Interesting article about Sudanese immigrants in rural Australia. The government gets nervous when immigrants do things like form communities so they have a policy now of spreading them out into the country so they can pick crops and “integrate”. So we have about 1000 Sudanese refugees living Toowoomba, Qld – a small city west of Brisbane known for bible-bashing and nationalist politics – who are understandably having trouble fitting in. The usual racial shit you expect in a cowboy town, letters in the paper, kids yelling stuff from cars. One guy said back in Sudan he had seen people hacked to death with axes… so he wasn’t too worried about the “shouting boys”.
The funny thing though is that the Sudanese aren’t helping things. Apparently they insist on driving without licenses and are very very bad at it. It’s claimed the young people are having trouble separating reality from fantasy, the culture shock is so great. For example in the film Independence Day the moon landings (true) and an alien invasion (fiction) are both depicted. To people who have never heard of either, or ever even seen a film, it all seems unreal. The people they see walking around in Australia look like the people on TV too so they are not sure what to take seriously. Basically they think it’s all an amusement park of sorts.
I suppose once you’ve been in an axe battle, everything else is Disneyland.
The funny thing though is that the Sudanese aren’t helping things. Apparently they insist on driving without licenses and are very very bad at it. It’s claimed the young people are having trouble separating reality from fantasy, the culture shock is so great. For example in the film Independence Day the moon landings (true) and an alien invasion (fiction) are both depicted. To people who have never heard of either, or ever even seen a film, it all seems unreal. The people they see walking around in Australia look like the people on TV too so they are not sure what to take seriously. Basically they think it’s all an amusement park of sorts.
I suppose once you’ve been in an axe battle, everything else is Disneyland.
2 comments:
Great post, SJ. Very thought-provoking, even for someone who thinks as little as I do.
Wait, aliens aren't real? Wow, what a letdown.
What about Santa and the Easter Bunny? I know the Tooth Fairy exists. I saw her on TV.
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