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Each year, on World Refugee Day, June 20, the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) asks us to honour refugees around the globe. To celebrate the strength and courage of people who have been forced to flee their home countries to escape conflict or persecution. During Refugee Week, we are excited to bring you this extraordinary interview with Aminata Conteh-Biger.

Aminata is an UNHCR ambassador in Australia. She’s also an author, speaker and the founder of Aminata Maternal Foundation. Clare and Aminata met at an event for Aminata’s wonderful book, Rising Heart, at an organisation in Sydney called The Social Outfit.

Like everyone who has listened to her tell story, we were deeply affected by it, but also by Aminata’s spirit. She has endured some terrible things, but if we had to think of words to describe her they’d be about love, joy, generosity, fun, glamour, the sisterhood and activism. Aminata is a fabulous fashion fan, a mum, a women’s rights and maternal health advocate, and, yes, refugee.

She is the sum of her many parts - proof that we are not one story, even when that story is as big as hers.

In 1999, during the civil war in Sierra Leone, the then 18-year-old Aminata was kidnapped from her home in Freetown by rebel soldiers. She was held captive for several months, and before eventually being freed as part of a negotiated prisoner exchange.

When she fled to Australia, with UNHCR’s assistance, she had no idea what it would be like. She arrived here with nothing and to had to start again.

Today Aminata lives in Sydney with her husband Antoine and children Matisse and Serafina.

Trigger warning - this conversation includes reference to rape and details of violence. But ultimately this is an uplifting story about fleeing one home and finding another - and joy along the way. 

NOTES

THE SOCIAL OUTFIT is is an ethical fashion brand celebrating creativity and diversity, employing and training people from refugee and new migrant communities. More here.

Here’s the vid for their latest fundraiser campaign, #wearthechange

FASHION Aminata loves it, and says - “Never underestimate the power of good shoes! … When you feel good about yourself, it makes you want to achieve something.” Her first full time job in Australia was in retail with the brand David Lawrence. She also worked as a fashion model in her 20s.

The story she tells about wearing black high-waisted pants, a blue-white-and-red printed top, and cherry red alligator-print heels took place at Parliament House, the day she shared her story with an audience of 500 people. “I’d had these comments about what a refugee should look like, and I was very much against that - I was going to go all the way to the opposite side,” she says. What does a refugee look like? Whatever they want to.

“ASKING FOR HELP IS VERY HARD, NOT JUST BECAUSE IT’S A MATTER OF PRIDE BUT ALSO BECAUSE THERE IS PRESSURE TO LOOK DOWNTRODDEN, SAD AND DEFEATED ALL THE TIME - AS A REFUGEE SHOULD LOOK - AND THEN TO BE ETERNALLY GRATEFUL FOR ANYTHING COMING YOUR WAY.” - Aminata Conteh-Biger

Want more on UNHCR? Here’s the episode with Helen Storey that Clare mentions. Former fashion designer current fashion academic, Helen is first artist in residence, in Zatri refugee camp in Jordan.

Here’s Aminata’s brilliant BOOK. Buy it! A percentage of royalties goes towards Aminata’s foundation.

The AMINATA MATERNAL FOUNDATION was established to improve maternal mortality outcomes for women and babies in Sierra Leone. More here.

STRENGTH Aminata’s grandfather’s name for her was Bahteh Guineh - which means powerful woman in the Susu language. SUSU is is the language of the Susu or Soso people of Guinea and Sierra Leone, West Africa. It is in the Mande language family. It is one of the national languages of Guinea and spoken mainly in the coastal region of the country.

WAR The Sierra Leone Civil War (1991–2002), or the Sierra Leonean Civil War, was a civil war in Sierra Leone that began on 23 March 1991 when the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), with support from the special forces of Charles Taylor's National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL), intervened in Sierra Leone in an attempt to overthrow the Joseph Momoh government. The resulting civil war lasted 11 years, enveloped the country, and left over 50,000 dead. (Wikipedia)

“WAR IS NOT SOMETHING YOU WOULD WISH ON ANYBODY, IT’S REAL, YOU ARE FIGHTING FOR YOUR LIFE.”

The war had been going on in Sierra Leone since 1991, but Aminata writes in Rising Heart that it “seemed to come to us slowly.” She had left boarding school because of it though, in 1995. Many people were fleeing by the fighting. Her father had opened up a hotel he owned as a refuge for internally displaced people. Even so, Aminata’s life didn’t change that much for the first few years…She noticed more security on the school gates, and everyone knew there could spies in town and they had to be carefully who they talked to, but otherwise life went on - until it didn’t.

The CHALLENGES FACING NEW MIGRANTS AND REFUGEES in host countries are legion and run from the profound to the mundane - from homesickness and trauma, to racism, discrimination, red tape and the daily grind of having to explain yourself all the time.

Here are some lines from Rising Heart:

“Most refugees end up doing medial jobs because our qualifications mean nothing in Australia” (p. 140)

“Before I came to Australia, I didn’t even know I was black; in Sierra Leone we didn’t recognise colour like that. I didn’t even picture myself as being black. I was just a human being. The fact of that the colour of my skin seemed to mean so much was very strange to me.” (p. 147)

“My sadness had nothing to do with what had happened to me back in Sierra Leone; it was about the shortcomings of this life; this place was going to be my fresh start.” (p. 152)

“Financial help is the most common need, but the authorities always require a lot of detail in order to give that support, and many times refugees would rather stay quiet and suffer than parade their pain in order to be accepted.” (p.181)

THE BAULKHAM HILLS AFRICAN LADIES TROUPE is a film of a play by Ros Horin. The film follows the story of four charismatic and inspirational African women - including Aminata -now living in Australia, who, with the help of Horin, turned their harrowing stories of survival into a joyous theatre of humanity that has filled theatres from across their new country to the other side of the world.