that munanga linguist

Yet again, I had a good time at hodgson downs last weekend. I tell you, that mob spoil it for this Ngukurr mob by being so nice. Alawa classes went well. I got in too late to do anything on Thursday but Friday we had a class that went well. I didn’t think it would because there was a community meeting on and I thought everyone would want to be there. But the two old men I work with to teach Alawa are so dedicated, they both rocked up after I thought I’d have to try and do something on my own. We ended up running a pretty good class. Some of the kids are actually getting into it. Their teacher made them make a little ‘pocket book’ that says on the front “Nanjal yemberli?” (what are you doing?). Then they stuck in a photo of one of the old men telling a Dreaming story. Then the old men put the caption to the photo which goes: “ Ninda ngemberli wulunga Wuradbunggu-yi, gada arrganya, ala murru Yilayi, Wanggurlayi, yil-jijan yil-murrgu ” which I translated (hopefully accurately) as

i feel sick today. nothing bad, just under the weather with that general ache-y feeling. so i haven't done much work today and had a good sleep this morning after watching the end of the Spongebob Squarepants movie. but this afternoon I had to do a couple of jobs and the language centre mob all came over... not for long luckily because i wanted to have a lie down. but my baba stayed for a cup of tea... he's sick too... so after that we went to get some bush medicine so we can get better. it was the first time i've ever gotten bush medicine for me! pretty neat. we got some dumbuyumbu . I came back, boiled it up and made a tea out of it. but you know what? it's so gross! haha... i'm still trying to drink it. But then again, it is medicine... and medicine always tastes gross. i'm gonna try and drink some more. i'll blog more later.

Friday was an interesting day. I was at Hodgson Downs and Alawa classes were cancelled. This was because there was an official opening of the new secondary school unit. The opening involved ‘important people’ flying in for the occasion: the big two were federal senator Nigel Scullion and NT education minister Syd Stirling. It was all a bit of a circus really. I ran around for a while thinking I should be trying to network and talk to people about language stuff, but then I stopped and sat down with local mob… at one stage all the teenagers, another point with the old people… and found that much more pleasant and satisfying. I don’t even know where to start with this lobbying and politicking business. It was good sitting down with the local mob… they weren’t fazed by the circus at all. So while I was watching the ‘circus’ I was sitting next to an old man who humbugged me to go hunting that afternoon. It was about the best offer so after lunch we went off, me, two very old men –

Monday at work was another stressful day. again, it was just busy and relentless, one task after another interspersed with humbug and distractions. by the afternoon I must have had enough because something snapped. I got cranky and one of the people I work with and spoke semi-harshly to them, which I never do. well, that person got cranky right back at me and threatened to quit. I’m the kind of person who avoids conflict like the plague so this was pretty eventful for me. I don’t really know why I cracked it, something must have got to me but I don’t quite know what. I mean, I know the specific thing I was cranky about, but I don’t know why I actually cracked it today instead of dealing with it as I normally do. I think maybe I just hit the wall or something. so I was very worried about having that argument. I didn’t mean to upset the person and I was upset now too. And also worried about what the ramifications would be. But everything actually worked out really well. The ne

Friday morning us language centre mob were invited to a CDEP meeting at the local council office. CDEP is the employment scheme that provides that bulk of employment here at Ngukurr and in every other Aboriginal community. In reality, it’s little more than work-for-the-dole, but it’s something. Anyway, John Howard’s government is implementing changes to CDEP (along with every other scheme pertaining to Aboriginal people!) which will make it tougher for this mob to keep going the way they have been going. So now, the CDEP mob who work with me will either have to go into the ‘employment’ stream – where they have one year to be trained up to move into a proper job (which don’t really exist) – or they go into the ‘community activity’ stream – where they can keep going the same way, but aren’t allowed to get any top-up pay so have to be content working for $200 a week! All the changes the Howard government are bringing in seem to assume that there is some kind of viable economy here at

For anyone reading this, I must be becoming repetitive... yet again, i'm here to tell you that here I am at Ngukurr, still tired, stressed, overworked and badly in need of a holiday. Yet, in spite of this, work is going well. If i was in a happier and healthier state of mind, i'd be able to be really excited about all the cool things were doing here, but as it stands, i'm just pooped. Yesterday (wednesday) morning, my mami N had organised to have a big bbq lunch at the language centre. It was actually a really good morning, because it was N's thing and I was just helping. We did grocery shopping, picked up some bricks and a giant grill for the fire place, some empty flour drums for tea and cordial, and then went out to get some wood. Me, baba G, mari T and mami N went to get wood. I'm still trying to muster the energy to learn some Wagilak from mari N but it's not happening very fast. Anyway, back at language centre, we set up the bbq and in the meantime,

