Greg Koroheke

ANGLICAN PRIEST SINCE 2006 AND A PATCHED MONGREL MOB MEMBER

You’re 18 now, and making some good decisions and some not-so-good ones. Home is where the family is — and that means being on the move as we work together shearing, haymaking and helping our old people in the Hangatiki area, south of Otorohanga. It’s a good life, and if I had to chance to go back to living that way I would.

There wasn’t an idle minute. When darkness came you slept. When daylight came, you got up. There was no moaning, you just got it done, and I don’t think any of us ever got sick. We didn’t even worry about money. Everybody shared it. And the outside world? We never took any notice of that. Everything was going on in our world.

But I was also just starting to get involved in the Mongrel Mob’s King Country chapter, going to youth camps.

Today, it’s different. There’s rules. In those days, we were naughty. I don’t want to say what we did — I could still get charged.

Being in the Mongrel Mob, it was mostly about crimes — it was just something you did, it was in front of you.

I want to say thank you to God for helping me get to 69.

When I talk to young people in jails now, I walk their journey back with them.

And I tell them what I would tell my 18-year-old self: There’s a better life. Your family needs you.

So don’t go there, don’t go down that path.