Dreaming of Ethiopia

As a child in the 1980s, I saw children starving in Ethiopia on TV, and I imagined myself as a missionary in deepest, darkest Africa…

I sleep in a different bed in a different village most weeks, but I am fortunate to have a bed. I travel hours by car, or sometimes plane, each week to get to work, but it's a beautiful country that most people never see – not even in photos. Summer days are very hot, winter nights are very cold; it's a country of extremes.

I work in health so I spend a lot of time with women and children and I hear many stories. In one village of 300 people, one that has never been at war or experienced a natural disaster, I meet three children in the one day under ten years of age whose mothers have died. On average, these people attend at least 40 funerals in their lifetimes.

I sit with a woman whose child isn't growing well and I am concerned for his health. I ask her where she is living. Her husband is in jail, and she lives with his family in her mother-in-law's home. There are 14 people in one three-bedroom house, with one fridge (that doesn't work) and one toilet (that also doesn't work).

Similar stories are repeated throughout the places I visit. The tales of despair, hopelessness and lack of control over their own lives can become overwhelming. Why do people even get up in the morning?

The sad part is this is not "imaginary". It's reality – and not in Ethiopia but in remote Aboriginal communities here in Australia. I am working in parts of my own country I didn't know existed when I dreamed of Africa as a child.

When the Prime Minister apologised earlier this year, I sat eating my breakfast with a tear in my eye. As I walked to work, I wondered how the people around me felt. I talked to the women in the clinic. Some had watched it, others had heard there was a party in Tennant Creek. I mentioned I'd seen people I knew from other communities on TV. This sparked much conversation in Indigenous Language and then one older lady spoke up: "Someone from here should have gone there, or those people should have come here and said it."

To a group of young mums, the confusion was around who the Prime Minister was: somehow news of the election and change of Government had missed this part of Australia. For these women, more important was what would happen next in their community. Would the community phone be fixed, so I could call to let them know the next time I was coming to the outstation where they lived?

I am learning so much. What would it be like to speak two or three languages, plus English, yet not be able to read and write? How would I get my voice heard? Would I have a voice?

I've never been to Africa, and I no longer dream about it. Trying to work out what it means to be white in this part of Australia is challenging enough.

Dreaming of Ethiopia: Elise Rolfs; 2008



I know when I set out for Central Australia; I set out in the hope of answers. Answers to questions like ‘why are Indigenous Australians 12 times more likely to develop diabetes compared to Non-Indigenous Australians?’; ‘why are Indigenous Australians 40% more likely to commit suicide compared to Non-Indigenous Australians?’ and ‘why on average will Indigenous Australians die 17 years earlier than Non-Indigenous Australians?’

However the reality is, the more I see, the less I seem to know.

There is only one thing that I know is for certain - the resilience, determination and wisdom that exists with the first Australians; and the only way that we're going to find answers to 'Indigenous problems', is by listening to 'Indigenous solutions'.

While my time here is slowly coming to an end, I hope I can share some of my thoughts on what it's been like to live in the red centre and try to make sense of the bureaucratic nonsense that takes place here.

As one of the traditional owners from New Haven said to me when he held my arm next to his 'our colours on the outside might be different, but on the inside all humans bleed the same colour; we're one blood'.

I hope I can enlighten some of these statistics to human faces and what it's been like to witness the oldest living culture in the world.

While I do still dream of Africa...for the moment trying to work out what it means to be white in this part of Australia is challenging enough.