Asian heroin using, street kid. That was me. A finished person. No future. I even believed it myself.

Lisa and I found each other in 1995 and have pretty much been together ever since. She's an ethnographer, which is a fancy name for someone who studies people like me and doesn't judge us. Lisa also gives out clean needles to the kids who don't use the needle exchange bus.We first met Tiet on the bus. He was taking pictures of workers in the area.

Me and Lisa had been talking to the kids about doing a project on something that was important to them. Like me, many of them were angry and frustrated by how the media treats us and our community. We wanted a chance to have our say - to tell our stories and say what we felt. And now we had a professional photographer.

In the beginning, Tiet was very quiet. Kids kept coming up to me and asking "What's wrong with him?" I just shrugged my shoulders and Tiet started taking photos. Mostly of me and Lisa at first and then the kids. Then Tu joined our little gang. We started collecting the stories. Some of us got carried away making collages and drawing pictures. Tu got interested in photography and started taking pictures.

We had a lot of fun doing this project. Sometimes we couldn't stop laughing over stupid stuff. We also had a lot of pain and days when the sadness was unbearable. Some of us got lost along the way. Friends died. Others got sick. Too many were locked up. We learnt a lot - about each other and about ourselves.

It's easy to be invisible in Cabra. You can disappear and if you don't want to be found then you won't be. When I look back now and see our words and the photos I'm glad we decided not to be invisible. If there is a wall of silence then it's not the Asian community that built it. I'm proud of myself and my friends for speaking up. I hope our work will help the community to see that we're human too.
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