Some pics from India

tjilari_emma's photostream on Flickr.

More to come... I became impatient with the slow photo uploading process...

Thursday night at the markets

On Thursday evening, fired up after a bit of healthy protesting with the Bagot community, I rode down to  the Mindil Beach markets, hoping to run into some friends, regular market go-ers, and give them their copy of Green Left Weekly.

Suggested to Pete he might want drive  down later and have dinner there (code for I don't want to ride home up those hills, will you come and get me?). Arrived at the markets, Anja and Michael weren't in their usual spot, realised I'd left my mobile at home - oh no! How would Pete find me! I'd have to ride home afterall....?!

Anyway it all worked out fine, of course. Yummy food was eaten as the sunset over Mindil beach and fire performers did their thing. We ate very early, looking forward to an early, quiet night at home.

Headed back to the car. To find that we were surrounded on all sides by other parked vehicles. None of this  two-neat-lines of car parks rubbish for the wild Territory. No, people park on traffic islands, verges, footpath, the beach... wherever they can fit their wheels, pretty much. Which, on Thursday, meant all around our Patrol, thus blocking our escape on all sides.

So much for a quiet evening at home.

Fortunately it is Darwin Festival time, and one of the Festival Parks happens to be in the Botanic Gardens, just opposite the markets. So we went over the road, lolled around on the outdoor furniture, among the palm  trees, under the fairy lights, beside the spiegeltent, drinking  cider and trying to estimate at what time drivers of a certain (very funky) purple ute might be leaving the markets that evening.

Got back the car park, and yay! Purple ute is gone! Only to be replaced by another car. Sigh.

Some highly skilled and very patient manouevring  finally had us squeezing out, much to the disbelief of some passing rather intoxicated lads.

And that was our Thursday evening.

Getting ready for the field trip

OK, at a certain point this stopped being field-trip packing, and became a creative procrastination endeavour, but how cool is this mobile spice rack made from a fishing tackle box?


So now I'm at Ramingining with colleagues, and the store  is very bare and we don't know when we will get fresh vegetables, but we can  eat saffron rice with infused with cloves, cinnamon and cardamom pods :)

Storm clouds over Litchfield

So last week, my birthday week, was a very busy one politically. Little old Darwin town experienced a temporary occupation by Obama and all his attendant security entourages, noisy-as-hell fighter jets and announcements that Darwin is going to be home to up to 2500 US marines as they defend US imperialism in the region and, I guess, practice killing people. There goes paradise... http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/49496

Then we launched the new concerned Australians book, Walk With Us. Ninety people  turned up to hear voices of Aboriginal people speaking out against the NT Intervention. Awesome!

Then finally we headed off to Batchelor, for some much-needed R&R...

Including gourmet goodies, of course.

We spent a day at Litchfield  National Park back in July, the dry season. It is so different now. It has gone from dusty dry scrub land to... well.... check it out:

I'm not sure my amateur photography adequately captures the dramatic storm clouds:

It turns out champagne and chocolate-dipped strawberries go REALLY well together. How did it take me 33 years to discover this!? On the  other hand, champagne and a good night's sleep don't seem to go hand in hand?

Thanks to my awesome friend in Sydney for the gourmet treats that meant that, even when the monsoonal showers kept us inside, we were well-catered  for and happily indulged.

And then I went crazy with the camera.

Desert Wanderings and Wonderings

Hello dear readers,

in preparation for my imminent departure from the Book of Face, I am transferring some of the notes I wrote during our Epic! Desert! Journeys! for 15 weeks of this year onto the blog. For Posterity. Because Facebook became something of a repository for Stuff I wanted to share and maybe I still want to share it, even if I don't want to be on Facebook.

So apologies if you have all read this before. Here it is again, a nice big chunk of text without any pictures to break it up, alas. Bare with me.

For those who don't know the history, Pete and I spent 15 weeks (5 weeks then 10 weeks) travelling through the remote Ngaanyatjarra lands of Western Australia, spending time in Aboriginal communities providing computer training and IT support...

