IDENTITY AND BELONGING

I Didn’t Come to Australia Empty-Handed — I Came Carrying Everything

I was seven years and eleven months old when I came to Australia.

Old enough to remember.
Too young to make sense of it.

I still remember the flight. The last meal I had on the plane tasted like burnt rice. I took one spoon and spat it out straight away. Even now, if I sit with it long enough, I can still taste it. Sometimes I wonder did they think that’s what we were used to eating back home? I guess I’ll never know.

I remember the airport too. The escalators confused me. The steps were moving, and I almost fell trying to stand on something that wasn’t still. Everything felt unfamiliar, slightly overwhelming but also new in a way that felt… hopeful.

There was excitement. There was innocence. There was confusion. But most of all, there was hope.

No more sleeping on hard floor with only a thin blanket underneath.
No more going into the forest just to find food.

And yet, there are parts of that life I still miss.

Climbing trees in our compound back in Ghana. Reaching for mangoes and whatever fruit we could find. The risks. The laughter. The kind of joy you don’t realise is joy until it’s gone.

Some of the hardest lives still carry the softest memories.

We arrived as a family – my mum, my dad, and my five siblings. I’m the fifth of six. We came together. But not everything that arrives together stays that way.

I was placed into an English as Second Language (ESL) centre called Western English Language School located in Braybrook, Melbourne. I remember sitting in classrooms where everything felt slightly out of reach. Words were being spoken, instructions were being given, and I was there but not fully inside it. You learn quickly how to watch, how to copy, how to stay quiet until you understand enough not to stand out.

At home, it was harder.

My mum didn’t fully understand English that well. Not in the way the system expected. Conversations that should have been simple became complicated. Forms, appointments, decisions – things that required clarity were often met with confusion and regrets. And when you don’t fully understand what’s being asked of you, you still have to respond. You still have to live with the outcome.

Some decisions are made for you long before you understand them.

A few years after arriving, my parents divorced. At the time, I can’t recall exactly how I felt. But home became stile. It became almost like a prison of my own shadows.

No explanation.
No understanding.
Just a shift.

Looking back now, I can see more – the pressure, the systems, the way certain pathways are quietly encouraged over keeping families together. But as a child, you don’t analyse it.

You just feel it.

I’ve never fully understood my parents nor the choices they made towards not only myself, but all my siblings. And quite frankly, I’m still trying to. Still trying to “put myself in their shoes”.

Just maybe – one day, I might get answers to the questions my heart has been yearning to understand.

Yet again, coming into a new life after everything my father had experienced – war, trauma, fear, constantly being in survival mode, I can only question if the behaviours I grew up seeing is a form of trauma response.

What does it mean to finally be somewhere safe…but still carry pain, regrets, and loss with you?

Maybe one day I’ll have the strength to ask him.

But there are small moments of silent giggles I do remember.

I remember pretending to be asleep on the couch so I wouldn’t get in trouble. Hearing his footsteps as he walked into the living room. The TV going quiet. Then being lifted – gently, carefully and carried to my room. He laid me down like I mattered.

But home wasn’t always peaceful. I remember that he worked. A Lot. Long hours, always trying to provide in the only way he knew how.

Or maybe… it was more than that.

Maybe work was where he found his quiet. A way to stay busy, so there was no space left for everything he had been through. Even now, in his 60s, he hasn’t slowed down.

Sometimes he says it indirectly – what is there to do at home but think too much? Better to keep moving. To stay occupied. To have something to look forward to.

I think that was his language.
Not always words.
Not always softness.
But presence. However he knew how to give it.

My mother was different.

She loved money. She loved business. She loved the spotlight.

There was always something she had going – selling African food, blankets, hair extensions, running Susu (loaning money). She moved with independence, with drive, with a kind of determination that never went unnoticed.

People called her “Mama G.”

She was known for her generosity – for showing up, for giving, for responding to people in need without hesitation. A heart that gave quickly, almost instinctively. And I saw that. I saw how easily her care extended outward.

But at home… it felt different.

There wasn’t enough for us. Just enough care to keep things moving. But not always enough to feel it.

She would say she was doing it “for us.”
That one day, her goodness would return through others. That strangers would somehow help us when we needed it most.

I didn’t understand her words, or resilience then.
But I see it now.
And I admire it, to an extent.

Because that part of her shaped me more than I realised. The way I build. The way I give. The way I show up for others even when I have little left for myself. That didn’t come from nowhere. It came from watching her.

But there are parts of her I don’t understand either.

I don’t know what she went through during the war. What she saw. What she lost. What she carried before she ever became my mother.

But sometimes, I dream. And the dreams feel too real. Like I’m seeing something that didn’t happen to me but somehow lives in me – a part of her story.

Maybe that’s what trauma does.
Maybe it travels.

She wasn’t affectionate with me. Conversations were difficult. We lived under the same roof until I was 18, but we never really had a relationship in the way people describe it.

It was more… understood as:
This is my mother.
And I am her daughter.
Nothing more. Nothing less.

The word love may have lived in my home…
but it was never spoken to me.

I don’t remember ever being told, “I love you.” Not once.

You don’t question it as a child.
You just evolve around it.

You hear it in other homes. You see it expressed so easily on television, through the encounters we have with others. And slowly, you start to wonder what it is about you that makes it so hard to say.

I don’t think they ever said it.
I just learned to live without hearing it.

Is something wrong with me?
Am I unlovable?
If I try harder… will it come?

So I tried my hardest to impress them yet no one ever noticed.

Or maybe they did.

Maybe they saw the effort, the things I achieved that no one else in my family had and chose not to acknowledge it. Sometimes it felt like silence. Other times, resentment. I’ve questioned that more than I care to admit. Whether it was real… or something I learned to internalise.

You adjust anyway.

You soften parts of yourself. You carry things quietly; pain, tears, and the questions you don’t know how to ask.

What if I wasn’t here?

You learn how to exist without needing too much. Without asking too much. All for something as simple as being told you are loved.

Now that I’m older, I see it differently.

Maybe it wasn’t something they knew how to say.
Maybe it wasn’t a language they were raised with.
Maybe love, for them, looked like survival. Like providing. Like staying.

But understanding that doesn’t change what it felt like to be a child waiting to hear it. And I think that’s where responsibility begins. Because if we’ve lived without something so essential, we should at least try not to pass that absence on.

There’s a lot in that I’m still unpacking.

And I will.

Over the coming weeks, months, and years I’ll be sharing more – slowly, honestly, and in ways that make sense of things I didn’t have the language for growing up.

Because some stories don’t arrive all at once.

They come in pieces.

Dear reader – before you return again, I’ll say this: I may not have experienced what love felt like…but I’ve certainly learned what it is not.

Sincerely, Saran Konteh

---