Community profile: Rosemary Kariuki
[Article published July/August 2009]
Rosemary Kariuki
“I grew up with so much love,” she explains – referring to her childhood on a farm in the Kenyan town of Eldoret. “We lived 40-50 people in one house. We shared everything we had.”
This spirit of sharing fuelled her desire to help others. In Kenya, she helped street kids facing illness or death. Later, in Sydney, Australia, she organised and lobbied for countless African events and services: including the African Women’s Dinner Dance (SMH link), the Celebration of African cultures, and generating employment and health awareness.
This involves working with Africans from many different backgrounds and bridging the gap between cultures – a challenge Rosemary relishes. Earlier this year she helped organise the annual African cultural festival in Auburn in which 20 African communities showcased their cultures, dance, food and artifacts. She also helped organise an innovative cultural exchange program that saw (Anglo) Australian women from Ulladulla stay with African Australian women in Sydney. “My goodness, everyone shared stories, songs, cooking,” she laughs.
The desire to connect cultures is something Rosemary attributes to her upbringing in Kenya’s town of Eldoret.
“It was a sharing area,” says Rosemary. “We were all people from different tribes living in one community – going to school together, eating together – and our church was always a place for poor, rich and middle class.”
“It opened my mind to living with different people without caring where they came from.”
Rosemary says her parents often helped people of all backgrounds in the community – for example, her father employed people on the farm and mother helped people who were ill and homeless.
Like Rosemary her father had enormous strength and determination to create a new life for his family. He’d spent seven years in jail – fighting against colonial rule in Kenya. On his release, and following independence he purchased a farm from colonial settlers, and saved to send children including Rosemary to boarding school. Sadly at just 56 years old, he passed away.
As an adult, Rosemary worked in administrative roles in Kenya’s capital Nairobi for around 10 years before “the community spirit in Eldoret encouraged me to move back there.”
By now married, separated, and with children she set up a wholesale beauty products business to support her two boys and adopted children.
The business was a great success. But she found Eldoret wasn’t without its problems. In 1992, she was attacked with a hammer, in her own home. Then in 1997 her shop was burgled. It was part of a new wave of tribal clashes that was to rock the region for many years to come. (Eldoret was also the scene of the 2007 clashes in which Kikuyus from Rosemary’s tribe were burned to death in a church massacre).
Rosemary was devastated to suddenly feel unsafe in a place where “our neighbours were all of different tribes and we lived like brothers and sisters.”
Though she sensed the clashes were politically instigated she knew it was time to move on.
With her children still in Kenyan boarding schools, she made the difficult decision to accept political asylum in Australia – hoping she’d one day build a new life for all her family.
“This was the hardest decision in my life that I have ever done, leaving my children behind,” she says.
In 1999, she arrived in Sydney feeling bewildered, lost and lonely.
On the first night, an Ethiopian Australian lady took her in, and St Vincent de Paul and Asylum Seekers Support services helped her to slowly build a new life for herself.
With her retail background, she managed to find work in a shop servicing Navy staff. “My English was already good, but by talking with young customers I began to understand the local accent too.”
She also volunteered at Mercy Sisters to visit elderly people in nursing homes. ” I decided to use my lonely time to help the lonely like myself. But I became very attached to them so that when they passed on, it affected me because they had become part of me,” she says sadly.
Soon she turned her volunteering skills to Australia’s growing African communities. Working with the NSW African Communities Council, HARDA and other bodies, she helped organise social gatherings, and meetings to improve local services.
Meanwhile in the mainstream workforce she progressed from roles in retail into accounts and administration. She helped finance her children’s arrival in Australia – so the family were happily reunited at last.
Rosemary then turned her efforts to supporting African women.
“It was 2006 and I could see that African women were still facing a lot of loneliness and isolation here,” she says. “They didn’t or couldn’t go clubbing because this is not our culture, and there weren’t many social opportunities available. Then I came up with the idea of the annual African Women’s Dance. The first people I shared (it) with thought it couldn’t work due to funding. But the first year 350 women came, and now it attracts around 500 women – 25% white Australian and around 75% African backgrounds.”
Rosemary helped set up the African Women’s Group (NSW) to organise the dance and help educate women about vital issues like women’s health and domestic violence: “Many who were being abused didn’t understand it was abuse.” she says.
By this stage, Rosemary was also actively working with other service providers. She was appointed as an Ethnic Community Liaison Officer with NSW police and worked with the Domestic Violence Team.
In recognition of Rosemary’s vital work, she was presented with a valued Edna Ryan award from Australia’s Women’s Electoral Lobby in 2007. Announcing the awards, Member of Parliament, Helen Westwood said “Rosemary has worked tirelessly for the wellbeing of migrant African women.”
More recently she was presented with a ‘Highly Commended’ award as part of the Women of the West awards presented by the University of Western Sydney.
While proud to receive such support for her work, Rosemary still has a lot planned for the future: “To help women you have to help men too,” she says. “Now I’m seeing more African women standing on their own two feet, it’s time to get more men’s services. Women are able to recover from culture shock in Australia easier than men with access to playgroup and essential support services. We need to start information and social sessions for African men – meeting once a week and build on that…”
Rosemary continues to elaborate on her next plan – and you get the feeling this interview wasn’t meant to be about Rosemary at all – but about her much-loved community.
And that’s what Rosemary is all about: community.
MORE ABOUT ROSEMARY:
The night belongs to the women of Africa Sydney Morning Herald 30/5/09
Photo Essay: African Women’s Dinner Dance Sydney Morning Herald 1/6/09
Another photo essay: African Women’s Dinner Dance Fairfield City Champion
Women of the West awards
