177 Nations of Tasmania Mark Thomson

Since arriving in Tasmania about a year ago, Michael has got somewhat accustomed to people questioning whether Benin is a real country - an indication of how little known his homeland is in Australia.

Benin is a small country in West Africa, squeezed between the much larger Nigeria and Togo. It was formerly part of a much larger Kingdom of Dahomey and was also one of the centres of the Atlantic slave trade. A legacy of this is seen in places like Haiti, Cuba, Brazil and New Orleans, where Voodoo is still practised, a belief system originating in Benin. In western culture this has become associated with pushing pins into dolls, but in Benin it is still a very much accepted bona fide religion.

Michael's story is remarkable other ways though. From a tough time as a child at a boarding school in Nigeria, to University studies in Ghana, where he'd secretly hoped to further his soccer career, he eventually got a scholarship to study agriculture in Israel. During his year in Israel he fell in love with a Filipina, and she was the eventual inspiration for him to come to Tasmania.

He arrived in Tasmania to study but with no contacts, little money, no secured accommodation and no partner ( her visa was rejected). His strategy for dealing with this situation and getting on his feet in Hobart was pretty unique and a really great story, which I'm not going to spoil here.

Oren was living in the middle of Melbourne with his partner during the COVID pandemic, when the city was put into regular lockdowns. This heightened the feeling of being stuck in a concrete jungle, and though not the only reason, it got Oren thinking about making a change. In 2021 he followed his partner down to Tassie, where she did a permaculture course and they did a farmstay down at Cygnet for 8 months...and the rest is history, as they say.
Oren originally came to Australia to study Audio Engineering, and music and sound have been very much a part of his life. Indeed, some of his teenage musical influences lead him to questioning some of the aspects of Israeli society. This questioning came to a head when he left school and faced the obligatory 3 years' military service. Through a mixture of protest and negotiation, he ended up spending his time in a desk job in the Air Force.
By the end of it, he was ready to jump back into the world of music and entertainment, and 18 months later he made the life-changing decision to move to Melbourne.

Original music produced and composed by Oren Gerassi.

https://borcho.com/ear-stimulants/

To mark Refugee Week 2024, here's a compilation of stories from five of the interviews I've done in the last 12 months that reflect different aspects of the refugee experience from Asia, Africa, Europe and the Middle East.
There's Ieva's story of her whole family walking 200km to get to the port of Riga to escape the oncoming Soviet Army, Sandra's tale of when a to-close-for-comfort missile attack was the final straw for her family to leave Damascus. Khadga explains how ethnic Nepalis were brutally imprisoned, threatened and expelled from Bhutan and Lawrence describes his memories of life of being a South Sudanese refugee in a camp in Uganda. Finally, Aubert explains part of the legacy for genocide survivors from Rwanda and the long-lasting effect it has.

Image attribution under Creative Commons 2.0
Creator: Mirek Pruchnicki 
Copyright: Mirek Pruchnicki | Flickr

Tunisia is a small northern African country, majority Muslim and Arabic-speaking, but also strongly connected with other cultures of the Mediterranean and North Africa.

Akram is, at least at the time of recording, the only Tunisian in Tasmania. Yet Tasmania was an intentional choice by Akram, who arrived here in 2023 with his Filippino wife and two young children. Previously they had been living in Qatar, where Akram had worked for around 10 years. He had originally moved there to take a job at the Sheraton Hotel.

Despite having done thorough research before arriving, there were some shocks. The first six months was quite a struggle but as Akram puts it, he learnt to be patient and accept new situations and now life is looking up for him and his family.



Music credit : "Sidi Mansour" - Ahmed Alshaiba ft Ahmed Mounib, Mazin Samih.

Malawi is a small country that fits like a thin sliver between the Zambia, Tanzania, Mozambique. It's become known as the "beating heart of Africa" for being a sanctuary for people from some of the war-torn and troubled nations nearby. With a population of around 19 million, it's also one of the continent's most densely populated.



Mwase's story begins by the shore of Lake Malawi, Africa's third largest lake and a feature of huge importance to the life and economy of the country. Although Mwase grew up in a small town, he was curious about the world and a backbacking trip around southern Africa opened his eyes to other cultures and lifestyles. When he returned to Malawi, he met an Australian volunteer, who he eventually married, and cutting a long story short. lead to his big move to Tasmania in the early 2000s.

Tasmania in the early 2000s was only just starting to see a few faces from Africa on the streets, and discrimination and finding a sense of community were just some of the challenges Mwase had to deal with. He became involved with community care work and incorporated his passion and skills in music into this, and has been involved in numerous musical projects in his time in Tasmania.

Bhutanese now make up Tasmania's largest refugee community, and also on of the major migrant populations living in the state. Yet many Tasmanians know little about them and their story.

In the early 90s many Bhutanese of Nepali ethnicity, were expelled from country, often with threats or actually use of violence, and forced to live in refugee camps in Nepal. For many years they lived in limbo in these camps, hoping to one day return to their former homeland.

In Khadga's case, he and his family lived in the camp for 19 years before being accepted for settlement in Australia. Through the research he had been able to do at the time, Khadga had come to the conclusion that Tasmania would be the best place for them to settle given it's similar climate and topography to Nepal.

Initial adjustments were tough but Khadga succeeded in getting first a qualification in Child Care, and then Nursing and Paramedics. He currently works as an Aged Care Nurse, but also is a co-owner of a business providing disability care.