come back to South Auckland<\/a>, to come home and show our people the potential we have,\u201d he enthuses. \u201cIt\u2019s pointless for me to realise my potential if I can\u2019t help this rohe [region] realise their potential too.\u201d<\/p>\nTimoti will never forget those who supported him along the way, like his cousin Pita.<\/p>\n
\u201cI rang him one day at medical school and said, \u2018Cuz, I have no money,\u2019 and he gave me $500. After my first pay cheque as a doctor, I drove up to Mang\u014dnui with a $500 bottle of whisky and a thank you.\u201d<\/p>\n
In his bestselling memoir The Unlikely Doctor, Timoti shares his life story. He\u2019s donating 45% of the book\u2019s profits to New Zealanders struggling like he did and to Palestinians in desperate need of aid.<\/p>\n
![\"Dr]()
Dr Timoti’s bestselling memoir, The Unlikely Doctor. Photo \/ NZ Woman’s Weekly<\/p>\n
Looking to the future, there are even bigger goals.<\/p>\n
\u201cI want to see our country evolve as I\u2019ve evolved,\u201d shares Timoti, who hopes to see his book available in all prisons and rehab centres around the country.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re the ones who need to be shown they have potential, but barriers have been put in front of them that prevent them from even knowing they have potential.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m a doctor now, which is really cool, but I should have been one 30 years ago and the reason I wasn\u2019t is because I had to overcome all these barriers.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo one has worked as hard as me to become a doctor and no one should ever have to work as hard as me again.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Unlikely Doctor by Dr Timoti Te Moke (Allen & Unwin NZ, rrp $37.99).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cBut I\u2019m the outlier. I\u2019m the exception, for now, at least, though it\u2019s my hope that things change.\u201d…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":73599,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1903,57813,6726,16717,3013,6184,7061,1952,20106,57817,2842,57818,1958,2740,1328,9832,293,302,2203,424,1329,57812,111,43,139,69,90,8442,10056,4514,312,57815,57814,57816,8690,1361,7563,57811,61],"class_list":["post-73598","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-abuse","tag-addictions","tag-become","tag-becoming","tag-but","tag-childhood","tag-doctor","tag-dr","tag-drove","tag-environments","tag-experienced","tag-fifties","tag-focus","tag-former","tag-gang","tag-helped","tag-his","tag-its","tag-journey","tag-life","tag-member","tag-moke","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-on","tag-prison","tag-repeated","tag-same","tag-says","tag-singleminded","tag-stints","tag-survive","tag-te","tag-that","tag-those","tag-timoti","tag-to"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73598","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73598"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73598\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/73599"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73598"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73598"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73598"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}