Tutor Reflections 5

Lessons from Africa
By Louise Olliff

Imagine being drawn into the streets by the sound of drums and trumpets into a seething mass of people of all ages. Buckets of water are being playfully thrown about by young and old. There is laughter and chatter and beautifully-dressed women dancing and singing in the middle of the road. Everyone is clapping. It’s a massive street party taking place under the baking hot midday sun. The colour and energy is infectious and you join in.

…and then you notice a casket being carried over people’s heads. It’s not a party you’ve joined, it’s a funeral. An old man takes you aside and explains that this is a celebration of life. The deceased used to wash cars for a living in this very street, which is why water is being thrown. It’s a kind of homage to his life. At that moment, a bucketful of water comes flying your way and everyone laughs.

It is at times like these – in a town on the central coast of Ghana in West Africa – when you appreciate just how much Africa and its peoples have to teach the rest of the world; lessons about how to live and work together as a community, of how to take the time to laugh and sing and dance, of quality and not just quantity in life.

After spending three months volunteering in a refugee settlement in Ghana, I have come back to Australia with a fresh perspective. And while new perspectives are part and parcel of the whole overseas experience, Africa affected me in ways I did not experience living, working and travelling in Southeast Asia, Europe and North America. Those experiences, although also transformative, did not leave me with the same sense of loss and hope I experienced leaving West Africa.

Other people I have met who have travelled or lived in Africa also talk about the profound effect their experiences on the continent have had. Could it simply be the stark differences that impact so heavily on those who venture to Africa? Or is there something about Africa that ends up teaching even more to those who go to teach?

Whenever I tell someone I have been working in a refugee settlement in West Africa I almost always get the same reaction: Oh, that must have been tough/depressing/difficult (insert one of any number of negative descriptors). The general perception we in Australia have of Africa – and of refugee camps in particular – is uniformly negative. Africa is a godforsaken place (singular, not plural) with no hope and no future. A refugee camp evokes images of a sea of tents and small sad faces, flies and illness. Africa is dark.

On the contrary, when I think about the time I spent in Ghana what strikes me the most is the energy, colour and joyousness of the place. As a number of Ghanaians I met confidently assured me: Africa is blessed.

Yes, there was something undeniably life-affirming about Ghana. It’s a place where, when you walk down the street, people will nod their head amiably and bid you good morning or good afternoon. Any number of people I passed graciously implored me with Akwaaba! – You are welcome.  And while life at times could be brutal, the people I met were almost always hospitable, friendly and good-humoured. As is the case in many parts of the world, I was astounded by the generosity of those who have comparatively little.

Oh, and the music! The hills on the outskirts of Accra (Ghana’s capital city) where I stayed came alive on Sundays with the sound of singing and clapping as the whole immaculately-dressed community congregated in open-air church buildings. At the beach, fishermen pulling in their nets chant melodically through the hours of back-breaking heaving and hauling. Music is intricately woven into all parts of life.

Despite the stark inequalities (and the divide between the few rich and the many poor is stark), there is a richness about life in Ghana I found enviable. And even the challenges – of unreliable electricity, lack of running water, and the hours spent walking along dusty roads or cramped in the back of a ‘tro tro’ (minivans used as public transport) – showed me just how little we actually need to live well. For example, electricity rationing throughout Ghana means that every third day the power goes out for 12 hours. In the evenings when there was no electricity, I would sit outside and talk to my neighbours or read by candlelight. People would congregate at the road-side restaurants or bars that had generators (and therefore music and lights). Life went on and I did not feel any worse for it.

And while there is certainly something to be said for running water and reliable electricity, living frugally showed me that it is possible, and certainly shed light on how frivolous my frustrations in Australia are in comparison – the frustration of dial-up internet compared to broadband, of whether or not to buy a microwave, of the day-to-day dilemmas and choices of what to eat or wear or do.

Such fabricated needs and stresses further pale into insignificance when I compare them with those living at Buduburam refugee settlement in the Central Region of Ghana, known locally as “Liberia Camp”. Buduburam, like many refugee camps around the world, is far from a temporary or transient place. Many of its residents have been there since the first wave of refugees fled Liberia in the early 1990s. Periodic outbreaks of violence in Liberia and neighbouring West African countries (Cote d’Ivoire, Sierra Leone, Togo) have seen different waves of settlement and the population of Buduburam has fluctuated over the years. Currently Buduburam is home to an estimated 38,000 refugees.

