chin

I am nervous as I walk up the path to the less-than-modest brown brick house. The railway runs behind it. A small silver SUV sits at an off angle in the middle of a decaying double carport. The garden is Spartan. I am here in the late afternoon to meet TZ for the first time. I am to be his English tutor.

At our second AMES training session last week each volunteer gets a folder with the details of the refugee or migrant we will help learn the language. My ‘student’ is 41 year-old TZ, a Chin from Burma. His English is rated intermediate, but that’s only his reading. His speaking and comprehension are a level below.

We are able to converse well enough, though he struggles to find the right words for some things.

The Chin constitute about two per cent of Burma’s population, though the regime is trying to reduce that figure. They are concentrated in the Chin State which borders both Bangladesh and India. In the 19th century the British occupied the region and suppressed the Chin who didn’t take kindly to the British presence.

American missionaries arrived in the 1890s and between 80 and 90 per cent of Chin converted to Christianity, further enhancing their minority status in Buddhist Burma.

“On 20 February 2002,” TZ begins, and I compliment his memory for dates, “I and others in my village must build … “ (long pause as he tries to find the right word) “ … a house to celebrate Burma’s national day. It is ‘not good enough’ so the soldiers beat us.” TZ had his front teeth kicked out. My compliment to his memory grows ridiculous.

He spent nine years in India before being accepted into Australia.

Over an hour TZ tells me he has ten siblings, four in Australia. He has two daughters and two sons. I meet the younger of each. His wife S comes into the room. She speaks no English. TZ wants to be able to go to ‘offices’ and speak for his family and not need an interpreter.

When I ask how he feels about Australia he sheds tears and cannot talk. He has rights here, he says; he owes Australia so much for taking him in. He works at a trailer factory in Kilsyth. He has no education but wants to study and learn English to be able to help other Chin settle more easily into the community, to save the Australian government money.

I ask the word for his sarong. In Chin it is hni. I am honoured to be his tutor and his student.

Rock on.