The Australian of the Year 2021 Local Hero Awardee and recipient of the Order of Australia Medal 2022 proudly launched the book at the Embracing Equity Forum organised by the Community Migrant Resource Centre to celebrate International Women’s Day 2023.

In addition to being an author, Rosemary works as Multicultural Community Liaison Officer with the NSW Police, serves as Swahili-English interpreter, is co-founder of the African women’s group for women at risk of domestic and family violence, and engages in film making, including the documentaries The Baulkham Hills African Ladies Troupe and Rosemary’s Way.

In her memoir A Joyful Life, Rosemary, who was born in Kenya, takes the reader through her survival story back home in Africa of a life strewn with hardship, grief, and trauma, to her migration to Australia. She shares her initial settlement challenges and how she made Australia her home.

The overall message is how Rosemary has found a joyful life, which she generously shares with everyone she meets.

Rosemary taps deeply into the experiences that have shaped her into a courageous person who champions the cause of vulnerable people by advocating for migrant women and women of refugee backgrounds. In the telling of her story, Rosemary is quick to point out, though, that she does not seek to be pitied. On the contrary, she lets the reader know that “these experiences did not break me. If anything, they are what sparked and then fuelled the fire inside me. They have allowed me to help others and live a truly joyful life.”

Rosemary Kariuki OAM has just published her memoir “A joyful life”

Over the years, in her desire to empower vulnerable people with whom she crosses paths, Rosemary has identified new arrivals’ information gaps as their biggest problem. For Rosemary, information is vital to growth, “when you have information you have the power of choice, when you have the power of choice you can earn money when you have money, you can earn independence, you can do anything you want.”

A true believer in embracing people, sharing, and learning from each other, Rosemary also co-founded the African Women’s Dinner Dance, which is now in its 16^th year. Through the event many Australian women from African backgrounds have connected, have gained confidence, and their lives have been positively influenced.

With so many accolades to her name, Rosemary has indeed blazed the trail as a truly inspirational migrant woman, a woman of African descent, a survivor of hardship, grief, and trauma. Having healed, she now uses her past to carve out a future that is joyful for her, and to give back to other vulnerable women, so that they can find their own healing and their own joyful lives.

Hearty congratulations again, Rosemary!

Dr Vera Williams Tetteh tells her story to AfrOzcentric

Often in my work as a sociolinguistic ethnographer, I am the one seeking out people and asking questions to learn about their settlement stories. This is what I did for my PhD research – a sociolinguistic ethnography on, with and for Africans in Australia; or what I’m currently doing for a project about the experiences of parents from non-English speaking backgrounds during pandemic-related home learning. So, it was a real surprise when the tables were turned recently and I was approached by AfrOzcentric for an interview.

The team behind AfrOzentric wanted me to share my migration story and PhD journey to be included in a series they are running for African Australians. The interview with Ms Holla David is now available on YouTube.

In our conversation, I not only tell my own story but also highlight the importance of African migrant histories and stories. These are too often overlooked in Australia and the diaspora at large. Bringing them to the attention of a broader audience will enable us to move away from perpetual problem discourses to highlight the contributions that African Australians make to our multilingual and multicultural society.

For me, this involves three key points, related to life in a new country, African history in Australia, and dealing with negative representations of African identity.

Life in a new country

Thinking back to my early years in Australia, I arrived as a family reunion migrant from Ghana, an English-speaking country, full of hope and aspirations for my future and the future of my yet-to-be born children. Things did not pan out as smoothly as I had expected.

First, I was shocked when language turned out to be an issue. In Ghana, which is a former British colony, English is the official language and medium of instruction from primary school through to university. I arrived with the belief that I was an English speaker and would, at least linguistically, slot right into Australia, another former British colony.

But that’s not how it turned out: oftentimes, I couldn’t understand people and they couldn’t understand me, either. That’s how I learned about linguistic variation and that there are different varieties of English.

Finding a job that was equivalent to the one I had previously done in Ghana was another challenge. Therefore, when I started a family, I put my career aspirations on hold and worked part-time as a checkout operator in a supermarket.

