Where the wogs go

Wogs were people who lived life large, who talked with their hands, ate with their fingers, whose culture was rich with otherness.

Multicultural Agency (MA) was a foster care agency that specialised in placing children of culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. In the old days we’d say wogs, which historically speaking is shorthand for Western Oriental Gentleman. It was an insult in the 70s, a slur aimed at anyone who wasn’t of English heritage, anyone that had salami in their sandwiches instead of Vegemite. Only a gay man can call another gay man a faggot, an African-American call their brother a nigger, or a wog call another wog a wog. In anyone else’s mouth those words are weapons aimed to wound.

In later years the wogs became a club of the Greeks, Italians, Asians and all the people that didn’t meet the stereotype of bikini-clad Australians. Norwegians, Germans, Swedish people wouldn’t fall into the wog class. I’m not sure what the club door looked like or who was the bouncer. If I had to put a band around it, it would be people descended from races who lived life large, who talked with their hands, ate with their fingers, whose culture was rich with otherness.

I called MA. The voice on the phone was warm and deep and, I guessed, African. Zola told me that FACS had a database of all the children in or needing care. When a child would need a placement they would alert the agencies. Zola had no filter and no idea of political correctness. I liked her immediately.

“So honey, theyz the official process and theyz how it is. We getz the email that comes just to uz. The other agencies got mostly Anglo parents and Anglo kids. With uz it’s the other wayz around. Where you from honey?”

I explained my heritage – Sri Lankan of English and Dutch heritage. My great grandfather on my mother’s side was an English tea plantation owner. My grandmother was his delicate English rose. My grandfather was of Dutch heritage, a cruel and damaged man who was blonde, blue-eyed and broad-shouldered. The resulting whitish Sri Lankans of Dutch, English and Portuguese descendants, were the Burghers. My cousins were tall, tan, blonde and blue-eyed. On my father’s side, they were Sinhalese, the largest ethnic group. They were generally dark, with more flattened button noses than the fine-featured Tamil people in the north. My grandfather was an all-purpose chemist/doctor/psychologist on a tea plantation.  He had 14 children officially but there were doubtless many more. He was a pith-helmeted, cigar-smoking, lovable rogue.

“Honey, wish you’d been with us three months ago. We had three Sri Lankan kids and no Sri Lankans in the state. In the end we placed them with Vietnamese families but they didn’t speak English so well.”

The hand of irony bitch-slapped me.

There were 11 couples and myself at the training. We were all wogs except for one Anglo-Australian couple. I sat next to Adeela, a Muslim woman whose curly black hair escaped the hijab that was covering it. Her eyes were almost black and sparkled like moonlight on a night sea.

“We have a fostha agency in our area with alot of Muslim families. Our friendz wid de agency near uz are still waiding afta seex monds. Bud our udda friendz who came heeya gotta childin in two weeks. Less competetition.”

The two young female trainers commenced with the usual uninspired round-the-circle introductions.

You could feel the ghosts of children longed for and children lost walking through the sadness. Every couple in the room had been doing IVF for years and finally decided to adopt. Fostering was the easiest path and so they were here in this room with 21 other hopeful strangers.

The first of the trainers, Sally, was a blonde and blue-eyed girl in her early twenties. Barbara was also an Anglo-Australian woman, a tall and imposing redhead in her fifties.

You could feel the ghosts of children longed for and children lost walking through the sadness.

Barbara commenced: “Just before we start, I need to be clear that we are looking for foster carers. This is not the quick path to parenting, to have your own child. You will be creating a loving and safe home for another person’s child, for a month, a year or maybe until they’re eighteen.”

I interjected “I thought this was the training for long-term foster care.”

Sarah responded “It’s the same training. A lot of people who want to foster long-term end up fostering short-term.”

The room slumped in unison. I saw half the men in the room squeeze their wife’s hand.

The trainers droned on, at times lecturing, at times just preaching. Zola, the inspiration for me giving up my weekend, was absent.

Adeela and I did the ‘discuss-with-your-neighbour’ activities together. She was vivacious one-on-one but a quiet observer in the group. She handed me a small diamond of baklava in the morning break, chopped almonds and pistachios, spiced with cardamom, wet with rose-water scented syrup. Heaven in a pastry.

