It was amazing grace that kept me in Australia as an international student. The journey of international education is one that I know very well, having migrated to Australia at the age of 19 to pursue tertiary education in Adelaide, South Australia.
I completed my International Baccalaureate in May of 2007 and two months later, I was sat on a single bed in student accommodation on a brutally cold July day in Adelaide – unprecedented chills for this child of Africa.
Just like that, it was just me. My mum had travelled with me to Adelaide and stayed the maximum time allowed for parents escorting their children – two weeks. She was now gone, and it was me vs life for the first time ever. To say I didn’t know my left from my right would be a severe understatement.
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I had migrated to Australia straight out of my parents’ house, where everything including thinking was outsourced. Up to that point in life, any and all decisions passed through consultation and management of the parental units.
There I was in my tiny room in Adelaide, staring at a growing pile of laundry in the corner that needed washing. At the student accommodation, we had a communal laundry area with washing machines and driers – I didn’t know who to tell that I had no idea how to use those machines.
And more importantly, that I had just come from a world where the cleanliness of my clothes was determined by the strength of the wrist – and I was therefore clueless about the connotations of a top loader versus a front loader.
The nuances of life admin began to come at me fast. What was I going to eat for lunch? Would I cook or get a ready-made sandwich from the deli down the road, like I had the last few days?
Across the road from our accommodation was Hungry Jack’s – I had already peeped an ad for a burger meal with a milkshake for just $10. Hungry Jack’s would win the battle that day (and many days to come).
With each passing day of my new life in Australia, I drifted farther and farther into the abyss of identity crisis. The university accommodation was walking distance to campus, both located in the Adelaide CBD, so weather permitting, I could walk to school or take the free bus to and from campus – that was easy.
The difficult part was learning that public transport works on a schedule so precise you can plan your life around it. University offered us bus, tram and train timetables that had arrival and departure times printed in advance.
Like a fortune teller, I could proclaim the exact time the bus on my route would be at the designated bus stop on any given day – not a minute earlier or later.
No amount of running, pleading or praying to ancestors would result in a bus waiting for you after the designated departure time. And so my life in Australia began, with wonders never ceasing. Stay tuned for more next week.
-The writer is a Kenyan-Australian lawyer and podcaster based in Nairobi
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By Dorcas Mbugua