I live near the Inverbrackie immigration detention centre in the Adelaide Hills. Having spent my life working with intellectually disabled children, I believed people who arrived on Australian shores and were living in the centre were being given things that disadvantaged Australians deserved more. I hated them with such intensity - it was eating into me like a disease.
When the boat carrying asylum seekers crashed into Christmas Island in December last year I thought: serves you bastards right. Come the right way and it wouldn't have happened.
Earlier this year, after speaking my mind about the Inverbrackie detention centre at a town hall meeting, I was invited to participate in an SBS documentary. This involved a 25-day journey tracing in reverse the journeys that refugees have taken to reach Australia.
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Illustration: Dyson. On Monday, March 14, 2011, I found myself standing at the front door of a home in Wodonga. I had not been given any details of who lived there or even the purpose of my visit. I knocked on the door, it opened and there in front of me stood not one black face but seven, all smiling and welcoming me into their home.
The Masudi family - Bahati and Maisara with their five sons, Chris 16, Lionel 14, Felix 6, and twins, Omba and Shako, seven months - were from Burundi, in Africa. After waiting nine years in the Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya, they had been resettled in Wodonga 18 months ago. For the next six days I lived with the family - people I had once feared.
We shared food and laughed and cried together. Each night I listened to their stories. These beautiful people had endured unbelievable atrocities. They struggled to recall the terrible things that had happened to them and their loved ones - the rape, murder and torture that is rife in the country they once called home. I found myself wishing I could do anything to help stop their suffering.
During the next part of my journey in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, I met and lived with Chin refugees from Burma. Again I was told incredibly sad stories of brutal persecution in their country, which led them to flee to Malaysia only to suffer further persecution. It was a crime for them to exist - or so it seemed. The Malaysian government did not recognise them, therefore it was illegal for them to work or live in that country. They were considered criminals, and lived in constant fear of being arrested, which meant jail, caning and being trucked back to the Malay-Thai border.
My emotions were in turmoil. I was overwhelmed by the degree of intense cruelty and persecution that you only read about or see on TV. Here I was, immersed in the lives of true refugees. And I was struggling. At night, as I lay on the hard floor, unable to sleep, the reality of following in the footsteps of a refugee was sinking in. I wept for their pain and suffering. Was it a crime to want a life of peace, to raise children and watch them grow and develop?
Unbeknown to me the worst was yet to come. I was sent to Africa to spend time at the Kakuma Refugee Camp in Kenya, not far from the borders of Sudan and Ethiopia. Here, 84,000 people are ''housed'' (and I use that term loosely) in an area 14 kilometres long and five kilometres wide. This is where I met the remaining Masudi family whose relatives I had lived with only a couple of weeks ago in Australia. But you are not living here. Not when you have no voice, no rights, no choice and no control.
Food is distributed every 15 days from two distribution centres that cater for the entire camp. People stand in queues for hours in the searing heat, and if you don't queue, you don't get your ration and risk starving. You build your own little one-room home out of mudbricks and the water used for the bricks must be saved out of your water ration. If it rains, your house dissolves, so the process must start again. A reed mat is all there is to sleep on and the scorpions come out in the dark of night. But don't worry, I was told, if they bite, you only get sick for about four days. I learnt that there is no use complaining, no use protesting, because no one listens, no one hears you and no one cares.
I met Deo Masudi, the older brother of Bahati, and he said to me: ''Raye, I close my eyes at night and pray to God for tomorrow. Please give me tomorrow.'' Why tomorrow, I asked. Deo replied: ''We can't ask for any more than that.''
When it came time to leave Kenya I was devastated to leave these desperate people. They deserved so much more. I had spent many nights awake, tossing and turning struggling with my thoughts and emotions. I had started this journey with such intense hatred for refugees and here I was sobbing, holding on to them, my arms refusing to let go. I was soon going to be home where I am free and have a voice, choices and control over my life.
I have been home for eight weeks now.
When I read in the paper or see on television protests at Australian detention centres, I get angry. These people are desperate, but at least they are not waiting 20 years or more for their freedom like the refugees in Kakuma. So I say to them be patient and appreciate you are safe from harm. And to all refugees who now call Australia home, appreciate your freedom, as I do now more than ever.
Raye Colbey lives in Adelaide and has spent more than 20 years working in the intellectual disability sector. She is a participant in the SBS documentary Go Back To Where You Came From, which airs tonight at 8.30.
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