“Weeza Persian like the cat.”

The only thing cat-like was her attitude.

“Theyz  nod sed one ting good about fostarring. But don’t you vorry. You juz ged yo keedz and den you deal wid dem. I juz bee verry quviet.”

Adeela was right of course. They had not said one positive thing about fostering. I should have shut up, but I was the kid at the front of the class with their hand up by nature. There was a repeated emphasis on children being removed, potentially after years in a family and restored to their parents.

“How often are children removed?” I asked.

“You mean restored to their parents” Sally corrected.

“We can’t provide figures” Barbara responded.

“But I mean as a percentage? Is it one percent, twenty percent?”

Barbara walked towards me as if to intimidate the heckler in the room.

“You could care for a child for three years and then they’d get removed but then you can care for a child for two years and if they get removed you could care for another; you could give those children a couple of good years before they get given back to their parents.”

“But I’m not interested in fostering a series of children.” I could hear the small girl in me talking.

Barbara towered above me: “Well maybe you should rethink fostering.”

Ali, a lovely man in his thirties, came to present to the group about his experience. He was bald and round and beaming. He and his wife, a young Muslim couple, had not been able to have children of their own and had fostered fourteen children over the past five years.

“We had a young girl, four years old, and she came to us with everything she owned in shopping bag. When she looked around her room, her eyes almost popped out of her head. She said “is all this for me?” For the first three months she wouldn’t even meet our eyes or let us touch her. But after a year she was calling me Dad and jumping all over me.”

The memory lit him up like a lighthouse; I felt myself finally steering in the right direction. He was the only bright light in a miserable day.

“About six months after she came to us, the judge ordered that she be permanently removed from her parents. We were in love with her by then. She was part of our family. So we decided we’d take her permanently.”

The faces and shoulders around the room finally relaxed.

“Nearly six months later her Mum left her Dad who’d been molesting her and got off the drugs and went to court to get her back. The court likes to keep families -”

His voice quavered on families.

“-the court likes to keep them together. It all happened so fast. In a week she was gone. But you know I think we made a difference. She went from a kid you couldn’t touch to a really happy, loving child. I don’t regret it. The hardest part is not knowing what happened to her after that. But you know by Allah’s grace and mercy we know that was what was meant to happen.’

We had all been riding high on the rollercoaster and careened down, crashing off the rails.

“How did your wife cope?” I asked.

I saw his wife desperately sobbing on his shoulder when she heard the news.

“It was hard but she accepted it in the end.”

I willed my tears not to spill over. I wanted to hug him.

In the next break I asked Barbara how it was that the girl was removed.

“She was only with them for a year so you know it’s not that long.” Barbara dipped a cracker in french onion dip. I hoped she choked on it.

“I imagine for a five year old and for his wife it was a long time.”

Zola finally turned up in a brightly coloured muumuu and fine braids of hair twisted in a pile on her head.

“Yez we get theez druggies and look after their kids and then the court sayz they got to go back.”

Sally and Barbara’s mouths gaped open.

“Zola! You can’t say that!”

“Well it’s true eezn’t it?”

Fifteen minutes after everyone else left, I was still filling in my feedback form, my hand cramped and aching with covering the page.

‘I should not be judged because I am not interesting a fostering a series of children.’

The next day a senior manager, a woman I hadn’t met, called. She understood my concerns and thanked me for the feedback.

“However I don’t think you are suitable for our fostering program. We mostly do short term fostering.”

I felt battered but not beaten. Mostly I felt angry that they’d lied to get me in the door. Anger was fuel for resolve.

I called another agency that focussed on multicultural kids. They could see from the computer system that MA had trained me. They called them then informed me that I wasn’t suitable for their program. That was the fifth agency I contacted.

I tried an agency that was unknown to me. Their criteria for the long term fostering program was that I have two short-term placements.

I knew that I could never mother a child and hand them back, hand them back to people who hadn’t cared from them in the first place. Mothers who turned a blind eye to their children being raped, violent fathers released from jail, parents too zoned out on drugs to look after themselves let alone a child that depended on them. I didn’t blame these parents for the life that they led, victims themselves of similar parents. I couldn’t bring myself to absolve them of their responsibility to care for their child. Having tried so long to fall pregnant, having lost a child myself, I could not fathom such neglect.

