Finke Desert Race Survivor…

Ok so I survived the Finke Desert Race. If I am completely honest I may have even squeaked in delight when the first buggy flew into sight and became airborne over the sand dune before the finish line. I wonder what is happening to me out here. I promise that I still don’t like football!

Finke was descended upon by a couple of thousand motorbike and buggy riders for the race and a few hundred football and softball players for the community sports carnival. My little house was filled with youth workers from other communities and we worked ridiculous hours to get games going, umpire, fundraise, set up band nights and dance really badly at the disco!

 

Our bright red jumps!

 

Stolen image of one of the buggies (the kids action shots weren't quite as successful!)

 

 

Our team won the softball, which was very exciting. We drove around Finke (1 whole block!) for an hour with the trophy out the window cheering. However after four days of a sports carnival, that could have stretched for the best part of a month if there hadn’t been a few of us dragging players out of bed, we were all a bit blasé in the end, we tried to finish a night match by car headlights (just a tip car headlights do not necessarily improve the visibility of the softball). During the day it was pretty incredible lining up on the red dirt softball diamond and looking across at the red football oval to see motorbikes screaming over the sand hills. I did wonder if I was going to wake up.

The battle of the bands was amusing, with communities kicking each other off the band equipment to play exactly the same songs over and over again. The disco cracked me up too. I love discos out here. All of the kids do this thing called the sexy dance. I think the only way to replicate it is to dislocate your hips and shake your bottom as much as you can, believe me I have tried and tried. But if you turn off all the lights everyone including adults does the sexy dance, flick the lights back on and everyone flees for the closest wall giggling.

Lots of other stuff has been happening too. I think things got a little crazy out here to write it all down (even for me). I have been on lots of camping and bush trips with the kids, which I love. Have improved in my knitting (I’ll post the proof eventually). Life is kind of continuing here in its strange way, void of time. I keep loosing track of the date and day of the week. I think this is good, although sometimes I crave some form of structure.

 

This is a picture (up my nose!) of one of girls on community who makes me laugh every day! She'd just been teaching me how to dance to reggae!

 

I went into Alice for a young women’s health educator training workshop a few weeks ago, with one of the local workers from here. I don’t think I have ever laughed so much. It was basically like taking a health-ed class at school. At one point we had to play an ice-breaker game, where half of us had to be an SDT (we got a name tag with a word like syphilis on it) the other half had balloons tied to their feet. The STD’s had to try pop the balloons. I was giggling so hard I could barely breath by the end. We were also given a plastic programmed baby. It cried all the time, and we had to work out if it wanted to be held, rocked, needed it’s nappy changed. The creepy thing even made suckling sounds when you fed it. In the end our baby cried so much, we asked how to turn it off. The instructor said it only turned off if you killed it. We took that as a challenge and even after all of our efforts it wouldn’t die. At one point, as I was holding the plastic baby upside-down by its foot, I wondered who let me be a youth worker!

It was actually a great course, it was really interesting learning about how to teach and learn across cultures. Out here there are lots of things that make people ashamed to talk about. It makes it difficult to address issues like sexual health and relationships, but was great to come up with different ways to communicate (although I am not advocating for STD tiggy). I think with the cultural and language barriers out here, I have learnt so much more about communicating without words. I think I am feeling more at home with people here too. Apart from picking up more language and understanding a little more the nuances of humour, I think I’ve become much more comfortable with long silences. Women out here will sit for hours carving punu (soft wood), or burning beads not saying anything, making small hand gestures to ask and answer questions. It is really beautiful.

 

Tree roots in the Finke river (on the bizarrely coldest day ever)

 

I was doing some dispute resolution the other day and at the end of it the two people involved looked at each other and laughed, a genuine deep laugh. I was so confused by it, because it had been preceded by such anger and heated discussions. One of them noticed my confusion and said to me “we laugh to break up hurt and hate. It breaks it all up inside so it can leave.” What a beautiful philosophy.

Have been getting a bit sick lately, sorry to complain! But I was treated by an old nunkary (traditional healer), which was incredible. Apparently the reason I’d been getting sick was that my soul had been frightened and jumped outside of me. He got it back for me and then gave me a little of his soul. After chanting for a while he put his hands on my tummy and dragged my soul back across into it rightful place in slow repetitive movements. It felt really peaceful, although he gave me some pretty bad scratch marks on my belly! At the time I had some reaction to some insect bites and a tummy bug, so I also got an antihistamine injection from the clinic to be sure. But I definitely got better. I like the idea that emotional and physical health are intrinsically linked.

My biggest concern at the moment is that I have nits… my head feels itchy… Before anyone says anything I have washed my hair in the last week! But yuck, I don’t think I can sleep until I’ve had my entire head checked!

Thank you for reading. Although I have been enjoying the community, I have felt really far away lately and a little lost so it has been so wonderful to hear from people. I keep hoping that everything in everyone’s worlds is beautiful, and thinking that I am so lucky to have such incredible people only a phone call away.    me

P.S I have a new pet… Terry.  He usually quite shy (but can be surprising!).  One of the women here made him for me out of a tree root that we dug up from the river bed. I think I like his nostrils and his wonky eyes the best. 

 

Terry sun-bathing in the afternoon...

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