Almost two decades after landing on Australian soil as a nine-year-old from war-torn Democratic Republic of the Congo, Monga Mukasa — now 28 — returned to the Tanzanian camp where his journey as a refugee began.
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Along with his two younger sisters, twins Tina and Neema Mukasa, he travelled to Tanzania to “reconnect with the motherland”, but to the Nyarugusu Refugee Camp to reconnect with his grandmother in particular.
This matriarch helped raise the six Mukasa children after their mother had sadly died when conflict broke out in their home country.
“She raised us when we lost our dear mother. She played a key role in our life, in terms of cooking for us, feeding us and protecting us as well,” Mr Mukasa said.
“She is the only grandparent remaining from both sides of the family.”
While the trip lasted four weeks and the siblings spent two of them in Tanzania, they spent only one precious day at the camp they called home for years.
Their grandmother knew nothing of the visit until two days before, with the Mukasas wanting to secure government permissions and finalise travel arrangements so that little could jeopardise the reunion.
They took a three-hour drive from Tanzania’s Kigoma — near the border of Burundi and Democratic of the Congo — to the camp, where many of their family members remain, 20 years on, still waiting to be granted refugee status.
Mr Mukasa said visiting spurred many mixed emotions, but the one that overrode them all was pure happiness.
“It felt like a dream to be there, being close to her (my grandmother), talking to her,” he said.
“She speaks our tribal language, Kibembe; she doesn’t know English. The tribal language is what we used to communicate.”
Being a couple of years older than the twins, Mr Mukasa remembers more of the dialect. He said he couldn’t speak it too well but could understand bits and pieces.
“But then, the language itself wasn’t a barrier for all of us, which was very interesting,” Mr Mukasa said.
“In the refugee camps, you have to learn a lot of languages because you have people from different countries who have escaped wars in their own countries and seeking refuge in a safe country, such as Tanzania.”
Mr Mukasa said he was thrilled to find his grandmother still coherent, walking and strong at nearly 90.
“The most beautiful thing and the most amazing thing is how she remembered us,” he said.
Before their trip, the trio had been concerned about their grandmother’s age and worried they might have missed visiting before she passed.
They knew they wanted to return, but with busy and well-established lives in Australia, co-ordinating a time that suited everyone and finding the time at all was challenging.
“When is the right time? And, considering the issues you hear on the news,” Mr Mukasa said.
“Then we thought, you know what? There’s never a right time. We packed our bags and said, ‘Let’s go’.”
Mr Mukasa clearly remembers the moment he learned his family had been granted refuge status in Australia.
He was in class and his older sister excitedly knocked on the classroom window and told him: “We’re going to Australia!”
“I was so excited. I just left my seat and said ‘Bye, bye class’ and went back home,” Mr Mukasa said, erupting with laughter as he recalled the moment.
The process had taken years and had been spliced with hope that was dashed as quickly as it had presented itself when a Norwegian immigration officer was so traumatised by the stories she was told that she left her post.
Mr Mukasa and his family had been waiting in line to see her, hopeful they would find refuge in Norway. He said she packed up her things and left just like that.
“All of us were very sad, wondering what would happen now,” he said.
But as luck had it — and Mr Mukasa emphasised that luck came into play in a big way in these situations — an Australian immigration officer came along.
“The hardest part was leaving other family behind, knowing that here’s us, we’re very grateful, we have an opportunity to start a new life for ourselves, but there’s still family members who are left behind,” Mr Mukasa said.
“People live there, die there, are forced to return to their countries and some end up taking their own lives because they didn’t want to.”
He said his family saw all those things in the camp, so returning there wasn’t easy, but they wanted to face it.
“Is life still hard? Yes, it’s still hard. Are people still living in misery? Oh, a hundred per cent. But that’s just the way it is, unfortunately,” Mr Mukasa said.
The family, who now proudly call Shepparton home, reconnected with their remaining African family members on the trip but had unfortunately lost many to the war itself and from the living conditions in refugee camps.
“On the three-hour trip back to Kigoma after leaving the camp that day, we sat in total silence,” Mr Mukasa said.
The Mukasa family arrived in Shepparton in 2005, unable to speak a word of English.
But they have thrived with the support the Goulburn Valley afforded them.
“The community really embraced us, so we were able to integrate very well into the community,” Mr Mukasa said.
“We started from scratch, having gone through primary school, high school, university and then into the workforce.
“We’re very lucky because we were able to achieve what we wanted to in our lives, which is being educated and also to give back to our community and support our young people.”
In his 20 years here, Mr Mukasa has given back to the local community more than some people do in a lifetime.
It’s a familiar story for many who’ve been dealt some of life’s toughest challenges: they are often the most giving.
That is true for Mr Mukasa, who has worked at Shepparton’s La Trobe University and for the Victorian Department of Education in Goulburn Valley schools, helping support and educate young people.
He also runs an organisation he founded called Networking African-Australians, which supports students in excelling in their school work and becoming valuable members of the community.
The organisation is currently hosting a homework club at Greater Shepparton Secondary College with $100,000 of funding granted by the Department of Education.
“The community has uplifted, guided and supported me,” he said.
“I do my best to support our community. It is my duty now to do my little part; that’s what I’m doing at the moment, supporting our young people.”
Maybe ‘little’ means the opposite in Kibembe, because Mr Mukasa’s impact in Shepparton has been anything but.
Now, he is making a career transition as one of 67 Switch to Social full-time scholarship students studying a Masters of Social Work (Child and Family Practice) at La Trobe University in Bundoora. He is one semester deep into the two-year course.
The Mukasa family is growing in Australia, with Mr Mukasa’s older two sisters and a brother becoming parents to a combined seven kids while living in Australia (now based in Melbourne, Wallan and Kyabram).
Their father and the trio of siblings who journeyed back to the refugee camp remain dedicated to their work and family in Shepparton.
Neema is a hospital nurse, Tina is a multicultural education officer at a Catholic college and their father works at a local chicken farm.
While Mr Mukasa is temporarily based in Bundoora for his social work schooling, he hopes to find employment in Shepparton once qualified.
“Shepparton is home for me,” he said.
“It always will be.”
Senior journalist