From Raya to Sunshine

Preludes to Nothing

Jerry Seinfeld seems to have had no shortage for that show of his back in the day.

My best guess is that this might have been because he had his eyes and ears open to ordinary people all around him being funny. On top of the fact that he knew how to tell a joke himself.

Which yes, all right, I agree, is not exactly the most dangerous bet anyone in history has ever laid.

But I mention this because as I start to put pen to paper on this book, which is going to be all about a bloke I’ve smuggled into Australia from Africa, by the way, I already I know that just like Jerry Seinfeld, I am not going to have any shortage of material.

But at this point, Seinfeld and I part ways. Mainly because I’m not Jewish, and I’m not living in the middle of what must be the most hilarious community on Earth, surely? Save, perhaps, the Hindus? But also, because I’m not funny, either. I mean, I’m not even accidentally funny. Case in point, I happen to have a turnip-shaped birthmark on my forehead. Not good, but there it is. Just like good old Gorby had one of those. Except his looked like a pigeon shat on him and mine kind of looks like I’m back at boarding school getting dacked. Well, that should get me a laugh, don't you think? Well, it doesn’t.

No, the reason I am going to have no trouble coming up with ideas for this book is to do with something else.

And that something else has got nothing to do with me being some sort of ideas man, either. Because I’m not. I can’t even come up with things to even think about, let alone write about. Most of the time, when I am down here at the bottom of the garden wedged into in my fat fold-up camping chair, I’m just sitting here staring blankly at some chickens I’ve got down here making eggs for me. Hour after hour I’m sitting here, as the blossom tree above my shed hums softly with the buzz of a thousand bees being useful. Which as relaxing as that most certainly is, a rip-roaring read it does not make.

No, the thing that is going to make this book something a little bit something else has nothing to do with me whatsoever. It has something to do with something else. And that something else is that bloke from Africa I mentioned. Who goes by the name of … Sunshine..

***

Now Sunshine’s real name, as it turns out, is Hailemekele Raszenawi. That’s an Ethiopian name. Because he’s an Ethiopian. (He’s not even an African, actually, he tells me, let alone an Ethiopian. And by that, he says, I’m not an Ethiopian, fat guts. But more about what the hell he means by that another day.) And he’s got the sort of face you want to punch, on a bad day. A real smart arse. But on a good day, he’s gold. And even on a bad day, he’d give you a kidney.

But anyway, when he finally landed here in Australia—and far out, was that a whole saga!—and came strolling out of customs so relaxed and laconic-like that I couldn’t help laughing, the first thing I said to him was that something had to be done about that name of his:

“You’re in Australia now, Sunshine,” I said. “And over here, Hailebury College Razzamatazz is considered a mouthful.”

And without me even meaning to, I had already come up with his Aussie name.

“Sunshine!” he said. “That sounds nice!”

“Well!” I replied, caught off guard. “All right then. Well, I’m glad you think that way. Because Sunshine’s where you’re going, China. Footscray’s full as a goog just at the minute and the flats in Flemington are in lockdown with cops and bloody do-gooders crawling all over them. So, I’ve got you a flat in Sunshine. Let’s go get your bags. I need to get you settled in. The footy’s on tonight.”

“From Raya to Sunshine,” he grinned. “This is the greatest day of my life, fat guts! Thank you.”

“Yeah yeah,” I replied, as I used my rather large frame to carve out a path out for my friend though the crowd pushing and shoving in the direction of baggage collection. “Save it for your wife. She’s coming in tomorrow.”

All right then. So now you know how Sunshine got his name. Or, I should say, his names. Because before too long, Sunshine became Raya. As in, Raya Sunshine.

But let me now slow all this down a bit, for a minute. Because I want to take you back to how I met Raya in the first place. And then I’ll swing back around and wrap this little preface up with what I think Raya is going to bring to this book.

I first met Raya about three years ago in Ethiopia. I was over there by chance. I had been sitting in my backyard bored, as usual. And I had glued a map of the world to my dartboard down here on the fence next to the chook shed, closed my eyes, and pinged a dart at it. And the dart had found Adelaide. So, I took a second dart. And this time, it found Ethiopia. And on closer inspection, I discovered that the dart had gone right through the middle of some town called Mekoni in some province of some sort called Raya.

So, I booked a flight. And from the minute I landed, Rastas, … ah, yes, of course … all right then, yes. I should have mentioned.

Right, the first thing you learn when you rock up in Ethiopia is that they give you a new name. Just like we do here in Australia. Or just like we used to, anyway. These days, if your name is Hailemekele Raszenawi, we call you Hailemekele Raszenawi. Just to make absolutely sure that you know we respect you. And that we don’t want to get to know you.