Buduburam is a fairly typical refugee camp in many ways. Its residents have been there a long time, there is massive insecurity, opportunity and resources are scarce, violence flares periodically, and discrimination and suspicion is rife between the refugee and local community. Within humanitarian circles, there is much discussion about what to do about these sorts of protracted refugee situations which are increasingly becoming the norm. The United Nations reports that, as of 2003, the average duration of time spent in a refugee camp was 17 years. When you consider the number of refugees worldwide reached an estimated 8.4 million persons at the end of 2005, the enormity of the global refugee situation becomes apparent.

Yet Buduburam is far from the image most people have of refugee camps as a sea of tents and UN trucks handing out food to passive, starving children. An outsider passing Buduburam on the main Accra to Cape Coast road could hardly distinguish the settlement from any other Ghanaian town. The settlement itself is made up of 12 densely-populated zones, with houses built from cement and corrugated iron and painted in bright blues, oranges and greens. Open sewers wind through the labyrinth of houses. Inside the settlement there is a market place, stores selling shoes and second-hand clothes; there are mobile phone dealers and pool halls, bars and schools and community colleges and churches. There are sports clubs and kids kicking footballs on any patch of ground they can find, using rocks to demarcate goals. There are hairdressers and restaurants and carpenters and cobblers.

Despite the waiting game that most of the residents of Buduburam are playing (waiting for peace, waiting for a ticket out of there, waiting to hear from loved ones, waiting for an opportunity to earn some money or go to school or obtain a qualification), there are things that I admired about the community that I watched unfold around me. It is the epitome of what I have come to think of as the noisy, sweaty closeness of this life.

At Buduburam I volunteered at a community newspaper called The Vision. The paper was established three years ago by two Liberian journalists in exile – Jos Garneo Cephas and Semantics King Jr. Dismayed by the negative publicity camp residents were getting in the local Ghanaian media, and with no way of disseminating information and raising awareness of issues on camp from the perspective of the residents, Cephas and King decided to start their own paper. Part of the goal of The Vision is to raise awareness about human rights, sanitation, HIV/AIDS and education issues at Buduburam. It also provides an opportunity for young people from the camp to be trained as journalists and develop skills that can ultimately be transferred back to Liberia.

Three months at The Vision humbled me. I watched this group of dedicated volunteers writing their articles on scraps of newsprint scavenged from one of the printing presses in Accra. The enthusiasm of the young reporters was evident from the way they participated in weekly journalism workshops, where heated discussions about what to report on and how meant the two-hour workshops quickly turned into three. One young volunteer turned up at a workshop battling malaria for which he could not afford any medication, determined not to miss out. He sat on the bench in the tiny cramped office, with no electricity let alone a fan, listening through half-closed eyes as we talked about how to report on the ongoing issue of access to water on camp.

I was amazed at the resourcefulness of those at The Vision and how they managed to etch out an existence with whatever little they could find. When there was electricity on camp, a call would go out and the reporters would congregate in a tiny room belonging to the acting editor, who had an old second-hand computer they would take it in turns typing their articles on. The fact that this committed group of people had managed to put out a free monthly newspaper for three years on a budget of US$150 per month demonstrated how little we actually need to do something worthwhile.

More inspiring still was the future the Vision volunteers imagined for themselves. At the time I left Ghana plans were underway to put together a funding proposal to take the paperand its team back to Liberia. The proposal for US$25,000 would employ five people for a year, support up to 10 local volunteers, secure office space and computers, purchase a generator and furniture and print the paper weekly. As Cephas puts it: We want to go back to Liberia with something. We have spent all this time in exile, we can’t go back with nothing.

Faced with reports from Liberia that indicate 80 per cent of the population are living below the poverty line, there is no running water or electricity, and there is a vacuum of infrastructure left in the wake of the country’s 16-year civil war, it amazed me how passionate my colleagues were about their hopes for their country and their return.