* * *

DAY ONE OF WEEK TWO

MAY 9

Woke up early to drive to Blackstone. Car broken into overnight, music gear taken. Decide not to leave until we recover it. Computer lab closed until music gear returned, our boss says. Not sure how I feel about this collective punishment, but anyway. The guys who "borrowed" the instruments for an all-night jam (more of my old students!) happily return it, smiling helpfully and gesturing vaguely when we ask where they "found" it. Leave town a few hours later than planned but with instruments and music trainer in tow.

Arrive at Blackstone. A big fight, not nice to watch, starts outside the shop and moves around the community. Feels like we should just stay put at the telecentre, which is slightly larger than a toilet cubicle. Claustrophobia notwithstanding, three young women and their kids crowd in there for the afternoon, keeping tabs on the fight oustide and doing computer training while pete successfully occupies ratty children.

That's day one at Blackstone.

VEGETARIANS

MAY 10

This week we are sharing the accommodation with a music trainer. Today he offered to cook dinner.

MT: "You're vegetarian, right?" Me: "Yeah, hope that's cool."

MT: "Sure, no worries. My partner's vego so I'm cool with it. How about some pasta with mince?"

Me: "Ah, yeah. I don't eat meat, that's the thing."

MT: "Oh, ok. um... Vegie pasta?"

Me: "That sounds great!"

MT: "Maybe with some ham and bacon chucked in for flavour."

Me: "Um, there's just one thing: I'M VEGETARIAN... Happy to cook for myself though."

MT:"No, no, it's cool... um... what could I put in the pasta...?"

NO WORK NO PAY

MAY 12

Today there is nobody free/keen to do IT Training. Everybody is at a community meeting hearing about a new "no work no pay" rule. Everyone's a bit confused, not sure who made the rule. A sign went up on the office door last night stressing the importance of the meeting (the mtg happening the next morning!) and saying anybody that doesn't go to the meeting won't get paid.

Apparently if they have a good excuse not to be there, they can let the office know "ASAP". But the office is closed, on account of the meeting. And at least five people I know have been out bush since Tuesday anyway, so don't know about the meeting.

I guess they'll come home tonight to discover they're not getting paid?

So we are sitting here with nothing to do. We ain't working, but we're still getting paid.

IT TRAINING... FOR WHAT?

MAY 19

So once again, this job sends us unannounced into a community to do mainstream training nobody is interested in or needs, particularly.

Turns out I am not very good at being aimless.

Those people who say "money is being thrown at Aboriginal communities...", they're not necessarily wrong. they're just using it to push unhelpful ideologies. There is a whole lot of government money being spent on ill-planned programs that aren't driven by the grassroots, don't work, and don't help.

Unfortunately perhaps I am currently involved in one such project.

Who am I to tell adults who drop in of their own volition that they can't just spend the day looking at photos, that they have to do some "training"? Like training will lead to employment or something, out here?

The unemployment isn't because people don't know how to send emails. It's because the government doesn't invest in jobs with justice- but it's happy to spend money for people like me to travel around with thousands of dollars worth of equipment so people can spend the week playing on Facebook and looking at photos.

THE DAY'S EXCITEMENT: A TRIP TO THE STORE

JUNE 2

Tjirrkarli: Each day, we optimistically visit the tiny community store, convinced there will be something fresh, yum, exciting... something we must have missed last time we went. Some cheese maybe, fresh vegies? Juice? Yoghurt! Even a frozen chicken, damnit...!

It takes less than a minute to peruse the short aisle. Again we come away with IndoMei instant noodles, multiple cans of baked beans, tinned mushrooms, scotch finger biscuits... sigh... Baked beans with no cheese for dinner, again...

Next week we will be in Warburton, population 500 and about 50 different government service provision agencies (my god it'll be like being in Sydney after where we've been!). That means lots of whitefellas, and - as disturbing as the implications are- we're expecting that means a more well-stocked store.

