Australians need to remember how good we really have it
Things may not be as rosy as they were a decade ago, but as a nation, we’re an exceptionally lucky bunch. As a recent trip to Africa made so clear to me, writes Angela Mollard.
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The most inspiring person I’ve met this year had a handshake that could throttle snakes and a smile that stretched for days.
Rhoda Mbelete is 80 years old, a mother of eight, farmer and businesswoman. She lives in a tiny, red dust-strewn village in Kenya where rain is rare and challenges are manifold but she has an attitude that puts us to shame.
Because as we here in Australia engage in generational warfare over upskilling, job opportunities for the ageing, entitled Millennials, profligate avocado consumption and the snarky new catchphrase “OK Boomer”, Rhoda and her local community are working together to improve all their lives.
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They don’t niggle at each other over who deserves what. They don’t dub each other “snowflakes” or “has-beens” or “dinosaurs” or “narcissists”. When you have so very little, you can’t waste precious energy on being adversarial, reactive and divisive. There’s enough to fight without creating battles of your own.
I met with Rhoda a few weeks ago in her capacity as a member of a Savings and Credit Co-operative established in her rural community and supported by World Vision. About three dozen members of the organisation aged from their 20s to their 80s turned up that scorching Wednesday morning to show us how they support each other by pooling their savings and offering credit so each of them can better their lives.
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As a community they decide who can borrow to buy a goat, who would benefit from a loan to purchase a motorbike and who might need assistance to send their children to school. Rhoda had borrowed money to buy a bull from the market, she told me. Her bull had increased efficiency on her own farm and now she hires it out to neighbours. As she enters her ninth decade she struggles to look after the animals and plough the fields so uses her income from the bull to pay for workers, thus creating jobs. In this nation riven with violence, poverty, child prostitution and abuse it’s the power of the collective which drives the tiny triumphs of the individual. They can’t afford to loathe each other; to do so would put their livelihoods at stake.
Sometimes we need to step outside our country to see how little we appreciate it. The week before I arrived in Kenya, 10 police officers were killed by a bomb near the Somali border. In June, another eight lost their lives in similar circumstances. To visit Nairobi is to be aware every minute of your own safety. Even in a market full of handicrafts and hopeful stallholders there’s an underlying sense of menace.
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And yet the people prevail. While our over 50s moan in response to Treasurer Josh Frydenberg suggesting wannabe retirees might need to re-skill and our Millennials complain constantly about not being able to buy a house, 12,000 kilometres away people with nothing seek to better themselves through grit and gratitude. I met a group of women who’d taken a World Vision donated mill and used it to grind corn and sorghum. Using the proceeds from sales of the grains, they’d bought a tuktuk to deliver water to local households. When that went well they branched out to drying kale and making jam from the fruit of the local tamarind and baobab trees. Bursting with pride, they’d even made labels for the jars and bought matching bright yellow dresses to show they were members of the collective. They didn’t gripe about each other or write waspish letters to the local newspaper about how unfair it is expecting them to retrain and be productive. Instead, all of them across multiple generations embraced the learning and opportunity to have agency over their own lives.
Why can’t we do the same? Why do we as the occupants of this rich, resourced, safe and functioning nation constantly find fault rather than take personal responsibility for creating solutions? Why don’t we embrace the opportunities available to us, dig in and create dynamic lives and workplaces where the mature and experienced learn from the young and agile and vice versa. The brilliant ABC series Old People’s Home for 4 Year Olds may have been great tear-jerk television but it was also a template for how best to live: cooperatively, curiously, constructively and with a willingness to love and learn from each other.
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If we’re privileged enough to live in a developed nation then the least we can do is have a developed attitude. Gen Z will gain little if they blame Boomers for climate change and financial inequality while it’s equally pointless for the over 60s to bang on about the younger generation’s poor work ethic, sense of entitlement, lack of manners and enthusiasm for delivered food.
There’s lots to be learned from being inquisitive rather than disparaging about each other’s lives. I spent my week in Kenya driving between projects with AFL player Nic Naitanui and two World Vision staffers. We represented different generations but as we took turns playing songs to pass the kilometres, each of us revelled in the sharing of tunes.
And so it is that they now have the Cowboy Junkies on their playlists and I have a couple of excellent young Melbourne bands on mine.