Hubby and I were sitting on our front verandah yesterday when an African gentleman walked past but kept looking back, he saw us and we smiled and said hello and he stopped to say that he was looking at the lounge on the path next door, hubby advised that it was free because the people next door were moving – I got up and showed him that it was a sofa bed and how to work it and said if he found someone to help him, he could take it.  He then stopped and spoke with us for a while and explained that he was a refugee and he just couldn’t believe the amount of stuff that we throw out in Australia, I mean it was a perfectly good sofa bed, just a bit faded and worn in places.  Where he was from in Nairobi you had hardly anything and kept what you did have and then he explained that you had to walk two hours to a hospital if you were sick, he was amazed at Medicare!  He was telling us that the concern that his people have is each night is ‘where am I going to get food to feed my family tomorrow’.  Where we have welfare to help those less fortunate and as he said, each fortnight you know that there is some money coming, there they have nothing.  A funny story he shared was a friend of his, also a refugee, when he came to Australia kept picking up all the televisions on the side of the road because he just couldn’t believe that people were throwing them away – he ended up with a unit full of TVs and had to get rid of them because he could hardly move!

We asked if he liked Australia and he said yes, he is happy to be here but that his soul will always be back home, and I can understand this, no matter how lucky this country is, it’s still not home to him, I think I’d be the same if I had to flee Australia, no matter how bad it was it would always have that place in my heart as ‘home’.

When he left to continue walking, hubby and I looked at each other and said how that conversation reminded us of how lucky we are but also how we take things for granted in general, how wasteful we are as a people, always wanting more and better instead of just using what we have and making do, we’re also wasteful with food.

We really are blessed to be here and we thank him for reminding us of it.