By Emmanuel Njuguna

Polite conversation towards the end of second semester demands that we ask questions like, “So, what are you going to do over the summer?”  For me, the answer has always been the same. I’m an international student from Kenya. Fortunately, every year I’ve been able to take a holiday there and catch up with family and friends for a couple of months before coming back and dealing with the rigours of getting a University degree.  On one occasion, a few weeks before I was due to leave for my first Christmas break back home, I remember a remark that someone made on hearing of my trip. He said, “Kenya, why would you want to go back there?”
At the time, the remark didn’t cause me any other reaction than anger at what I perceived then as being a very insensitive thing to say. With 3 years of reflection, the statement is still insensitive but quite justifiable. Why would I want to go back to Kenya at all?
With every year that I spend here in Australia, I become more immersed in the culture of the place and become more accustomed to the lifestyle here. As this process continues, I find myself noticing with increasing clarity, the differences between the 2 countries. As this process continues I find myself coming to the realisation that in many ways, the things I value about Kenya are not here in Australia and vice versa.
Let me explain.  I preface this by conceding that Australia has amazing natural beauty that I have (so far) failed to fully appreciate. With this being said, Kenya somehow seems to mix the urban and the rural in a way that is simply unique.  Nairobi is the only capital city I’m aware of that has a full sized National Game park within 20 minutes of the CBD. Indeed one of the first things a visitor is likely to see on their way into town from the airport is giraffes grazing in the distance.  Kenya’s appeal is not only limited to its natural beauty. There is a friendliness and openness of the people that every person that visits the country readily identifies as being unique to Africa in general.  This is difficult to describe in the format of a written article but every time I go back and catch up with friends from high school, their friends, many of whom I have never met will treat me as if they’ve known me for years. In Adelaide, sadly enough, that is rare.
On the other side of the coin there are things about the land of my birth that cause me to cringe in embarrassment or even shame when I compare them with life here in Australia. The foremost of these for me is the fact that in comparison to the system here, Kenya has a barely functioning government. I find it interesting to listen to politically minded people here on campus debate, saying things like “Party X is destroying our country with their extreme [insert political ideology here] policies and our policies would be so much better.”  Perhaps it would be a useful by way of mitigating their outrage to consider that Kenya over the last 30 years has been at various times a one-party state and has suffered a 24 year one-man dictatorship. Most recently, in 2007 we had a disputed election that caused much destruction and some loss of life. The other issue, related to the first, is how things like public transport and health care actually work here.
It is the balance between these considerations that makes my time here in Australia all the more interesting. They also make questions about my future all the more interesting to answer. Polite conversations often lead to the question, “So what will you do after your degree? Will you stay here or go back home?” At that point I sometimes think back to the remark I started with and answer as confidently as I can, saying “I don’t know.”

By (Bobby) Hai Yang

President Kennedy asked, “My fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country”. I sat through high school with the teacher repeating this statement over and over again, later moving into a cramped hall for weekly assembly only to hear the school principal give a mundane speech about how us Singaporeans can contribute to our little red dot. Nor was that the last of it, we had to write an essay on this sentence. It was horrible. It’s like they were training us to be bloodhounds. They made us sniff a scent and expected us to unquestioningly run off toward their target. No questions, no thinking.
Only recently did I truly come to understand what President Kennedy was talking about. I enlisted in the army at the end of 2007, for my mandatory service period of two years. It was the government’s idea, not mine. I understood the need for national service (Singapore has no professional army, instead we have a citizen’s army), but the heart was not willing. I forced myself, though, to understand that it would do me a whole lot of good. I forced myself to believe all the things they said about it, about how it’ll change you from a boy to a man. The toughest part about enlistment was that I would be spending almost all my time away from home, in an offshore army facility getting barked and cussed at while crawling around in mud and feeding mosquitoes.
It gradually became easier for me to accept that I was going to be in the army for a while. But I was in for a real nasty surprise. After a brief period of basic training, I was sent to an elite infantry unit. Hell, in other words.  The whole process of accepting my new situation came full circle. When I enlisted, I was overweight. Because I was able to get into shape, the government felt that I would be fit enough for my new posting. But life was not about to get easier; I was expected to fight for that khaki beret. So fight is what I did. I rappelled out of a helicopter 15 floors up, fired a missile costing a quarter of a million dollars, learnt how to drive a combat dune buggy, and was sent to three different countries for training; the vast volcanic plateaus of New Zealand, the mountains of Taiwan and the harsh contrast of the Australian bush. I had the time of my life.
The few months since my service ended have been weird. In the army, everything is set out for you. You wear specific uniforms at certain times of the day. Even the way you wear your socks comes under close scrutiny. Finding food also becomes a new challenge. Deciding what to cook, how to cook, and when to cook now means an afternoon of aimless walking in the supermarket.
For me, military service has its good points and bad. It toughens you up. It instills discipline in most of us. It made me see the need for a defense force, and its importance to the sovereignty and security of a nation like Singapore. But military service took away two years of my life. It felt like I was being put behind bars for something I did not do. My freedom taken away; I was caged like an animal. Initially, I could feel the life draining out of me. And military service brings out the worst in people.
Serving in the military also taught me several valuable lessons. Don’t expect to get what you give. While my unit was on a particularly strenuous exercise, an acquaintance of mine collapsed from heat exhaustion. I helped keep him conscious, sacrificing most of my little remaining water in the process.  Not only did I not receive even a hint of an acknowledgement from this acquaintance, he then proceeded to vilify me for not doing things the way he likes it. Though I felt the need to make several rearrangements to his face, I didn’t. Discipline.
If asked whether I felt that compulsory military service was important, my reply would be that, in a country like Singapore, it goes without question. If Singapore did not have compulsory military service, then virtually any nation would be able to just walk in and annex the island. More importantly though, it has helped to open up our boyish minds and reshape them into something more mature.
I cannot say for sure if every nation in the world should adopt compulsory military service. Some would find it superfluous or immoral, while others, like South Korea, Switzerland, and Israel would benefit. Would Australia benefit? I am myself in the process of discovering the ways of this vast and dramatically beautiful continent; all I can say is that a willing soldier is more effective than ten hired guns. Serving in the military certainly has been a beneficial experience, and is definitely one of the reasons I chose to be an international student. It worked for me.