Aotearoa in 20: A golf club encounter changed the direction of Rachel Afeaki-Taumoepeau's life
Monday, 7 September 2020
A move, four kids, work, and losing a parent – it all came in the first 10 years of Rachel Afeaki-Taumoepeau’s marriage. She shares her story for Aotearoa in 20, a Stuff special project.
We met at a golf tournament at Clarks Beach up in Auckland.
I'm going to say he noticed me. I didn’t know who he was. And normally, as a Pacific Islander, particularly if you're Tongan, you have a tendency to know who is this person or which family he comes from.
My husband, Alekisanita Taumoepeau, and I got married in 2007. We had a quick courting season. Within a year and half we were engaged and then married. That was quite hard case. I was 34 then and had my first child at 35. You can imagine, being a Pacific woman, a bit of a late bloomer so to speak. But still, very busy as a professional woman. All of a sudden, my life took a pivot.
We had a golf theme at our engagement party in Mt Eden, and we got married at St Patrick's Cathedral in the city. We had our reception on the newly opened rooftop of the Auckland Museum.
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Golf, for my family, has been a social, common gathering. We’re not amazing golfers but golf was a sport we all tended to enjoy. My father and my uncles have been quite heavily involved with the New Zealand-Tongan golf club. My father and a group of friends set it up about 15 years ago.
I used to be the secretary, by default, and organised a lot of the events – and Alekisanita came to one. We were good friends, and the rest is history. He had a gentle, humble presence about him, and everyone who met him thought he was super-duper nice. I was 34. I had travelled the world, I had already been working, had already done a lot of things.
I’m New Zealand-born Tongan, raised in South Auckland, and did my big OE to London. I lived with some other New Zealand girls, worked for companies like Microsoft and BP UK, ran with the bulls in Pamplona, and heard the Pope take Mass at the Vatican.
Back home, I was a born and bred Aucklander. It wasn't until I got married that I moved to Hamilton and realised, oh, life is very different past the Bombay Hills. Had I not married my husband, I probably would not have come to know and appreciate how beautiful New Zealand is. New Zealand is beautiful from Auckland. But once you come out and you live in the regions, it’s easier to get to surrounding towns and areas that you're less likely to visit if you're born and raised in a particular city and you stay there.
In the first 10 years of our marriage, it seemed like I was doing twice as much in half the time. We hadn’t lived together or anything before our wedding.
I think people would say we’re quite the opposite: he’s an introvert, I'm an extrovert. He’s very precise. If you ask him to paint the fence, he’ll paint the fence, but it might take him about three months because he does it so perfectly. Whereas I’m like, oh my goodness, it’s got to be done in two days. It’s a good balance, especially for my boys.
We had four boys, from 2008 and every two years thereafter. Alekisanita has an older son as well. In 2014, I was the mother of four boys five years and under. I guess when you're in it, you don’t recognise it. But when you look back, I think, wow.
I would always say to people you actually just do, because you don't know any different. We really pressed into our faith together. My husband was working full-time and I was working part-time, but in high-level government and international engagement roles which involved travelling.
I’m a professional director. I’m self-employed and have been for 14 years. It’s worked well for me, because it allowed me to be very flexible in my work. And I’m managing a house of little humans. I call them my little people. My husband is my strong pillar that allows me to do that. He supports me, he gives me strength to allow me to go forward. I’m not going to imply that it was all perfect but you do learn to recognise that we don’t live in a perfect world.
I believe it’s not until you become a parent that you truly understand what it means to have unconditional love for another. I came to truly comprehend the love of a parent, so then I came to appreciate my parents, even more so. It’s an amazing feeling.
My mother passed away in 2013 and it would have been her 71st birthday recently. I’m thinking about her and what life would have been if she’d still been alive. Have we done alright since she's gone and would she have been pleased with how we turned out?
My husband and I decided to take our boys to Tonga for our 10-year anniversary, to celebrate. We went to an outer island and just had a great time for two weeks with the boys and friends of ours.
We took some quiet time to reflect on the past 10 years and consider our hopes and dreams for the next decade. You know how you do a planning meeting, a strategic planning meeting with your team? We told some of our friends and I think they were quite surprised. They thought it was hilarious. But now some of them have said they’re doing it too.
As told to Libby Wilson for Aotearoa in 20, a Stuff project.