Janice visits the Christmas Island Detention Centre with Gail, Rachel and Ken. Here is what she says:
Just a little blog snippet from our yachtie visit to the Christmas Island Detention Centre. Thursday Sept 22nd, 2016 In the weeks preceding the visit, I had to work really hard to make sure the forms were precisely perfect so that no-one at last minute could prevent us getting in. It took much to-ing and fro-ing with emails to Serco, Christmas Island and I know Anna Buch and Bobbie Waterman you are not in the least surprised. I have much greater appreciation for all you do! I was quite sure they would come up with some excuse to prevent our entry, even upon our arrival .. and sure enough they tried every trick in the book to make sure we would give up. Even cutting off our phone calls from the Xmas Island visitors centre and pretending it was a mistake on several occasions.
The nice lady at the visitors centre (nothing to do with the detention centre) eventually grabbed the phone from me and gave them an earful about how these nice people from the mainland deserved better than the crap runaround we were receiving from the useless people answering the phone in the Detention Centre. Nice work Katrina, I’ll never forget you! Not just once or twice did they hang up on me but about 4 times. It actually back fired and made me more determined!
SO finally we arrived and gained entry. One of us was almost turned away because she was wearing thongs. Whoops … quick thinking, I opened the box with Monkez’s new shoes and fast as lightening my friend Rachel was squeezing into his new runners as tho they were her spare pair. We were told on arrival that we could only see one refugee at a time. Weird! But we were ok with that and didn’t bat an eyelid, even tho it mean our conversations would be shorter than intended to get through them all. Still no probs. I’m wondering now if our lack of reaction changed everything because in a matter of minutes that whole plan changed and we could see them all simultaneously. Who knows what goes on.
We were led through the centre into the one and only community room. It didn’t look too unfriendly. Just bare and unfurnished really. Not many daily visitors it would seem. Not today and not ever, I reckon. The awful part came when we realised that Monkez Mrayhejj had been shipped out the night before. Literally less than 12 hours earlier, and sent to Yongah Hill. I was actually quite shocked as it had been him all along who had organised everything, including the names of all the people we had put forward to visit, and he had even asked the guards ahead of time what we should do/see as tourists. Monkez turned into a tour guide for me which of course was hilarious in many ways. He had told the guards that friends were coming to visit and they had said yeah sure .. tell us another one! Next thing, in the week leading up to my Sydney departure Monkez is telling me (via FB messenger) where the best place for snorkelling is, restaurants and who to phone to hire a car! He had convinced some friendly guard to tell him all the tourist things to do and passed that info onto me. Shame we never got to meet him there but the adventure continued. The lovely Murteza (black curly haired young Iranian) was seated in the community centre when we arrived. I actually didn’t recognise him and there was a moment of confusion but suddenly I figured out who he was and we surrounded him with attention, all 4 of us. He’s so young and has been locked up for 3 years for overstaying his visa and no doubt a few other things. Shame, he seems so lovely but so sad.
Soon I asked the guards where the others were, because I had expected Ali Madavhi and Rafid from Blaxland and a couple of others. The guard said they were at the gym. Whaaat? Murteza and I looked at each other and before I could explode M said something in native to this guy (who was also Iranian by background) and a few phone calls were made and within minutes the boys came shuffling in. I was overjoyed to see them and Im sure we brightened their day a little. The stories were grim and my friends were shell shocked by the long protracted detention for such unimpressive crimes. It was hugely eye opening to them and we have already been in touch with an immigration lawyer friend to see if anything could be done but .. funnily no reply from him (not funny at all). We only stayed a couple of hours. It was not going to be easy to say good bye but finally we had to and they were really gorgeous with us, saying all the right things about how much they appreciated. We were sad for days. The only funny thing that happened after that was when I had posted some photos on Facebook of us travellers in beautiful turquoise waters, snorkelling over coral reefs and soaking up some tropical island cocktails, Monkez in Yongah Hill who had seen all these photos finally left me a FB message to call him. He answered my call with a very loud “Alohaaa!!!” .. as though he’d been watching Hawaii 5 O all his life. Best wishes to you all, keep up the good work.
Janice
PS Anna, Ali Mahdavi told me several times that he LOVES YOU!!!