PUT TO THE TEST IN TJIRRKARLI

JUNE 8

Wow our tolerance of bad food and boredom is getting seriously tested. We're at Tjirrkarli. A tiny community with baaaaad food. Meant to leave Sunday past but the radiator has given in. Expected a new radiator yesterday on the mail plane, which didn't arrive due to bad weather. Didn't land again today, and the mechanic who was hanging around to fit it for us has had to bite the bullet and take the trip he postponed on our behalf.

So we're here until at least Tuesday. We're eating baked beans and Indo Mei two minute noodles. I am seriously craving fruit or something green. Wondering just how bad the tinned peas in the shop could be (Pete assures me they could be pretty damn bad). Anyway, turns out the shop's closed for the next few days?!?! So not only do we have to continue with the indo mei and baked beans, we have to BE CAREFUL NOT TO EAT TOO MUCH OF IT!! (which won't be hard, as Pete points out.) Could I be feeling so tired because I'm not getting enough of the stuff we're meant to get from food??!!

How the hell do anangu cope? (ah. life expectancy gap. Yep, it's not so much that they "cope"... )

Meanwhile, nobody is really interested in training this week (could it be the bad food...?). There is no internet at home. We're rationing the few DVDs we have left. And the few books we have left.

So I pass the days going for walks, watching daytime TV , trying to study yolngu matha (although is it just me or does boredom and crap food do bad things to the brain/concentration/motivation?).

Meanwhile apparently all the roads to the west of here (where we're headed) are closed due to bad weather. I bloody well hope they're open by the time we get out of here...

WE ARRIVE AT COSMO NEWBERRY

JUNE 15

Last night we stayed at Tjukayirla roadhouse, owned by the papulankutja community. Best roadhouse food in Australia! (you gotta travel far to get there though...) Home cooked vegie lasagne, chicken curry, home-cooked sticky date puddings, avocado on toast.... mmmm so different to the two and a half weeks we just spent at Tjirrkarli. Still have four more weeks on the road, but am feeling very energised with good food in my belly and a good radiator under the bonnet...

Cosmo Newberry seems interesting. Unlike other communities, it is entirely Aboriginal-run. Not just in terms of what the constitution says (which in practise never means anything anyway. We can't just thrust "democratically elected community councils" onto an entirely different, ancient culture and expect them to work, can we?). In Cosmo, thhe advisor, office manager, store managers etc are all Aboriginal.

Anyway. Have to recover from 10 days of eating rubbish food, watching rubbish TV and sleeping in as an anti-boredom strategy. Back to work!

MIXED FEELINGS ABOUT TELECENTRES

The gov’t (not sure if it’s federal or state) provides an Aboriginal media organisations with a certain amount of money to set up telecentres in each community across the Ngaanyatjarra Lands, with satellite internet access etc. Connected to the telecentres is IT Training , which is what we’re meant to do.

The potential for these places is great I reckon. In theory, can access government services and online media, control their finances through internet banking, etc, all without putting pressure on the already over-worked community offices.

It’s also generating Aboriginal employment, of sorts. Each telecentre has one or two local Aboriginal workers who open the centre, supervise them etc. And they’re paid real wages, again from the government via NG Media, rather than CDEP.

In practise there are huge problems, as with most well-meaning programs out here. While we on the left call for real jobs for Aboriginal people in these places, and the government can say it is providing real jobs (in this instance), I think aspects of this program are a huge step backward in terms of empowering Aboriginal people, treating them as adults, giving communities control etc.

For example, the telecentre workers are paid for 20 hours a week. There are certain things they’re meant to do in those 20 hours. But there is no supervision, support, or training. There is no employer-type person acting like they give two hoots whether these people work on not, or supporting them one something goes wrong, or training them for the basic skills that they’d need to feel they’re doing a good job (surely our annual one-week visit isn’t adequate?!).

