Earliest memories of family.
Earlier this week I was interviewed by Australian broadcaster Phillip Adams on his RN show ‘’Late Night Live’’. Adams in talking to me about the shortcomings of the current model of refugee sponsorship which Amnesty International has been campaigning to expand and improve for the past 3 years, made a reference to my family’s own sponsorship story. Adams quoted both the name of the gentleman who picked us up at the airport when we first arrived in Australia, as well as the fact that my parents still live in the first house that they initially rented, then later bought at auction.
I found myself stunned and unable to respond, and rambled about something else.
Ron Ward was the late father of Alison Ward, who together with my uncle had sponsored us. Phillip Adams mentioned the name of the old man whose interaction with me, is the earliest memory I carry.
It was a hot summer’s day in Melbourne, and I was seated inside Ron’s Toyota Hiace. An old man, I remember distinctly, trying to put the seat belt on me as I was screaming and wailing like the world was about to end. He was trying to keep me safe, for the ride home. We were safe. With Ron, I was safe.
Chatting to Adams, a wave of emotions were passing through me, not because I was being asked to conjure up these memories.
For the past 3 years I had been letting the assumptions run, that the image of Alison and her family who sponsored us, were strangers who chose to be kind to us. It was convenient that they were white and we were brown. Bu they were family, in more ways than one.
Sponsorship calls on every day Australians to reach out and sponsor people on the other side of the world who they might not ever know. Sponsorship asks a great deal of those sponsoring. Alison, her sister Barbara, they and their families came to help, including Ron. They all stepped in. Because family helps family. We were their family even though they had never met us.
Earlier in the day, before Phillip Adams and before being asked to speak about Ron Ward — I had shaken the hand of and smiled at a man, who spends 1.9 billion dollars each year, locking up innocent men, women and children in horrific conditions. There’s something our Minister for Immigration doesn’t get about who these people are, and who they can be: they are our neighbours, our friends…and they become, our family.
It was true that due to the expensive nature of the current model of sponsorship available to Australians, that almost exclusively, only families are using this model to sponsor their own family. Like Suriyan and Alison did for us, more than 30 years ago.
When Phillip Adams asked me about Ron Ward that night, I froze. I didn’t want to speak about Ron like he was a stranger who lent a helping hand. The memory of his kind face, is the longest memory I have.
Sponsorship has, does and will rely on strangers being generous to other strangers, but Ron Ward was no stranger. This old white man, was my family — neither of us knew it yet.
The memory of Ron’s face, his gentleness and his desire to be involved in my welcome to this country, is the longest memory I have had in my life and it will stay with me for the rest of my life. Those who walked on the road to refuge with us, are eternally with us. They will always be family.
