that munanga linguist

Last week, someone new joined in with teaching our language program – but this time it’s someone young! And not only that, he’s really good and seems to be enjoying it so far. He’s only about 20 and helps old E teach Ngandi. Ngandi is really endangered so D, the young guy (my nephew), doesn’t really know the language but he has good brains and is picking it up really quick and running with it. Best of all, he is pretty outgoing and a naturally good teacher. Pretty exciting really. But what was surprising to me was finding out how different it is to be working with someone young, someone who I can relate to a bit more. I didn’t think it would have such a noticeable effect. It felt really good to be working with someone who naturally understands me a bit better (and I don’t mean in terms of language, I mean in terms of interests, attitudes, values etc.). But then I started feeling a bit sad, because I realised how I am always working hard to understand and relate to the older peo...

I slept very badly last night, even though I was very tired. I thought I would collapse into bed and go straight to sleep, but instead laid there watching telly until I got sleepy at 11pm. But that’s not the end of my story. Sometime later, my mobile phone woke me up. I thought someone was sending me a text message. I woke up and looked at my phone but there was no text message and no missed call. It had definitely made a noise because the phone was lit up too. But whatever noise my phone was making was totally unexplained. It was just after midnight. I fell back into sleep easily but woke up a couple of hours later and couldn’t go back to sleep. I sat there awake for a while, getting eaten by mozzies. Eventually, I sat up and reached for the fan switch to turn it up. At the exact moment I turned the fan up, the touch lamp on the other side of the room went on. In two years, this touch lamp has never turned on for no reason. So this afternoon, I told this story to my two ...

Hello to anybody still looking at this blog. I'm still here at Ngukurr. I just haven't felt like writing much lately and haven't had anything I wanted to get off my chest and on to my blog. I suppose the longer I'm here the more ensconsed I am in life here and the more normal life here becomes for me. But yes, I'm still here and not going anywhere. Literally. The roads out of here have been cut for a couple of months now. Luckily, I got to fly out of here a month ago for a week or so, but since coming back I haven't been able to leave. Which is fine, but it's now four weeks which is about my limit before going a bit stir crazy and spending too much time fantasising about being able to go to a cafe and pay someone to make me a nice coffee. Don't ever take those things for granted! I'm hoping to be able to drive to Katherine in a week or two, but there's another stinkin cyclone hanging around which might have plans of thwart.