Australian Greens: A PHONE CALL MAKES A BIG CHANGE

How a chance encounter with two detainees, Koffi and Lucky, led to a family taking up their case and then a continuing friendship that has enriched the lives of all concerned

By John Beaton, a long-time Greens supporter and friend to two wonderful African men!

I first met Lucky and Koffi at the Perth Detention Centre. That was in 2005 when, with fake passports, they landed on a flight from Johannesburg. One of them – I’m not sure which it was – had a passport stating that he was a Hungarian doctor! Unsurprisingly, they were quickly taken on the very short drive from the airport terminal to the detention centre.

I met them because my youngest son Andrew had phoned CARAD, an organisation in Perth for asylum seekers, refugees and detainees. They were looking for anyone who spoke French who would volunteer to visit a detainee. Andrew spoke student French so he called, and went to visit Koffi. A few days after visiting him, Andrew badgered us and all of his friends to visit Koffi and his inmate new friend Lucky (ironic name there).

The detention centre is a very nondescript building. We went through the checks we had to undergo and then met the two of them in a bleak, outdoor area. Lucky, a tall man from Liberia (or maybe Nigeria ‒ we still don’t know and we don’t ask) was very nervous. While friendly, he seemed close to a nervous breakdown. Koffi talked to us, with Andrew interpreting. That was our first visit.

Seventeen years later, they are our “adopted” sons. Added to the three boys we have, that makes a big family of males. 

How did this happen?

Slowly.

We visited them from time to time in the lock-up. Andrew took up their cause to get status as asylum seekers. After the questions and facts about their separate lives, one in Liberia, Koffi in the Ivory Coast were established, they were finally granted that status.

By the time Koffi was released our sons were travelling overseas on working holidays or pursuing careers in Sydney and Melbourne, so he came to stay with us. 

Koffi ‒ I still don’t know his exact age, but I guess at this time he was in his forties ‒ had been a very successful businessman in Abidjan where he ran a chain of bakeries. He had won medals for this and had gone to Paris to collect them. He had six children back home.

I got him some work at our local bakery. We ferried him around when needed.

Lucky was released from detention and he and his new girlfriend and Koffi visited us for lunch where we got to know a little more about them. We never asked them questions about why they left or how, but from time to time they volunteered some specific piece of information while we were having lunch or walking around our bush block.

Koffi brought his children to Perth and established them in a rental property in Belmont.

For the next few years we stayed in touch with both men. Lucky married and in short order had two young sons. Koffi was working in Aged Care, but took time off to go back to the Ivory Coast and sent us photos of his wedding there. Soon after, he came to our home to show off his new bride. He would bring us an expensive gift to celebrate Mother’s Day or Father’s Day. After a few years of his expensive gifts, I suggested that he could just buy us a pot plant. Made a few times, my suggestion finally met with a degree of anger from him. This was unusual; he was always smiling – and he told me in strong terms, that “it was his custom to do so.” We learned a lesson.

At one lunch when he told us that he thought it might be OK to lock up his children at night and we told him that this was not an acceptable Australian custom, he challenged us a bit.  Then told us a nightmare tale of gangs of thugs, carrying machetes, roaming the streets of Abidjan at night. Koffi would lock his family up for their safety and would sit at night, clutching a machete for some degree of protection. When a burglar broke through a window in his daughter’s bedroom he whacked the intruder with his machete. We listened to this tale, one of very few about his life in Africa, and it drove home again, a reason why many people flee their own homeland. It is the powerful need to be safe. For themselves and their own family. No matter how hard it was for him, and for Lucky to learn English, to get citizenship, to get work, to get a house to live in, the over-riding sense was, at the very least, here they were safe. You can begin to build a life from the basis of safety, but it is difficult if you are in fear of your own life day after day, night after night.

In the meantime, Lucky had decided to honour a vision he had as a young boy and entered University to study for a degree in Theology. Which he gained, and soon became a pastor in a small community in Melbourne where he and his now ex-wife had moved with their two boys.

We visit Melbourne at least once a year to see our two sons and their families who live and work there and always catch up with the tall, smiling, very handsome Lucky and his boys in a coffee shop, a restaurant, a family home. Even a few visits to the Melbourne Zoo, a Nigerian restaurant ‒ wherever is convenient.

Last year, Lucky went to Nigeria and returned with his new wife. Now he is working as a security officer, a part-time pastor and community worker helping other Africans adjust to life in this strange country Australia and getting his accreditation as a migration officer.

Koffi works in Aged Care and tells us how often so many of the residents insist that it is he who should attend to them, not someone else. We can understand why. He smiles. He cares a lot and has time to spend with “his” patients beyond the immediate task. He is generous, gentle and wonderful company.

His children, including the young daughter and son with his new wife, all are either at school or working. His wife is studying to get accreditation for Aged Care work and will achieve that at the end of this year.

I write this to reinforce what all readers of Green Issue know anyway, that refugees are people first, second and third. Make judgements about them as people first not because of a label, a former nationality, religion, skin colour or any other limited form of recognition.

We came to love our two adopted sons and their families. They have enriched our lives and Australian life.

Welcome again, Koffi and Lucky. We’re so glad Andrew rang CARAD, talked to you and got to visit you in the Detention Centre.

Header photo: Koffi, Penny and Lucky

_{[Opinions expressed are those of the author and not official policy of Greens WA]}