why am I so stressed? today was a normal day. Normal, yet I still ended up feeling completely exhausted, stressed and overworked by the end of it. It’s no good. I need to do something about this because it’s making me unhappy, affecting my work and worst of all, I don’t know why really… So in an attempt to find out why I’m getting so stressed, I’m gonna try to recount my day in step-by-step detail to figure out what happened, why it stressed me out and what I can do about it… firstly, I didn’t go to sleep til 12:30am last night, so not having enough sleep isn’t going to help me do my job in a relaxed manner… 7:45am: woke up… had slept in (sposed to start work at 8am). 8:15am: finished yesterday’s washing up, ate my weet-bix, started reading my favourite ever book which I’ve just rediscovered. 8:30am: first phone call. mami N called and asked me to pick her up to go to the police station to check on a family member who was locked up during the night 8:45am: showered, dressed, packed

Monday morning and somehow was stressing before work even started. geez i need to learn better stress management. i was stressing because of the Ngandi course we've planned for this week... stressing firstly because i didn't know where the lecturer who is running the course was (he was due in last night) and secondly because i wasn't sure we'd get any more than a couple of students. anyway, i realised i was stressing for no reason and relaxed a bit, and by that time the lecturer had turned up... seriously 75% of the rest of the day was spent behind the wheel... and i didn't even leave this stinkin community! (until 5pm when we went on a quick outing). firstly i was trying to find ppl to join in on the ngandi course, then i was picking up my usual mob, then running around on the usual errands, then it was lunchtime... geez i don't know what happened today, but i did a lot of running around. The Ngandi course is going fine. It's being run by Batchelor col

My visits to Hodgson Downs are still really great. I got there lunchtime on Thursday and shortly after we - me, some of the old people and one of the teachers - took the high school girls (about 12) on a bush trip to a place called Renyen. Two old men sat them down and told them about the place – the Dreaming story for the place and a whole bunch of other stuff. I don’t know about the girls, but I thought it was pretty special. Some of them were being so bratty and not listening, giggling, whingeing, just acting like two-year-olds really. It’s a shame because some of the other girls are actually quite interested and want to learn. So apart from a couple of girls driving me nuts, it was a good afternoon. I had a quiet evening then up for work again on Friday. I ensconsed myself into the world of sound editing for a while, then went to see if the old people wanted to come teach Alawa in the classroom. Well, there’s been a lot of arguing at Hodgson Downs lately, and it was just st

You’d think I’d be happy to have two short weeks in a row, but really it just means I’ve got four days to do all our work in instead of five. Tuesday was interesting and lot of things happened. I had a run-in with the woman from Batchelor, talked to someone from Education Department about all the good work we’re doing at no cost to the Education Department, digitised some audio, helped Baba G start to transcribe some Marra, drew six large women on cardboard for tomorrow’s body parts lesson, a new worker started at the language centre, talked to Baba A about working on Nunggubuyu and started sorting out the Ngandi course being run here next week. And I finally got some printer ink cartridges after having no ink for two weeks!! hurrah. I won’t go into more detail. The only other thing I did was go on a bike ride to the airstrip and come back all sweaty. Today (Wednesday) is language classes at Ngukurr school. We’re still doing stinking body parts. Actually, it’s not a bad thing bec

This is the second long weekend in a row. Last one I spent in Katherine, this one in Ngukurr. And it’s been alright. I’ve been able to relax to a significant degree. I didn’t get back from Hodgson Downs til 7pm on Friday and I just crashed out. Saturday morning I watched Rage and did my best to avoid humbug, ignoring the phone right-out. how rude! Well, I’d already been humbugged the previous day so at Midday I picked up old N and JBJ and went to pick up a washing machine for them and get their medicine from the clinic. After that, I snuck off to K’s… my only humbug free zone. Had a coffee, watched Degrassi and then we put on some music and turned her place into a mid-afternoon nightclub. Seriously! We danced non-stop for an hour and a half in her living room. It was quite therapeutic and put me in a good mood for the rest of the day. Saturday nite I was invited to a munanga party. I still find munanga parties here a strange affair. You see, there are about 30 munanga liv

Thursday morning I headed off to Hodgson Downs again. It takes about two hours to get there. We’d planned to go on a bush trip after I got there but I found out that there were nurses visiting and giving all the kids a check-up and blood tests, so no bush trip. So I didn’t end up doing much that afternoon, did a bit of planning, talked to the teachers and visited a few old people. After school I hung around with some of the kids and we kicked the footy around. Haha, I suck at football. No, I’m not too bad, but compared to these guys I am. They’ve got style and talent and were just shaking their heads at my kicking style. Oh well, I’m still learning. Friday morning we have language class. I was a bit worried about it because I hadn’t reminded all of the old people about it and I knew some of them were going away anyway. But when I went up the road to see who was about, again there was a group of 5 old people sitting there. Two of them happily came along to teach Alawa. So dea