end up at the doors of night shelters.
Peter Humphreys is manager of the Hamilton Christian Nighshelter.
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