Barbers at cutting edge of mental health
Less than a year ago Halene Ikiua was behind bars, now he tells Troels Sommerville he’s turning lives around – one trim, and one chat at a time.
It’s redemption time for Halene Ikiua.
In 2019, he was sentenced to three years in prison as one of four men convicted of importing methamphetamine into New Zealand.
He had allowed his Clover Park barbershop, Halene & Sons, to be used as a delivery point for parcels sent from overseas that contained drugs. He took responsibility, pleaded guilty, and was soon sitting in a cell.
But it gave him think.
‘‘It might sound strange, but it was good for me – brought me back to ground level, taught me to be more comfortable in myself,’’ Ikiua said.
Now out and back in his shop, he wants to help others.
From gang members to real estate agents, no matter who sits in Ikiua’s barbershop chair, he’s always willing to lend an ear to listen.
Through more than a decade of cutting hair he has heard all sorts. Often it’s stories about relationship and work pressures, but he’s had more than a few men confess to contemplating suicide.
‘‘It’s pretty daunting at times, but we tend to get through it and end up both of us smiling,’’ he said.
‘‘Like that deep conversation really broke down something and that person ended up going home and carried on with life being happy.’’
It’s a responsibility he doesn’t take lightly.
New Zealand has one of the highest suicide rates per head of population in the Western world, and the numbers are particularly high among young Pasifika.
A hope of changing those numbers is what led Ikiua to Barberhood.
It’s group time of about to
‘‘What happens is that these guys become pseudo-social workers and counsellors... because their customers trust them, they feel safe inside the barber shop.’’ Matua Letoa Jenkins
40 or so barbers – most of them from South Auckland – trying to give these professionals extra tools to aid in mending both their own and their clients’ mental health.
Since its inception in September last year, the collective has provided regular clinics where members learn coping strategies for themselves, and ways they can help those sitting in their chairs.
‘‘What happens is that these guys become pseudo social workers and counsellors... because their customers trust them, they feel safe inside the barber shop,’’ said Matua Letoa Jenkins.
He’s the general manager of the Village Collective, an NGO working with Pasifika youth in
south Auckland, and one of the masterminds behind Barberhood. Jenkins had been looking to create a men’s leadership group and, after a chance meeting with some of the barbers, he realised there was no need to reinvent the wheel.
So he helped them build the network, but at the same time made sure they were equipped to cope with whatever they might hear in the chair.
And as they started to pick up steam, the group realised their ability to affect change in their community was beyond just listening.
‘‘Fitz’’, founder of Ma¯ ngere’s twosevenfive barbershop, is a blueprint for what many, like Ikiua, hope to become.
Through his shop he has already set up a music studio, and is running a pilot programme for youngsters to come in and hone their chess skills.
But at the heart of it, he wants the shop to be a ‘‘safe space’’ where men can come and speak openly about how they feel.
‘‘What we’ve done is put name to it,’’ Fitz said.
‘‘Before, people would come in and talk, but now that we’ve put it out there people know that there’s nothing they can’t say, and it has made them a lot more comfortable.’’
Ikiua agrees. For him the barbershop is a place where pretences are stripped off at the door and honest conversations a can happen.
‘‘It’s a platform for us to really get it out there... that people can come towards us, reach their hand out and not be left in the cold – that there are people there who are in the same boat,’’ he said.
‘‘You get all walks of life, but when they walk through that door they are just the man they are, with none of society’s labels.
‘‘You can walk in a patched member, but if you jump into my chair... I just see you as you.’’