A sense of place

A great many people round the world today live in countries that are not those they grew up in. This may be from choice — they emigrated from their country of origin, looking for a better life — or because they left, intending to go back, but never did, or because they were forced out by war or persecution. That may have been political, racial or even religious — the last less common than it used to be, but it still happens.

It’s a conventional cliché to picture expatriates getting together and reminiscing about (what was) home. I remember when I was a young man in the country then called Rhodesia, I and my fellow-Rhodesians used to get quite irritated with the English immigrants who poured into the country after WWII. They constantly referred to England as home while, as far as we — the native white Africans – were concerned, these people had come to Rhodesia to make a life and a home, so they should refer to their adopted country as ‘home’, and get on with adapting to whatever was different in the way of life there. This matter of integration into adopted countries is one of the major issues arising in relation to immigration programs. In Australia there have been long and heated arguments about multiculturalism, which is the policy that says immigrants are welcome to preserve and indeed maintain the cultural practices of their native countries, provided always they do not violate Australian laws and customs. This tends to result in ghettos; enclaves of foreign cultures within, but separate from, the mainstream. The other approach — far more sensible in my view (I haven’t moved far in my opinions in this area since I was young!) — is to aim at assimilation: integration of immigrants into the mainstream culture and society. This, in due course, should lead to a more coherent and unified society

But, whatever system pertains, most people who have emigrated (I suspect) hold in their hearts (as the saying goes — it’s actually nothing to do with hearts but all to do with heads) some image, some concept, albeit usually idealised, of the country and society in which they grew up. In most cases there is a strong element of nostalgia about this. I am not immune to it. I am Australian; this country has been good to me and my family and we are well integrated into its society. But at the root of my being, in my blood (another widely-accepted saying with doubtful physiological justification) I am an African. My roots are in the country where I, and my parents, were born; where I grew up. Intellectually I am well aware that that country no longer exists: it has been destroyed, socially, by the Mugabe regime that has governed it almost since the hand-over to black government in 1980 (there was a short-lived interim regime before he took over). Mismanagement and corruption have also gone a long way to destroying it physically. The countryside is denuded of trees around the towns; farms  that were well-kept and well-run have fallen into decay and ruin. Population pressure and poor farming practices are degrading the land. Except in remote areas, such as along the Zambezi, the wildlife has gone — although it must be acknowledged that this was largely the situation under white government. So I harbour no delusions about returning: that is not an option; there is no place for the likes of me in Zimbabwe. All I can do is visit Africa occasionally and sometimes, when something about Australia is particularly frustrating and irritating (such frustration and irritation are usually generated by politicians and the media) indulge in dreams of what might have been.

Diana and I left Rhodesia in 1964, just before Ian Smith’s Unilateral Declaration of Independence from Britain, which led, a few years later, to bloody civil war with the African freedom fighters. The Rhodesians called them terrorists, but in the end international pressures and sanctions, as well as unsustainable losses, forced them to negotiate, leading to black government. We weren’t part of what was called ‘the chicken run’: those who left Rhodesia because of the political situation, but if we had stayed I would have had to fight in that war and could well have been one of its casualties. We left because I was pursuing a career — I wanted to be a scientist and to achieve that had to go where there was more opportunity. So we left Rhodesia and went to South Africa. A few years later, taking an unlikely opportunity, we went to Scotland. I wanted to find out if I could compete with people with PhDs from Oxford and Stanford; I wanted to publish papers in international journals and attend meetings where clever people presented the latest results from their research at the cutting edge of the field. So in Scotland and, later, England, I began to work my way into the sub-culture of the area of science I worked in and found that I could compete compete with those people with PhDs from Oxford and Stanford. I could publish papers in international journals and present my own research at high-powered meetings. I became a recognised member of the sub-culture. Time passed and dreams of returning to Africa faded and died. Eventually I was offered a senior job in Australia’s premier scientific organization. So we moved again.

The job in Australia represented the peak of what I could aspire to, a position from which I could influence science as well as work at it. Taking it up required a very steep learning curve, since I had become a manager and director of research and also needed to deal with the politics involved in forestry — the field of research that my division (as the unit was called) was concerned with. And we settled comfortably into Australia. My children thrived and grew into wonderful people with families of their own.

Through all this my wife, Diana, supported me loyally, ran our home and was the major partner in raising the children, so the way they have turned out owes much to her. For seventeen of the twenty-one years we spent in Canberra she also ran a large group of young people — more than a thousand passed through her hands over those years — organizing, supervising and taking part in activities that included challenging hikes, camping, hunting, teaching life-saving in winter-cold rivers and, through it all, endless counseling and discussions that prepared her charges for later life. It took a great deal of her time — weekend after weekend, trips into the bush that lasted ten days, often several times a year. It was my turn to provide support, both personal and financial. For that work she was awarded the Medal of he Order of Australia.

Now we are retired and have to admit to getting old. I am sad that there’s nothing I can do for Africa. The experience and knowledge — perhaps even a modicum of wisdom — that I have accumulated over fifty years could be useful there, but no-one would be interested. The teeming populations of Zimbabwe and South Africa, and all of sub-Saharan Africa, will continue to increase, pushing the cities and sprawling shanty towns ever further into the country; the bush and farmlands will be progressively degraded, either in the name of progress and mismanaged development or because of the continual pressure of poor people moving into any area where they can clear land and scratch a living. African politics seem unlikely to improve: corruption and nepotism will continue to flourish, driven by greed and selfishness and the lust for power.

Perhaps I am unduly pessimistic but I don’t think so. I regret that the world my grandchildren will inherit will be uglier and poorer than the one we have known, rent by tensions and wars generated by competition for water and resources and the increasing pressures of the poor and desperate on those places that remain good to live in. I regret that my grandchildren will never see the Africa that I like to remember. Perhaps they will be expatriates too, leaving Australia or Bermuda, where some of them are now growing up, to wander and settle in other countries, either on purpose or, like us, because of circumstances. In that case, as has always happened, dreams of the homeland and society where they grew up will probably haunt them too. But perhaps — who knows — my pessimism will turn out to be misplaced and humans will exercise the wisdom that undoubtedly exists in our societies to solve the world’s problems. That wisdom is currently smothered by materialism and stupid ideologies, but it needs to be released so that we might conserve and live in harmony with the natural world of which we are an integral part, not just in Africa, but everywhere.