Samuel, how did you come to be in Wagga?

That’s a very good question. I used to live in Sydney when I first came to Australia in 1994, so that’s a long time ago. I was working – I was cooking at the time – and I wanted a bit of a change in career, so I decided to come and study here.

I got into Wagga and I never went back. That’s how I came to be here. I thought ‘it is such a nice place, such a relaxed place’.

I’m from a small country town myself, back in Africa, so this setting was perfect.

My family lives here now. My kids (daughters Shanya, 5, and Oprah, eight months) were born here. We wouldn’t want to live anywhere else.

Why did you originally come to Australia?

I was living in England and fell in love (with now-wife Bernadette) and we came to Australia and the rest is history.

Samuel, tell me about Wafrica (Wagga African Association) and how you came to be involved.

It’s been a journey. When we set it up, Wafrica was initially to look after the interests of – and to help – newly arrived people and refugees. 

We achieved that aim and we helped a lot of people settle in the community. We also helped them navigate the laws and things like that in Australia, because it was pretty hard for refugees who were finding themselves in strife with the law.

The way refugees, young people in particular, seemed to be getting in trouble with the law all this time, we thought ‘this can’t be right’. 

It wasn’t just young people, families too, and men. They couldn’t understand that things are done completely differently in Australia. What is acceptable in Africa is definitely not acceptable in Australia, for example being violent towards their wives, and so we thought ‘we can’t keep this going, so we have to step in and do something’ and that’s one of the reasons Wafrica came into being.

We’ve had a rotating presidency of Wafrica. For example, when it was first born it was led by a lady from Sierra Leone, then a man from Sudan took over and I’m from Ivory Coast, so although we are all Australian, we’ve been from different African backgrounds.

You must have seen Wagga’s African community grow so much while you have lived here?

Oh yes. It’s incredible because there were few African people in 2004-05, when I was finishing my degree. We’ve seen the African community grow and grow, not just refugees who have come to live in Australia, but people from places like Melbourne or Sydney who decided Wagga was a pretty good city for them.

Today, we’ve got a pretty vibrant middle-class African community. We’ve got a lot of professionals: lecturers, doctors, teachers and nurses, and it’s wonderful.

Wagga is very multicultural now, isn’t it. We have a lot of different communities here.

It’s great. You know what, people around the world who are struggling with multiculturalism should come to Wagga and see what we do and how we do it.

I haven’t personally seen any major incidents in Wagga. Occasionally people will say stuff, but overall it’s great. There are people from different cultures living here in harmony.

This is what makes the place what it is. It’s great, like a melting pot of cultural backgrounds, a melting pot of different ideas, different food, different cultures.

You’ve just crowned your first Miss Wafrica?

Yes.What a journey. Four years ago, we had a community awards night to say thank you to members of the community and some organisations we had been working with.

It was really successful and people had been saying ‘when are we going to have something like that again’, so we were thinking we needed to do something, even just to bring people together for a bit of a celebration.

So earlier this year, we started planning and were thinking whether we wanted to go the same way and just say thank you to community members, or do something a little bit different, so the organising committee thought we might do something a little bit similar to Miss Wagga, but halfway through the planning process, we realised some of the key members of the executive were not going to be around at the date we wanted to have this thing,. so we canned it.

Two months ago, we were having our AGM and a couple of new members came on board, and they jumped on Miss Wafrica and they pushed it, and they made it happen.

And I’m so glad because it was wonderful. The reception was incredible, people were talking about it on Facebook. It was great for the community.

Next year – because we intend for it to be an annual event – we will have a lot more people.

It’s not just open to Africans, it’s open to anyone.

It was a lot of fun, and a great excuse for a party in Wagga.

Wagga has some great festivals like Fusion, the Lost Lanes and all the music festivals. 

The vibe around Wagga is generally positive.