Children are a privilege not a right. As Keanu Reeves said in Parenthood  “you need a license to buy a dog, or drive a car. Hell, you need a license to catch a fish! But they’ll let any asshole be a father.” He was right. There was no licence to be a neglectful parent having multiple children without trying. There was however a licence for other people to look after those children.

You need a license to buy a dog, or drive a car. Hell, you need a license to catch a fish! But they’ll let any asshole be a father.

I called Family and Community Services, the department of the government that had the responsibility of holding children in the “parental care of the Minister.” I told them I was the only Sri Lankan carer in the state. I asked if there was a way to put a flag in the system so that they knew there was a Sri Lankan Carer registered with a specific agency. There was not.  It seemed a Sri Lankan child would in all probability be placed with ‘another Asian.’ Remember we’re all the same? The woman on the phone was sympathetic but unhelpful.

It was hard to be philosophical but that didn’t stop me from trying. There are 12 000 children moving into foster care each year and 45 000 in care at any one time. If this was a disease outbreak we’d be calling in the CDC. People would be all over it. There’d be people in white space suits in every neighbourhood looking to solve the problem. This was another type of epidemic, an epidemic of lost children. Being removed from your parents caused more impact than any disease: homelessness, drug addiction, incarceration and early death. This was a public health issue run by childcare. The system was the problem not the solution.

If this was a disease outbreak we’d be calling in the CDC. There’d be people in white space suits in every neighbourhood looking to solve the problem.

My outrage was poor company. There had been seven attempts to find a foster agency. There were a dozen others to try but I wasn’t sure I had the heart for it. I was nearly fifty. The big Five-O.  

I looked at the cot set up in the alcove that was supposed to become my child’s bedroom. The baby monitor was on a table beside it. The sheets were strewn with blue teddy bears and clouds. My old teddy, a present from an ex-boyfriend, sat proprietorially on the pillow looking up at the mobile of sea creatures.   

How far was I prepared to go? I didn’t know if I had the heart to go on but I didn’t have the heart to give up. To accept that would never have a child was….

At school people would have voted me ‘most likely to get married and have kids.’ I was a good little Asian girl with a Catholic boyfriend. I mothered everyone but I had never been the Mummy type. I’d never googoo gaga’d over a baby. The maternal instinct had crept up on me quietly and shoved me out to sea. I was buffeted in a hormonal storm. I had always been doggedly optimistic, stubbornly single-minded when I decided on something. I had already gone to extraordinary lengths, by anybody’s definition, to have Phoenix. Could I give up now?

I looked for signs. It seemed the thing to do in desperate times when no other course of action was obvious. I read my horoscope on a daily basis, ramped up my prayers. Any sign would do.

On the weekend, I caught up with my old friends Jed and Amy. We sat on the balcony, wakened and soothed by the scent and rustle of the graceful eucalyptus shading us. Jed turned over sausages on the barbecue, the fat spitting on the grill. The smell always transported me to the campervan of my childhood. My mother would puncture the cheap, low quality sausages, more sawdust than meat. The pink meat-like substance would ooze out of the cuts. Mum would take requests and make the shapes of dogs or dolls or horses as they sizzled on the camper cooktop.

Whilst still in the campervan, Amy told me about their friends. A gay couple had just adopted three Tongan girls through Little Foster Agency (LFA). Another, a woman I knew, did emergency care for two newborns a year through LFA.

It wasn’t the sky opening and the Virgin Mary appearing with a message. It was the barbecued horse I was riding into my future.

Next: Part 5 The Goldilocks principle

Wishing you love and ll good things x

A 12 part series on a single woman’s journey through the foster system

1. Letter to the Minister 2. List every relationship you’ve ever had and why it ended 3. The Asian tick box 4. Where the wogs go 5. The Goldilocks principle 6. Letter to Keanu Reeves 7. An Anglican minister, a Catholic nun and a Buddhist philosopher walk into a cafe 8. To be or not to be: The singleton’s conundrum 9. Absolutely fine 10. Fate and other fuckery 11. Danger signs 12. An unusual situation