But all that aside, when I first met him over there back in Mekoni, Which was the town I was staying in, Ras, as everyone in the town called him, looked me straight in the eye, and told me he was Irish.

Well! The funny thing is that for a few years by then, people had been opening up the top of my head and shovelling all sorts of bullshit into it at a rate of knots, and when he introduced himself to me as a red-haired freckle-faced Mick, I didn’t doubt it. Not even in my own mind. Which, obviously, left me wide open.

“How about that,” I said. “Me too. You never know. We might be brothers.”

Holy snapping ducks’ bums! Twenty years ago, I would never have been caught out like that! We Aussies used to dish it out! And now here we were on the receiving end. Courtesy of a pack of bastids who seemed to be pretty good at it too. Suffice it to say, for the rest of my time in Mekoni, the children were coming up to me chanting “look at me, look at me, I’m Irish, I’m Irish!”

“Get out of here y’little bastids,” I took to growling, bending down as if to pick up a rock or a stone. And off they’d run, laughing. With me left standing there knowing I’d been got. “Never again,” I swore, “will I trust that bastid Rastas."

So, all right, yes, I had a different name for old Sunshine-features back then in Raya. Rastas. And he had a name for me, too: ስብሒ. Fat Guts. Which was a fair call. But all that aside, from the minute I landed in Raya, Rastas and me, well, we hit it off like a house on fire. And this, as it turns out, is how Raya’s ended up an Aussie. And I’ll tell you that little story and call it a day on this preface.

Back there in Raya, Rastas had a little quarry. Pretty entrepreneurial, I thought. I like that sort of thing. I like it a lot. But by the time I got there, he was in seven shades of shit. There was a whole lot of crap going on over in Ethiopia. Some marathon runner had chosen that moment in time to be a hero. And now, Rastas was going broke.

“Couldn’t agree with that Oromo bastid more,” Rastas said to me, more than once. “But he’s killing me!”

And I ended up asking him a whole lot of questions about what he meant by that and then one thing led to another and eventually, I had made my decision. And before you could say “visa” I’d got him married off to his sister and had got all the paperwork together and told all the public servants back here in Australia that both the beautiful Rastas and his lovely wife were about to get put up against a wall and shot.

Well, here’s the thing. I’m an old public servant myself, back here in Australia. Going back a long way. So, I know which buttons to press. Nobody in there wants to end up on the front page of The Age. And neither does the secretary or the minister or anybody at all, in fact, going up the tree. In Australia, it’s not who you know, it’s what you know. So, all you have to do is trigger a ministerial, and then …

Bang! Here he was coming out of customs at Tulla grinning that good old Raya grin and hugging me like a brother. Old Rastas-features himself. And I have to say, although at the time I made sure he didn’t pick up on this, I had a lump in my throat. Because I’d known for a long time by then that if anyone deserved this chance, Rastas did.

All right then. So that was all that. But getting back to the purposes of this book now, yes, Raya really is something else.

And it’s not only because he’s got so much talent (he's been in Australia for only a year and already he's got a little operation called Sunshine Sand and Gravel up and running and a few of the young blokes in his community off the streets doing some hard yakka), it’s also to do with when he's with me down here at the bottom of my back yard for a barbecue, chatting away about all sorts of things I would never have come up with myself.

To illustrate, imagine Charles Darwin never existed. And Raya is sitting with me right now slicing up some raw beef and roasting a few coffee beans. Which he can’t do, just at the minute, incidentally. Because I’ve banned him from bringing me that shit for a while. Back in March he landed me in hospital with a lethal dose of salmonella. But that aside, picture us sitting here anyway. And here’s what would be happening. Raya would be slicing up his beef and roasting up his coffee, and he'd be thinking about the chooks over there in the chook house, and then suddenly he’d be coming up with evolution:

“I reckon it’s not silkies you’ve got down here for company, fat guts,” he’d say. “It’s pterodactyls."

“Bloody what!?” I would have exclaimed. “That’s gold, Sunshine. I need to start writing this stuff down!”

All right then. That's the preface done. Coming up next, as I launch into the book proper, is Raya’s spin on all this stuff I’ve just told you. You know, about how it came to pass that Raya ended up an Aussie with a gravel business going great guns here in Sunshine instead of a quarry going to the dogs in Ethiopia. Because the way he sees it, it wasn’t me that lined him up for a one-way ticket here to Australia. It was him that lined me up!

And when he told me all about that, I laughed my head off. And loved him just that little bit more, that sneaky son of a bitch.

Fat Guts Thredbo, 16 Sep 2020.