It took me ten years to go back to university. Starting full-time studies while looking after my family and working part-time was incredibly challenging, particularly as I did not have the kind of family support I would have had back home in Ghana. I’m grateful for the kindness of the people who have been willing to support and mentor me throughout the years.

I would particularly like to acknowledge my academic mentors, who helped me navigate the, for me, unchartered waters of academia. The guidance of my sociolinguistics lecturer during my undergraduate years, Dr Verna Rieschild, was crucial during my undergraduate and honours years, and the same is true of Distinguished Professor Ingrid Piller during my PhD and postdoctoral career.

African history in Australia

1834 portrait of William Blue, by J. B. East (Source: Wikipedia)

Black African people are often made to feel like they do not belong in Australia. In reality, Africans have settled in Australia for as long – or as short – a time as whites, and belong as much, or as little.

Therefore, it’s important to share the little-known history of African people in Australia.

You, too, may be surprised to learn that Black Africans arrived in Australia with the First Fleet in 1788 (Pybus, 2006a, 2006b). In her book Black Founders, Cassandra Pybus shares the stories of famous bushranger John Black Caesar, or Billy Blue, who has the Sydney suburb of Blues Point named after him.

Back then “the notion of race was a highly malleable construct, […] and the binary of black or white was not a reliable way of constructing difference” (Pybus, 2006a, p. 181).

Pybus’ account complicates assumptions that race in colonial Australia was an Aboriginal (black) and European (white) binary. However, the African presence in colonial Australia from first fleeters to the steady trickle of black convicts and free people who followed “have been completely whited out of Australian colonial history” (Pybus, 2006b, p. 41).

Negative representations of African identity

The erasure of African people from Australian history goes hand in hand with contemporary racism and the inescapable negative representations of Africans in Australia. The predominant media representations range from pitiful refugees via scheming fraudsters to violent gangsters. Obviously, the vast majority of African-Australians simply do not see themselves represented.

In other words, there is a huge gap between the ways in which African-Australians are seen and the ways in which they see themselves. This gap needs to be bridged.

One way of doing so is through research. My PhD research, a sociolinguistic ethnography on, with and for Africans in Australia, for instance, challenged the homogenised view of African-Australians as a monolithic group by examining the diverse pre- and post-migration experiences of black African immigrants, particularly as they relate to language learning, education and employment.

Focusing on differences in pre-migration educational opportunities and the status of English in their countries of origin, the analysis distinguished four groups: migrants from Anglophone African countries who have completed secondary education or above; migrants from non-Anglophone African countries who have completed secondary education or above; migrants from Anglophone African countries who have had no or low schooling; and migrants from non-Anglophone African countries who have had no or low schooling.

Overall, I found a persistent mismatch between diverse pre-migration linguistic repertories and education trajectories, and post-migration language training and education pathways into settlement in Australia. This mismatch is at the heart of the disadvantage in the Australian labour market experienced by many African-Australians. In short, my research demonstrates the harm that comes from telling a single story.

Indeed, one of my favourite African proverbs goes as follows: “So long as the lions do not have their own historians the tale of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.” It is my hope also that we will get to hear more stories and interpretations of African migrant stories through their own voices.

If this has whetted your appetite, head over to YouTube and watch the full interview:

References

Pybus, C. J. (2006a). Black Founders: The Unknown Story of Australia’s First Black Settlers. Sydney: University of New South Wales.
Pybus, C. J. (2006b). Race relations and early Australian Settlement. The Sydney Papers (Winter/Spring), 39-48.
Williams Tetteh, Vera. (2015). Language, education and settlement: A sociolinguistic ethnography on, with, and for Africans in Australia. (PhD), Macquarie University, Sydney.