Coming back to Australia, I have been astounded at what we waste and chastened when I think about what my colleagues at The Vision would achieve with the resources and wealth I have available. Moreover, I have been amazed at how little the wealth of our country seems to translate into a sense of happiness and wellbeing. Everywhere I go I seem to hear or read about discontent, fear, suspicion and sickness.

At a meeting I recently went to, someone made a comment about the fact that as workers we are ‘time-poor’. It was an interesting turn of phrase, but also fairly accurate in describing not only our working lives, but life in Australia in general. We spend a lot of time here rushing around doing, it made me think we have a lot to learn about being from those who are ‘time-rich’ in places like Ghana.

Of course, you don’t have to go all the way to West Africa to learn something about how to appreciate quality time and community. We are lucky enough to have growing African communities here in Australia, and I have watched their movement and interactions with renewed appreciation since returning from Ghana. In Carlton, Footscray and Dandenong you can see elegantly-dressed Somali women with children walking to the supermarket and they unfailingly stop to talk to each other when they pass in the street. And while idealising “communities” is not my intention – for we know they also bring with them tensions, factions, gossip and frustration – but perhaps we have gone too far the other way in Australia in our push to be independent individuals, putting up walls that mean when we do look over them and realise people are living on the other side, we’re not very good at negotiating our differences and getting along.

It reminded me of the culture shock I experienced leaving Ghana. I flew out of Accra and arrived in Europe just before Christmas. In Austria I had to plough my way through a flurry of angry consumers making last-minute purchases in downtown Vienna. I went from a place where strangers would smile warmly and bid me good day, to a place where I was met with cold stares and abrupt responses when I asked for directions. Nobody smiled. Nobody attempted to meet my eye. Certainly nobody greeted me by saying: You are welcome.

I mentioned this to some Sudanese friends on my return to Melbourne. I said: I think Africa has a lot to teach Australia. I can’t imagine anyone being lonely in Ghana.

With typical humility, my friend responded by saying: Yes, but the West has a lot to teach Africa also. There are no jobs, problems with corruption, fighting. There are many problems there.

He also acceded that: In Africa, even if you have little, you share. If someone comes to you with nothing, you share with them what you have. It’s like that. And it made me think: I wish that would happen more here. I wonder how we can learn to do that better in Australia, so we’re not so insular and alone?

One place where I am reminded weekly of the value of being part of a community is as a volunteer at the Sudanese Australian Integrated Learning (SAIL) program in Melbourne. I have been volunteering as an English tutor at SAIL for the past two years. When I think about why the SAIL program is so successful – attracting hundreds of dedicated volunteers each week – I think part of the answer lies in what the Sudanese community itself brings to the equation. Turning up each Saturday at the Maidstone Community Centre you are met head-on by that noisy, sweaty closeness. There are kids running around, there is energy and colour. The Sudanese families that come each week seem to effortlessly bring something. The children are quick with a smile and the women, meeting you for the first time, will ask you how you are and unaffectedly shake your hand.

As the federal government makes noises about limiting the proportion of Africans coming through our humanitarian program, I wonder whether they consider the incredible riches and lessons these communities have brought to our shores. Although unfounded by research, there is a perception that newly arrived African communities are somehow more prone to social problems; they are ‘difficult’ because of their pre-settlement experiences (the years spent in refugee camps such as Buduburam). Yet in seeing the challenges, I hope we also continue to recognise the incredible strengths that refugees bring with them as a consequence of their experiences. Surviving in a refugee camp requires skills and qualities that are transferable and inherently valuable – resourcefulness, determination, hope, tenacity, multilingual capabilities, and a strong sense of community.

I only hope that the introversion of contemporary Australian society – of high fences, heads down, fear and insecurity, and an obsession with work and consumption – doesn’t put our new African Australians off. I, for one, feel like they have a lot to teach me.

To find out more about The Vision, go to: www.thevisiononline.net
To find out about SAIL, go to: http://home.vicnet.net.au/~sail/
To find out about things happening within the African Australian community, go to: www.africanoz.com.au

Louise Olliff is a freelance journalist and habitual volunteer. She currently works as a senior policy officer at the Centre for Multicultural Youth Issues (www.cmyi.net.au).

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