This year has a different flavour about it. Perhaps because we had such a lovely break? Perhaps because the end is near? Perhaps we just took that long to make proper friendships that we were genuinely happy to come home to? For whatever reason we are enjoying life here more this year. We have been getting out of town a bit and socialising more.
I'm still working pretty hard but savouring the satisfying work. The clinic has finally handed over entirely from a government-run facility to a community clinic. It doesn't automatically follow that the facility is run better or caters more specifically to the local population but it does at least rest on a foundation principal of self determination which is a step in the right direction. A lot of the workplace politics has correspondingly dialled down a notch so work is a calmer, happier place for me to be. (Photos below from Malalas Facebook feed and one of me with the lovely Shelley!)
There is a lot of crime in Maningrida at the moment. It started building at the end of last year and crescendoed over the summer while we were away. The police reported a 5x increase in crime. Almost all of it is break-and-enter crime with some theft including theft and destruction of multiple cars. Luckily we have had minimal personal impact and we don't find the situation really frightening because the crime is almost all a group of young teens who are very destructive but not violent. At the end of the day these are children who are desperately struggling. Unfortunately it does affect our workplaces and the children are affected when their classrooms are trashed and when kids including some in Luca's age group are especially disruptive.
Mum and Dad came to visit. Mum was here for 10 wonderful days in which we enjoyed her lovely company but also enjoyed her delicious dinners and all that clean washing appearing in our bedrooms magically! She seemed happy to go along with whatever we were up to so she spent lots of time at the school and the pool. We went up to the sand quarry (where sand is mined for local building sites) which was enormously fun for the kids. I convinced her to get up a few mornings and join me at the walking-sometimes-running-club too. Here she is with me, Kerry, Nat, Blanche, Jonelle and Di.
Dad arrived in time for some fun activities one weekend so we took them out on the boat. We attempted fishing and were nearly as successful as usual (we caught nothing). It is incredibly peaceful under those dramatic wet season skies looking up the river and into the thick mangroves.
We also got them out to Rocky Point. They had a true Maningrida experience in which we spent an hour driving around town (it takes 5 minutes driving from one end of town to the other) collecting a few locals and getting the correct permissions and buying an essential kangaroo tail. It is a beautiful place but especially interesting to see how Nancy, Mary and Monica cooked that tail in the coals and special to share their place with them.
On the way back we let the kids swim in a beautiful creek that we were promised is croc free. It was a beautiful little spot. You can see Jamieson doing some interesting pool entry here!
I made it to Darwin for a couple of days and had a wild night out with Maningrida docs Mel and Kerry. It was fun to let loose a little!
Remote towns are known to have a fairly transient worker population and we have been here long enough now to have to say some tough goodbyes. Well miss the Turner Family and Luca will especially miss those Turner boys! He insisted that we host his birthday party early to ensure that Louis and Henry would be there and before Reade went away to Cairns to check out the new house his family have bought there. Luca's simple party plan turned out to be enormously, grubby fun. We headed back up to the sand quarry with 300 filled water balloons and hosted a water balloon war! The kids were awesome about picking up all the balloon debris and some snacks and cake were all that was required to finish off a great afternoon.
When his real birthday came around he was content with cake at some Friday night drinks with my workmates. Happy 11 little man.
We managed only one beach clean up in the last few months. We were away in January and February it was rained out but March we had a great turn out and it was an especially glorious sunset so it was totally worthwhile!
We have had a couple of other lovely trips out to Rocky Point. The school hosted a picnic there and when the tide was low we went out onto the point (yup, it was rocky!) to collect cockles and it was a remarkable thing to think that people have been collecting this same food source in this same place for thousands of years.
Another time we nicked out for an hour after work to share the place with Gen, a fantastic physio who has spent a week of every month here for the last few years but has never been taken out of town. She also has plans to move on soon so we seized the moment! We again had some amazing weather and the children rumbled on perfect sand dunes and we made the only footsteps on the beach.
We finish the school term with Easter eggs, headlice (episode #357), some more fishing and getting to know Olga and Mason and their lovely boys.
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