By CASEY NEILL
AFGHAN refugee Ali Mustafa arrived in Australia on a Thursday night in 2008, aged 17.
“Sunday I went to a butcher and I asked them if they needed someone for a job,” he said.
“The manager said ‘Write down your name and number and I will contact you’.
“Monday, I waited until 12 o’clock and didn’t receive any calls so I went back.
“I was like ‘You took my number and you never called me’.
“She smiled and said ‘Can you start today?’.
“In a week’s time, I had my first pay.”
Ali moved to a metal factory job a few months later, where his colleagues encouraged him to go to school.
“Some days I would finish at 3.10pm from school and had to be at 3.30pm at the factory, until 12 at night,” he said.
“In my breaks I would do some study.
“When I came home at 12 o’clock at night I would do another one or two hours of study, and then back to school the next day.”
Ali struggled to keep up during his first six months of Year 11.
“I didn’t even know basic maths,” he said.
But he progressed to Year 12, and scaled back his hours in the factory to focus on his studies.
“I got the highest mark in Business Management out of 40 or 50 students,” he said.
The 24-year-old is now three years into a commerce degree at Monash University.
“But I will be doing my masters as well, after I finish the bachelor,” she said.
“This is just the beginning.”
Ali owns a cafe in central Dandenong, is opening a restaurant in six weeks and for the past three years has worked as a full-time social worker for Life Without Barriers.
“When I was born in Kabul, that’s when the fight started,” he said.
“After a while we fled to Pakistan as refugees.
“The first night when I came to Australia I was thinking ‘I should be changing my life’.
“I had all the opportunities here.
“Of course I get exhausted, but you’ve got to work hard to get somewhere.”
Ali says plenty of people tell him he’s crazy.
“I’ve also got full-time soccer, four days a week. And I go to the gym as well two or three times a week,” he laughed.
“It’s about working harder than others if you want to get on top.
“When I go to bed, before sleeping, I write my to-do list for the next day. Sunday night, for the whole week.”
The weekly list sometimes fills both sides of an A4 sheet – up to 90 hours of work.
“It’s really good to be busy and I’m thankful,” he said.
“I see young people around, they’re looking for a job, they don’t even have one job.
“But sometimes the business is not doing well and you’re stressed out from that and can’t concentrate on your studies.”
That’s when he turns to motivational videos and lectures.
“What they all share is that hard work is the recipe for success,” he said.
“Most of the millionaires work more than 60 or 70 hours a week on average.
“Some of us work 30 or 40 hours and then we say ‘I did a lot this week, I need a good weekend, boohoo’.
“If you want to get somewhere you’ve got to do a lot more.”
Ali said some people complained about refugees taking their jobs.
“If a refugee comes with no contacts here, with lack of language, who doesn’t even know how to get back to their house when they go outside – if he takes your jobs, that means you’re not good enough,” he said.
“You’re not trying enough.
“Hopefully I will contribute something to this country. I’m really grateful to this country.
“If I wasn’t here, I would have achieved none of this.”
