Sydney
23 June 2002
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St Pio – newest saint
US calls in Australian archbishop
Order pays $3.6 million
Fund for ‘tragic cases’
Shame and sorrow for all in Church, says schools head
‘Humble, but delighted’
Church stands alone in war on poverty
Giving and receiving
Religious urge Govt to sign Kyoto treaty
Appointee ‘daunted’ but committed
New employment relations commission installed
Call to keep tough embryo laws
Editorial: In search of a better life
Letters: Back to the ‘bad old days’
Conversation: No platitudes – ‘all our teaching has to be real’ - Sybil Dickens, school principal
Reflections: ‘Welcome’ in a new faith family
Rosary peace plan spreads in schools
Students, teachers prepare for Youth Day pilgrimage
St Charbel’s students welcome bishop
Opinion: A role for entertainment and media in ‘new evangelisation’
A new beginning for Tampa refugees
Inspirations: Good hair day for young Maronites
A new beginning for Tampa refugees
Tampa refugees Mohammed and Sharafat Bakhtary and their children – Toobah, left, and Nasibullah – enjoy the peace and freedom of life in their new country, New Zealand
Tampa refugees Mohammed and Sharafat Bakhtary and their children – Toobah, left, and Nasibullah – enjoy the peace and freedom of life in their new country, New Zealand
New Zealand’s Tampa refugees arrived in Auckland last September and were accommodated in a reception centre while their claims for refugee status were processed and approved.
That took a little over two months.
A few were rejected initially, but when it was found that there had been an error in the translation of their applications, they, too, were accepted.
The Government determined that the refugees would be settled in various centres.
Ten families would come to Christchurch.
The Refugee and Migrant Service called for volunteers to assist in their resettlement. A hundred Christchurch people answered the call.
We were given training over a number of weeks, then formed ourselves into groups, each of which was assigned to a particular refugee family.
Many of the volunteers have no religious affiliation, but I and most of my group are parishioners of the Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament in Christchurch.
Indeed, we had volunteered at the suggestion of one of the priests at the cathedral. We were joined by two members of a Baptist church.
The Government made a house available to each refugee family and each group of volunteers was given the task of preparing the house, using furniture and homewares that had been donated – in large quantities – by Christchurch people.
On the evening of Thursday, December 13, we met our family at Christchurch airport: Mohammed and Sharafat Bakhtary, a couple in their twenties, and their children – son Nasibullah, aged four, and daughter Toobah, 18 months.
We took them to their new home in the Christchurch suburb of Bryndwr where most of the families were being resettled because a small Afghani community already lived there.
Mohammed and Sharafat explored their new home upstairs and down and expressed gratitude for it. They seemed confident and mostly cheerful, though at times one could sense the hugeness of what they had been through.
Sharafat put little Toobah down on the sofa to sleep. They had their first meal, which had been cooked for them by an established Afghani family living nearby.
The meal did not begin until quite late because it was the fasting month of Ramadan, and food could not be eaten until after sundown.
Now, after six months in Christchurch, the Bakhtary family is fully engaged with their new country.
They attend English classes and are using the language more and more.
Mohammed has started a vegetable garden and has been busy chopping wood in preparation for the cold Christchurch winter.
He has managed to obtain a secondhand car.
He is a good driver and hopes to drive a taxi when his English is a bit better.
I recently interviewed Mohammed through an interpreter in order to learn more about his past life.
He and Sharafat come from the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif, where he was a shopkeeper.
From the time he was seven he knew fighting, first during the Russian occupation and then from the Taliban, who, he says, were far worse than the Russians.
They killed two members of his family: first his younger brother, who died when the Taliban press-ganged him into fighting for them, and later his father-in-law, who was shot dead while gardening one day.
I asked Mohammed, through the interpreter, why his father-in-law was a target for the Taliban. “He looked different,” he said.
His father-in-law’s death precipitated Mohammed’s decision to leave Afghanistan. He paid $US9000 (nearly $A16,000) – representing everything the family had – to a people smuggler.
The family’s journey took them by air to Pakistan and then Malaysia; from there by boat to Indonesia and finally – they hoped – by a larger boat to Australia.
But this second vessel had no lifeboats and proved to have a defective engine.
Trapped on the stricken vessel, scared and blown about by the wind, they sought help from two passing ships.
The second one responded. This was the Tampa.
I asked Anne-Marie Reynolds, regional co-ordinator of the Refugee and Migrant Service, for her impressions of the refugees. She said they were notably undemanding, accepting whatever was given to them with gratitude.
What did she think of the claim that they were queue-jumpers? “There is no queue for them,” she said.
Mohammed and Sharafat miss their family members still in Afghanistan, but have no desire to return, except maybe for a visit.
They are grateful to New Zealand for accepting them and thrilled that their children will go to school.
I – like the others in my group – visit them about once a week. On arrival, I’m offered a cup of tea.
Little Nasibullah greets me in his running-into-one-word English: “HowareyouI’mfine thankyou.
“Thankyouverymuchyou’re welcome.”
There are many small problems to be resolved. We need to make a doctor’s appointment so that he can receive innoculations.
The first step is to ring the interpreter. The new washing machine is working well, but Mohammed’s axe has broken. Where can we get another one? What does this letter mean?
Mohammed and Sharafat are striving to build a new life in a place where the culture, the language and even the writing system are completely different.
But despite their problems they are gracious and hospitable. We volunteers are often given a delicious Afghan meal when we visit, eating it while we sit cross-legged on the floor.
It ends with Mohammed raising his arms in an unspoken grace.