For their first few months in Tasmania, Fartun Farah and her
five children slept with the lights on.
They patrolled their new home several times a night to startle any would-be intruders.
‘We all slept in the same room—even though we lived in a three-bedroom house—and were fearful of all the glass windows that could be broken so easily’, she says.
Everything was different and strange. Even things she was familiar with, such as fruit, looked different in their new setting. When Fartun phoned her family in Kenya they asked her if all the faces in the street were white, and warned her to be careful when she replied that they were.
‘We wondered how they lived like this’, she says. ‘But
then slowly things got better and I discovered that people were friendly’.
Fartun and her family were the first of over 50 refugees to have been
welcomed by a small Launceston group that offers support to newly arrived
refugee families.
The group helps with practical tasks such as setting up bank accounts, registering with Centrelink, organising the children for school, teaching the new arrivals how to shop and use public transport, and providing English classes.
‘Basically our role is to ensure that they have everything they need’, group member Coby Vautin explains. ‘Some of the refugees arrive sick, and the first thing we need to do is get them to a doctor. That can be fun and games, trying to diagnose the medical condition of a terrified refugee through an interpreter.’
Coby oversees the day-to-day running of the support group. It is made up of people from a diverse cross-section of the community, including the St Vincent de Paul Society, the Uniting Church, the Catholic Church and other Christian denominations.
Coby has found it particularly challenging to help the refugees with the huge cultural transition they have to make. Most of the arrivals have come straight from refugee camps and have been living in fear for a long time.
Fartun’s family spent seven years in a Kenyan refugee camp before coming to Australia. She and her children were traumatised not only by the experiences that led them to the camp, but by events that occurred in the camp as well.
At the airport Fartun felt frightened and didn’t know many English words to speak to her welcoming party. It took several months for the fear to dissipate and for the family to feel safe enough to sleep the whole night through.
Coby knows well the feeling of being ‘other’. As the daughter of Dutch immigrants she experienced childish schoolyard discrimination and the difficulties of not understanding English. As a child she was aware that because her skin was white she was able to blend in, but people with coloured skin were a constant reminder to the Australians that they came from ‘somewhere else’.
In May 2003 the group established Launceston’s first community centre for migrants and refugees. The centre is named ‘Cooluck’ after the home inherited by Catherine McAuley, who established the Sisters of Mercy in Dublin in 1831. It has a table-tennis and pool table, computer, television, video, sewing machine, and kitchen and dining room facilities.
‘Cooluck is designed to create a space for people to converse in English and learn about Australian culture in a relaxed setting’, says Coby. ‘There are educational and craft activities, and the opportunity to socialise with Australians and other refugees.’
Cooluck, which is provided rent free by the St Vincent de Paul Society, is especially busy during the holidays, when it fills with refugee children looking for a space to be together and have fun.
Coby has developed a series of activities to help refugees acclimatise to Australian culture, such as playing money games to help them become familiar with the currency’s appearance and value. She has also designed a polar fleece ‘sheet-liner’ (modelled on the sleeping bag) to keep the newcomers warm—most of the families the group has assisted are from warmer countries such as Sudan, Ethiopia and Afghanistan.
‘When they first arrive, there is no warming them up!’ Coby says. ‘We also keep boxes of donated clothing at Cooluck for them to help themselves to.’
Fartun and her family were naturalised in 2001. Today she works as an interpreter on the mainland, although she definitely sees herself as a Tasmanian.
‘Tasmanian first, Australian second!’ she says. ‘But even though I felt really good when I lived there, it was not multicultural enough at the time.’
This is despite the dismay she felt when she was shown Tasmania on the map.
‘I wondered how Tasmania could be part of Australia when there was sea between them’, she explains. ‘I had no idea how many people were there or anything. I was so confused that I called my family and told them that we had been accepted to "Autrasmania" — my children still laugh about that!’
Once she began to get used to her new home, Fartun realised that the picture of Australia that she had first held in her mind before she left Kenya, of a beautiful place where she would feel safe, was an accurate one. She now watches with pleasure as her children blossom with each passing day.
‘They are fine, they learn English so quickly and they have so many things they wanted’, she says.
Seeing such happiness is one of the many things that motivates Coby to continue her involvement with the group.
‘Thankfully I haven’t really heard any stories about discrimination’, Coby says. ‘Most of the refugees seem to be fitting into their new communities well’.
Fartun feels very welcome in Australia and has generally found that people are accepting of her religious beliefs.
‘Some people use their religion to justify their points but I do what mine tells me, which is "love one another"’, she says.
Most of the refugee support groups in Tasmania are formed through religious groups such as the Catholic, Uniting, Anglican and Dutch Reformed churches.
‘Churches are good at reaching out to the refugees living in their parishes. For example, in our parish many of us also take a Catholic refugee family along to church with us to help them out with transport’, Coby says.
Church events are being expanded to include multicultural contributions, such as a performance held to raise money for the Christian Brothers in Tanzania that featured a Sudanese drumming display. Officially, the refugee support group is only supposed to support the families for six months. In Coby’s experience the reality has been quite different.
‘It can be quite a social worker role’, Coby explains. ‘Six months is not enough time for us to help—we do see them less as time goes on but we keep in touch by a phone call or a visit every now and again. Some families need more help than others, and we can’t really just walk away from them.’
Not that the group wants to walk away. Coby has found her involvement with the refugees extremely enriching.
‘The worst thing that any of us can do is nothing’, she says.
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