They are left to their own devices. Telecentre workers tend to be young people who have better English and basic computer literacy. Ie people who, according to their culture, don’t have a lot of authority or rights to tell people what to do. In a way, they are set up to fail.

The government is told of places where the job isn’t happening, where the telecentre is being used inappropriately, but doesn’t take any action because all it cares about is being able to say “look, we employed 20 Aboriginal people in IT jobs”

Effectively, the government says “you’re Aboriginal people, we have low expectations. We don’t expect you to do what we’d expect non-Aboriginal people to do. We’re going to let you do what you want, but we reserve the right to occasionally tell you off, disconnect your internet or maybe even sack you for doing the wrong thing. But this won’t happen very often because basically we’ll ignore you.”

So the telecentre workers who open the room, leave it open 24/7 while they’re away, come back to (surprisingly enough) broken computers, shitloads of downloaded porn and a very uncomfortable community, gets paid the same amount as the worker in another community who works long hours, keeps the place locked up at night, calls community meetings to develop a grassroots response to the porn issue… all in the name of “investing in jobs for Aboriginal people”.

Giving Aboriginal people “real jobs”, without training, support, consequence etc, is just as problematic as all the other paternalistic policies, I reckon, though I’m sure that’s controversial. In the end the government will no doubt say, “well look, we tried. We paid you good money. And what happened? You trashed computers, downloaded porn in front of kids, etc etc…”

And another service will be taken away, again without people really understanding why, although somehow they will understand that they have failed another mystifying whiitefella test.

Anyway that’s what I have been thinking about, during my time at Tjirrkarli.

Things we see on the road

Ideally this blog post would be illustrated. There are many photo-worthy things happening on the roads out here. But alas we are always so focused on getting from A-B (remember the distances out here), that so far I have no photos to go with this story. Let’s call it a work in progress. One day we will remember not to pack the camera cases away in the depths of the troop carrier, will keep a camera up front with us, and will add photos. Maybe.

For now, I will paint a picture with words, no analyses or solving the problems of the world, tonight, dear reader. Just a ride with us in the front of the Toyota, along the 2500 kms we’ve done since May 1.

For the map-inclined, our journey has roughly been: Alice Springs-Irrunytju-Blackstone-Yulara/Uluru-Jameson-Patjarr-Tjirrkarli-Cosmo-Newberry. With more to come!



TRACKS

We see lots of tracks of course. When the road gets rough you’re meant to stay in the tracks of the last car that went through. It’s the best way to avoid getting bogged, and a helpful way of deciding whether to go through or around the puddles.

Also from the car you can see camel tracks in the sand fairly easily. For the smaller animals you need to be travelling by foot to see their tracks.

At Patjarr I would go for a walk along the road each morning and see how many animal tracks I could spot. One day, back in town, a nine-year-old girl was walking behind me. She suddenly said “Emma- have you been going for walks out on that track?” I asked her how she knew, and she pointed to my shoes’ imprint and said “I was out there this morning, and I didn’t know whose track that was. Now I know it’s yours!”

CAMELS





Cheeky things. They like to sleep on the sand after the sun has warmed it all day. They’re never in a hurry to get out of your way, either. They tend to amble along slowly in front of the car rather than move to the side. Last night, we came across a big mob on the road after dark. I don’t know if it was fright or if we’d interrupted some serious cud-chewing, but as they slowly jogged along in our headlights, there were some impressive drool-strings blowing out behind them.


GRADERS


What long, solitary hours those grader workers spend making sure these roads are passable. There are so many long roads out here, which people rely on for clinic visits and food supplies, that you can’t really drive for more than half a day without passing one.

Whenever I pass one I think about a day in the life of one of these men (so far they have all been men).

Sometimes there are two graders a few hundred kilometres apart, so I imagine them meeting halfway, camping together to at least have some social interaction in the evenings. Because of the distances, and the slow speed at which they travel (about 20ks an hour when they’re actually grading), they usually don’t make it back to a town. Hence they are fully self-contained, travelling with a caravan and a vehicle in case they need to get somewhere in a hurry.

