TheBanyanTree: extending the ghetto

[Peter Macinnis]

I live in Sydney, along with about 4 million other people, but we 
ghettify in curious ways.  I live on the Northern Beaches, a narrow 
coastal strip that has in many ways a separate, more laid-back culture. 
  Teachers who were not brought up here don't realise that some of the 
kids are marching, not to the beat of a different drummer, but with the 
rhythm of the waves.

We know each other on the Northern Beaches in all sorts of odd ways -- 
we went to school together, or worked together, or were in the same 
group.  We also know things about each other, as one former rural 
brothel-keeper and consort of criminals is about to discover if he wins 
pre-selection for the Tories in an upcoming election.  The ghetto has 
eyes and ears.

Yesterday, I went to the Central Coast, the next strip up, divided from 
us by a monster bay, so it is two hours away by train.  Because I was 
among conservationists, I knew one of the people in the meeting (we 
worked together 25 years ago), the others were all friends of an old 
colleague, and they cited the work of somebody who is a friend of my wife.

I am sure the common ground helped us to get to work faster to solve the 
problem.  We had common and mutual ownership, we were clearly in the 
same ghetto.

Last night, we went to a dinner to raise money for a water-supply 
project in East Timor, and Sophie Delezio's name was mentioned.  Sophie 
is one of two little girls cruelly maimed two years ago when a car 
ploughed, at low speed, into their pre-school.  The other girl was the 
daughter of one of Chris' fellow teachers, and Sophie lives next door to 
her former principal, whom I have known since 1982 -- we knew of each 
other before that, because we taught in neighbouring schools.  Ghettos 
again.

It got personal for our family, because a policewoman, taking the other 
girl to hospital, gave her name as Chris when she phoned from the 
ambulance, and we fielded calls for several days from people at the 
school who thought it was my Chris.  That kid is OK.  Sophie lost her 
feet and a number of fingers, but was recovering.  Yesterday, she was 
hit, savagely, by a car at a crossing that I know well as a danger spot, 
because I saw a family almost skittled there, several years ago.

The man who drove into the preschool was an alcoholic who was stone cold 
sober -- they say he blacked out from a lack of alcohol, and would have 
been safer with a few drinks in him.  The driver yesterday was 80, and 
dazzled by late afternoon sun.

The girls are both Catholics, as it happens, and the Timor charity is 
driven by the social justice people in a nearby Catholic parish -- I 
regard this as a problem, in that I would rather see more non-church 
support, but the folks in East Timor are Catholics and have been for a 
long time, and water supplies don't have a religion.  I just fear for 
nasty interpretations from idiot Muslim extremists who would rather be 
offended than fix something.

There were several priests there -- one of them had wangled a day off 
and had played a round of golf as part of the charity day, but we all 
had the same feeling of shock when the host priest told us what had 
happened.  Sophie is a Northern Beaches kid, and she belongs to us all, 
she belongs to our ghetto. The people near the crossing recognised her 
special cart and identified her, so a helicopter lifted her out, and she 
I expected to live.  We heard optimism later in the evening, but the 
good news came today.

There was another level of suffering that linked us in empathy last 
night -- two miners in Tasmania, trapped 3000 feet down in a rock fall. 
  They have been dug for  over about eleven days, and there is a small 
tube into them, and a rescue shaft is close.  Our MC for the night, 
Kerry O'Brien, is a current affairs journalist, and his employer 
grounded him until they were sure that the miners wouldn't get out, but 
in the end, he came, once it was clear they would not be out last night.

Down in Tasmania, the Uniting Church in the mining town has dug out the 
church bell, last used to celebrate the end of World War II, the police 
have barricaded the streets, and extra beer has been trucked in.  All 
over Australia, we have made these two miners ours, and we will all jump 
up and down.  They are part of our extended ghetto.

Sure, we cared about the people of East Timor, and we laughed when the 
consul-general told us that the children there still greet all white 
faces with "g'day, mate!", a legacy of the days when Australian 
peace-keepers were there.  I think we cared more about Sophie and the 
two miners, even as we paid money into silly games where the prize was 
worth less than any person's entry fee.

Events in Dafur, or somewhere else on the Horn of Africa, repression in 
Burma (not Myanmar), the lack of antivirals for pregnant HIV-positive 
women in South Africa, genocide somewhere else, these are all just dim 
shadows, muted echoes, with no real meaning.  We don't own these 
problems, we don't own these people, and they have no claim on us.

I'm not sure how you extend the bounds of the ghetto to take in a larger 
group.  The media have served well for the miners and Sophie, but you 
can't do wall-to-wall 24/7 suffering and empathy.

There has to be a way to enlarge the ghetto, to bring more people into 
the family.

No one of us can solve all the injustices in this world, but perhaps if 
we extend a few more tendrils, we can make more differences, and reduce 
the differences, all at the same time.  We need to live in a ghetto that 
covers the world.  A ghetto without borders would do nicely.

peter