By Addo Tetteh

Racism is an inevitable part of growing up black in Australia. As a mother of two African-Australian boys, one of the hardest things is that I can only do so much to protect my children from being the targets of racism. Many African-Australian youths grow up permanently alienated from the mainstream. Our hope is always for our children to grow stronger and more compassionate. Both my sons have been profoundly influenced by the experience of racism. Very often this has been the cause of great sadness and anguish for me. When I see them triumph over adversity, it has also been a source of strength and courage. I am very proud to be able to share my sons’ creative engagement with racism here on Language-on-the-Move. The lyrics were written by my 16-year-old son Nii as an English assignment and the artwork was produced by my younger son Addo when he was 12 years old.

A Canadian couple of Ghanaian origin was visiting Australia in November 2001. Their first stop was Brisbane. Having escaped the chill of the northern hemisphere, they enjoyed every bit of their week’s stay there and were looking forward to an even better time in Sydney. Their dream turned nightmarish when accommodation booked online fell way short of the standard shown in the brochure, and the area surrounding the hotel boasted iron bars in windows and a sea of graffiti greeted them as they made their way in the rental car. Feeling unsafe and unable to sleep that night, they decided to look up listings in the White Pages for Ghanaian names. They found Tetteh. And that is how I came to receive a telephone call late that night almost nine years ago.

They introduced themselves with their first (Anglo) names. The woman’s name turned out to be the same as my mother’s, Comfort. Intrigued, I asked her “ofai nε mεni dji ogbεi diεntsε?” [“Please what is your real/clan name?”] She hesitated and said “moko moko biko mi nεkε sane dan. Atso mi Komle, aankpa Komle.” [“Nobody has ever asked me this before. My name is Komle.”] The same clan name as that of my late sister-in-law!

The reason I had asked her for her clan name can be traced back to my first migration experience when I was eight years old. My family moved from Accra to Koforidua because of my father’s work. In our socialization in this new setting and other regions in Ghana that dad worked in, I got to observe my parents trace the family backgrounds of Ga people introduced to them through clan names, surnames and siblings’ names: “Mεni shia mli odjε?” [“Which house do you come from?”] “Mεni dji ogbεi diεntsε?” [“What is your real/clan name?”] “Mεni dji onyεmi mεi agbεi?” [“What are the names of your siblings?”] I learnt that through a person’s family name and/or their clan name their heritage and their history is preserved. This means also that families like ours living outside their hometown are able to link their kin who have settled in similar parts of the country. Many were the families and communities we forged out of these links as migrants!

As an adult on that night in Sydney many years later, we traced the family’s roots of our surprise callers to the same roots as my husband’s. We welcomed them into our home and hosted them for the remainder of their stay in Sydney. To both of them we became mi nyεmi yoo, mi nyεmi nuu kε wo bii [my sister, my brother and our children]. And to us and our children they became “auntie” and “uncle”. I don’t know why of all the Ghanaian names listed in the Sydney White Pages, it had to be ours that they found and why auntie bears the name of two very important people in my family’s history. What I do know is that on that fateful day a transnational family was born with links that go back in time and space and that criss-cross four continents – North America, Africa, Australia and even Europe – I had stayed with my sister-in-law and her husband in Italy during my migrant application process to Australia in 1992. Last month, I finally got to visit auntie and uncle in their home in Canada – as a sidetrip after attending AAAL in Atlanta!

What does this story tell us about language in transnational contexts? Is a name simply what people call you and what you respond to or is there something more to a name? The age-old question of “what’s in a name?” with a twist: names on the move and how they provide links in a world characterized by global (people) flows!

For Ga people, the clan name together with the person’s surname is usually traceable to a particular tsεmεi awe [fathers’ home] thus linking people to their roots. This is useful particularly for future generations born in Diasporas who go back to trace their lineage and unite with kin. As well as helping to forge family and community links, this system of naming also ensures that by checking on family backgrounds, relatives on the move do not end up marrying each other.

Thus, for Ghanaians in the Diaspora and for Ga people who seek to enjoy links with their community of origin, names provide one way of identifying and forging such links. There is an interconnectedness of lives that is embedded in names, which provide for a redefinition of family and which is worth exploring to understand community formation in lesser known linguistic and immigrant groups.