Usually you will pass this rough graders’ camp before or after you come across the grader. But on one track, a very rough disused track (I was surprised to see it being graded) we came across a site that for some reason I found quite exciting. It was a grader towing a caravan, towing a ute. While it graded. How cool?

I was reminded of China Mieville’s The Iron Council, although I’m sure I was reading too much into it.

I like to imagine the grader drivers with a dog or two. For company. The graders go so slowly, the dogs could run alongside sometimes, or sit up in the cabin at the driver’s feet. And a little comic relief and puppy-distraction never goes astray on long drives.

DINGOS


After camels and birds, dingoes are the next most numerous, at least that’s the view from the road. One day, on the same old track where we saw the travelling grader road show, we spotted a dingo up ahead. They are usually fairly shy, but this one wagged its tail and ran towards the car. It seemed genuinely excited to see us, and when we passed it slowly it started running behind the car.

Was it someone’s pet? Out here in the middle of nowhere? It got shy and ran off when I opened the door, which is probably just as well because I might have had to adopt it.

We still don’t know what that tail wag of recognition and the car-chasing was about. Maybe prior experience had told it that sometimes the white Toyota animals camp along there and leave food scraps in their wake.


CAR WRECKS


Everybody has probably heard of the famous car wrecks strewn along the tracks of outback Australia. There’s a great one near the SA/NT/WA border, an old panel van, painted like an ice cream van and brightly displaying the words “Ice cream. Now open.” If you’re doing the eight-hour drive from Alice Springs to Irrunytju, that wreck appears just at about the time you wouldn’t mind a roadside stop and, say, an icecream.

INTRIGUING SCIENCE-Y STUFF


Around Warburton, we kept passing this big mob of utes, trucks and caravans with “Terrex Seismic” logos on them. I had no idea what it was all about but it was an exciting distraction after numerous hours on the road.

Anyway someone pulled us over and said “We’ve got men on the road for the next 20ks, so just take it easy and slow down past the equipment”. The “equipment” was one very long extension lead lying along the road, at various points plugged into something stuck into the ground. That’s the technical definition, anyway. Plus there were fancy looking trucks with satellites on their trays and metal legs that held them firmly into the ground.

It was all very intriguing and hard to keep my eyes on the road ahead.

I didn’t really know whether “slow down past the equipment” meant “..in case someone steps out in front of you” or “…because that extension lead is plugged into machines buried underground that might explode if the vibrations get too full on”. Anyway we didn’t explode, nobody got hurt, and I just found this link on Terrex’s website: http://www.terrexseismic.com/html/terrex_seismic/seismic-exploration-australia.html

“The “Reflection Seismic Method” is a geophysical technique used to map in 2D or 3D, an image of the earth’s subsurface. Reflection Seismic is used by Oil & Gas, Coal Seam Gas, Minerals and Coal Exploration and Production companies to develop a clear understanding of subsurface rock structure and other geologic properties. “

Fabulous. I’ve read a thing or two about coal seam gas. Not impressed. http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/47808


So far, these are some of the visual highlights from our driving adventures. My words won’t do them justice, alas, but soon hopefully I will add photos.

On camels, salt lakes, and more food angst

When we arrived at a certain community, we heard that the phonelines, ATMs and eftpos were all down and had been down since the previous week. The store hadn't bothered opening because nobody had any money to buy food.

Some people had managed to catch a kangaroo or goanna, or dig up some maku, but most people were pretty hungry. A bunch of kids came knocking on our door looking for food that night.

There are lots of camels out there at the moment. That's about the only wildlife we saw apart from lots of birds and all the lizards I tried to dodge while driving. When I lived out there, nobody would hunt or eat camels. I was told it had something to do with the camels being the mode of transport the first invading whitefellas used. Australia is now the only country in the world with a wild camel population. Saudis buy camels off us.

