From the ground up

An ex-Mongrel Mob member is teaching a new generation that a difficult past need not define their future.

- REBECCA MACFIE

In Napier's industrial zone, a couple of young workers are paving a street corner on the banks of the Ahuriri Estuary. It's a small and unremarkable civil construction site. The workers are in high-vis gear, and there's a small digger bearing the name Topline Contracting. For the ordinary passer-by, there's nothing to see here. But this site is part of a much larger story of rehabilitation, healing and growth.

One of the crew in high-vis is Tumana Sullivan. He grew up in the impoverished suburb of Maraenui. When he was 13, his mother died suddenly of a heart attack, and he anaesthetised his pain with drugs and alcohol. He dropped out of school at 14, spent years drifting between the households of extended whānau, had time on the dole and bounced in and out of jobs. He had several brushes with the law, but managed to get himself clean of drugs a few years ago. He and his partner became parents when they were teenagers.

He wanted a better life for his children and partner. But that’s easier said than done: how to build a better future without access to the skills and jobs to earn a higher wage? The average employer can’t be bothered taking on guys like him, except perhaps when they need some low-paid casual muscle.

But Sullivan has found himself with a boss who is not average; a boss who understands what it’s like to struggle, because he has been there, too. Taurus Taurima is the employer who gave him a chance, hiring him three years ago to learn civil construction skills. For Sullivan and other workers, he’s the bro who defied the odds and showed them that a difficult past need not define the future.