Thursday, April 22, 2004

We are one, but we are many... 

I don't know how it happened, but I am somehow now on the freaking organising body of a ethnic youth forum. The other people are all like Youth Convenor of the Ethnic Communities Council and Anti-Gambling whatsit and Anti-Racism co-ordinator of such-and-such university. Then there's me. No experience, no contacts, not even a burning passion for the issue! I am WAY out of my depth.

Add this to the fact that I was under the misapprehension that I was invited as a participant, not as an organiser. Sure, it was a bit weird to have a meeting before a forum, but what do I know, right? And there's free food, so it can't be all bad, right? Um, yeah.

I'm not sure if I should try to extricate myself gracefully or just plunge into the deep end and have a go. I don't want to seem a wuss, and it'd be a good experience for sure. Not to mention a nice line on a CV, ahem.

The meeting was however the cause of an interesting encounter. See, I had to walk from Redfern station to Waterloo, where the ECC's office is. That Redfern. Although I walk from Redfern to school three days a week, walking there alone at night is another matter. Look, intellectually I know that I should not fear an Aboriginal suburb more than any other. But paranoia doesn't take any notice of political correctness.

While I was puzzling over my badly drawn map copied from the Sydway, an Aboriginal girl came up to me to ask what street I was looking for. To my wary eyes, it seemed as if she wasn't walking straight. Glue, I thought. Fleeting images of being led to a smoky den and being pack-raped passed through my mind. But sanity won out and I told her where I was going.

She immediately offered to show me where it was, and lead me the entire way. A slight detour, since she didn't know the names of the streets and went the wrong way, but we got directions from a Domino's guy. Her name was Lillian and she offered me a smoke that she'd scrounged off a friend. As we walked along, she greeted just about everyone we met. I asked her how come she seemed to know everyone, she said she didn't. She talked about how one had to be careful because the boys sometimes would snatch bags, but it wasn?t too dangerous, she said with no bitterness, most of the bad ones had been locked up. She talked about her friend who lived at The Block. We passed the dry fountain where she and her friends used to pour in bubble bath and swim, and she told me how they'd be shooed from the pond near the uni for splashing around in their t-shirts and bloomers, and how her friend who was kind of big couldn't get away fast enough. She missed the freedom from responsibility she had as a child, though now she is only twenty-three. We grew quiet. I thanked her at the end, but it wasn't enough.

I was ashamed and moved and in awe. I met a real human being today.

# posted at 11:23 pm

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