A few years ago the government decided there were too many camels and started a big cull. I've heard that a few people have started eating them and the meat is pretty good. There have also been attempts at mobile abattoirs etc to turn the meat into dog food - what else to do with all those camel carcasses that will otherwise just rot the waterholes etc? I wonder if that's why all the camp dogs are that much healthier than I remember them being?

We were right near a giant salt lake called Lake Hopkins- at least that's what the whitefellas call it. We were taken out there a few times. After a big rain you can walk out into the middle of the lake, across dried and crunchy mud flats, and be rewarded with knee-deep muddy water to cool off in. It's salty, though, so take fresh drinking water with you.

There is also a tributary creek running through the salt pan that apparently is always full- even in drought.

The country round there, they call it tali (sandhill) country. It's beautiful, and seems to change every couple of hundred metres. Steep red hills with beautiful rock formations punctuate the miles and miles of rolling red sand dunes covered with spinifex and desert oak. There is water, if you know where to look.

Food Angst

At one of the communities on our recent IT Training bush trip, we found ourselves with nothing to do for the day. Listless, we got ourselves excited about the idea of going "out for lunch", for the first time since we'd got out bush. Drove 100ks down the road to a nearby roadhouse.

I was served the worst chicken burger I've ever tried to eat. The fresh food truck was stuck in the mud over the SA border, so there was no salad, no cheese... I'm not entirely sure the "chicken" was chicken. Took two bites, chucked the rest out, drove 100 ks back to base, wishing we'd just opted for baked beans on toast in the home ec classroom we'd camped in for the week.

It was inconvenient and disappointing. But what about the people who live on remote communities permanently and deal with this sort of food insecurity?

When the Howard Coalition government introduced the NT Intervention in 2007, supposedly aimed at tackling child abuse and neglect on Aboriginal communities (cos that's the only place it's a problem, right?), half of Aboriginal welfare recipients' income was "quarantined" onto a "Basics Card", which could only be used in certain shops on food and other essentials. (see http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/46894 for more information about the Basics Card, which continues- indeed is being expanded- under Labor.)

This was meant to ensure children were fed. But what good is the Basics Card when there is no healthy food in the shop? When a Mars Bar costs $1.50 and an apple costs $2?

When I first wrote this reflection, on my Facebook page, I wrote "Rather than the Basics Card, why doesn't the government invest in community farms and training to grow fresh food out here?"

But sometimes it's not that simple. In fact, many communities have had government-funded orchards and market gardens established, and teams of people who spend time on the community teaching people how to garden.

In most instances, the orchards are now abandoned, died, or gone wild. Or have a dedicated whitefella tending them.

This isn't an indictment on the ability of Aboriginal people to learn new skills, or their commitment to practise healthy lifestyles. It is, rather, another example of the failed approaches government has taken to community "development", "bridging the gap", and all the other catchphrases.

Many, many well-meaning non-Indigenous people are living on communities, making reasonable money, doing their best to improve living standards etc. So many of them get burnt out and leave. We need a radical re-think of the entire concept of "training on Aboriginal communities". We need to re-think the criteria used to when inviting people to work on communities.

"Do you speak the language of the people you'll be working with?"; "Do you understand and respect their legal, social, political system? Are you willing to work within it?"; "Do you have any experience working with communities experiencing inter-generational trauma?" These are questions I have never been asked, in all my years working on communities.

Finally, when all these millions of dollars are spent on "training" and "development" aimed at Aboriginal people, and they don't work (because of how they're set up, what they aim to deliver, the language they deliver in, etc...) what message is being sent to Aboriginal communities? What effect do all these failed programs have on people's confidence, receptiveness, dignity and sense of collective wellbeing? What conclusions do people draw?

We need to radically rethink approaches to working with Aboriginal communities before Aboriginal people give up entirely on the invaders' system of law, health, education etc, and lose all hope in ever understanding it or mastering it so they can take the power back.