My inner superhero…

Ok so knitting may not be my forte… but new forms of entertainment are pretty hard to come by out here (as are presents to send to people). So I thought that I would knit my lovely sister a scarf for her Birthday (sorry Vaness I have failed thus far!)

But as a memento of my efforts (and a reflection of just how much I have come to rely on my own extremely witty humour out here in the desert) I have taken some photos.

This was the overall feel I was going for. Warm, classic scarf, symmetrical, long, immaculately woven…

 

The classic snugly scarf

Two slight issues… one end was quite significantly bigger than the other… I ran out of wool for the scarf to be any longer than this…

 

 

Issue 1

 

Issue 2

…and there are some largish holes in it (that is three issues…). What to do? I contemplated this for a while….

 

I let out my inner super hero...

But out of adversity was born a new breed of superhero, Scarfette. I have superhuman powers in um… clearly not knitting. I am still working on my powers.

Ok so by now some of you may have stopped reading, others maybe wondering if I have actually finally lost the plot, or be feeling sorry  for Ben who I work with. Maybe all of these thought are somewhat valid but I think that everyone needs to let out their inner superhero every now and again!

To be honest I think that humour is about the simplest thing to translate across cultural barriers. I am not suggesting that everyone here thinks I am funny, but I do love laughing with a group of people in moments where there are so few spoken words.

There is a couple that are walking eight camels from Darwin to Melbourne to raise money for the Royal Children’s hospital, which is pretty amazing. They stopped over in Finke for a few nights last week. There are lots of wild camels out here, but it isn’t very often that the kids get to pat camels and see them up close. They are such funny creatures, just as we were leaving with the kids one of them walked up to the troupe and burped. I have only just recovered from it- intellectual humour I know!

We had a big outdoor concert here last week too. Everyone from the school kids to the older men performed on a stage around bonfires- it was incredible. Someone stupidly thought it would be a good idea to leave me on face painting and hairspray. I think I may have taken too much creative licence and convinced everyone that they would love to be a jungle animal or at least a strange morph of one. I did discover that I am in fact hairspray retardant. No matter how much hairspray is put on my hair after about 5 minutes it disappears. Weird I know!

There was something really special about sitting around the fires with the community giggling at the kids, feeling proud of them, talking about how next time we could make an even better concert. I felt connected to the community and part of something positive.

I watched some 60 Minutes interview last night about Indigenous kids getting scholarships to prestigious schools in Sydney. I felt really conflicted, it felt too much like a good will story and not about sharing of cultures. We have so much to learn from each other. I realised that we talk about indigenous communities as if they are synonymous. Central desert kids life experiences and cultural are so different to rural indigenous kids. I don’t think scholarships like that would work for most of the kids out here, the change would be too drastic. I guess the sad reality is that in terms of education we are failing lots of these kids. I know that it is complex and that there are people giving it everything. But there are not enough educators who stay, and in my experience community services and resources are so strangely administered out here. I am still sitting with all of this, chatting with some of the elders, who like most people want the bright and health futures for their children.

This is Finke river bed, where I do lots of my contemplating…

Finke river bed

Missing people loads and loads.

Shan xo

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