ABSTRACT
There is a lot of culture shock. The children go into a middle culture; they are not Australian and they are not African. You know what they are? They are in the middle. They are confused. I have seen them. They need a coach to tell them how life is. Most young people want to adopt American culture; and first we are not in America, and second youth are the bright future of our community. We need them to have a better understanding of how life should be. If I become a youth worker I’ll know more about how I should deal with teenagers. Teenagers have problems-some of them are drug addicted, some are into guns, and they need good care. Some young people came with a single parent. If a youth worker has been trained fully and he has an organization that can work with them, you need to engage them so that they can have a good life. I have seen the needs of young African people here and thought, “Why should I not do this?” They have a lot of culture shock. They have a lot of new systems to understand. They want to get into new things that they do not belong to, like if you talk about the way they react in the school, the way they behave, it is different to the way white children behave. Before people came here, they have a high expectation. “I go there, I am free, free to do everything.” But freedom is different. Some people took it the wrong way rather than the right way. 1
Task: Reflect
1. How does Paul position himself in relation to the Sudanese community in Australia and the wider Australian community?
