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Re-entering white society

I’ve had a big and interesting week. The biggest thing that happened was that S arrived to take over my post at Ngukurr Language Centre for the next three months. That means that time is swiftly approaching for me to be out of here, have my holiday and re-enter white society for a while.

It’s been good having S here. It’s kinda re-invigorated me a bit. Having S take over also means that I can have my holiday with a clear conscience. There’s no way I could easily leave this place if it meant everything I’ve been doing this year was about to fall over.

We had a good week at work. The Ngukurr language program went really well this week. We had all 5 languages going and we had a bunch of new people join in this time. One guy in particular was rather enthusiastic about getting involved in the language program which was lovely. I call him brother and he’s only about 35 or so. He’s a Ritharrngu speaker and it’s just so good to have young people keen to teach their language.

S and me also scooted off to Hodgson Downs for Alawa classes at the end of the week. There were hardly any kids there because they’d all gone off to a big festival at another community. (I’d like to say ‘at a community nearby’, but the community is still a good 230kms away). Classes went really well though because we seemed to be left with some of the best students and they actually listened, participated, learned and wanted to learn. how nice!

Oh, one other thing we did at work this week was start testing the kids at Ngukurr to see if they’ve learned anything. I really enjoyed doing testing, partly cuz I’m a dork and partly because it was good to see the language centre mob learning about assessing kids and good to see kids realising what they know (or how little they know and that they need to try harder). Doing this testing is all part of trying to get this language program taken seriously so that we can get some stinking funding.

Well, I’ve only got a few days left here at Ngukurr and a list of jobs as long as my arm. I’m looking forward to having a break and a holiday and escaping humbug for a while, but I know that as soon as I’m gone I’m going to start missing this place and the people like crazy. Bobala mi!

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Anonymous said…
Hope you have a great holiday!
1:18 pm
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