The 9 to 5

So what's happened since Wednesday?

Well, Thursday and a bit of Friday that's what.

Thursday was not a bad day.

Kate was doing better with communication and I had a huge giant ton of work to get done, which always makes me happy.

There were some interesting cases too.

We had one woman come in and say that she'd lied in court a few weeks ago about her partner assaulting her and now she wants to revoke her statements. She says he never assaulted her but the police made it up. This is after her partner has been sitting in prison for a couple of weeks. We listen to what she says and then call the police to get a copy of the file and her partners criminal history. Not only are there pictures of her injuries (including bad brusing along her very pregnant belly) but there are two witnesses statements as well. Furthermore, her partner has a 14 page criminal history beginning at age 10 with thefts and burglaries and moving on to aggravated (that means with a weapon) assault by age 13. So we're going to have another appointment with her and try to convince her that it's probably not in her interests to revoke the statements (well, because she might go to prison for lying to the court). But it's generally sad that she wants him back and that she's willing to go to prison herself to get her abuser out of prison.

Another case was of a lesbian aboriginal couple. Very interesting, they'd both been married before and had kids. After those marriages ended they found eachother and started a relationship and moved in together. The problem is that they are both alcoholics and so their relationship is pretty abusive. But it seems from our clients statements that their kids and parents are pretty accepting of their new same-sex relationship. Cool aye?

Lastly, we had a very sad case of a girl who is 17 now but at the time of the assault had been 14, she got compensation from the government (it's a NT thing) and it's sitting in the state trustees' account until she's 18. Her very very very drunk mother came in and tried to access that money for herself. We explained that it's her her daughter and in anycase her daughter can't access it until she's 18. But it seems inevitable that when that money is released it will be drunk away very quickly.

On to less sad topics and more frustrating topics.

The solicitor, my supervisor Kate didn't come into the office today. She didn't call me or text me or email me letting me know. Sure, I had work to do but I've finished it now. She really is the worst communicator. So I'm likely to spend the afternoon watching court proceedings. Which is actually pretty ok with me.

On to less sad or frustrating topics.

I have a happy weekend ahead of me. Tonight I'm having some (very new) friends over for dinner, I'm making lasagna. Tomorrow evening I'm going to a picnic. Sunday I have a BBQ for Territory Day (the day the NT got independance from SA) and hopefully I'll be going camping to the Katherine Gorge for that night.

And then who knows that next week will bring?

I hope you have have a great weekend, shabbat shalom, Ms. B

The Weekend

So what's been going on since Thursday?

Not much to be honest.

Friday morning I got up super early and caught the 4 hours bus to Katherine. The bus ride was a bit uncomfortable inasmuch as there were white and aboriginal passengers, yet the black passengers all sat at the back of the bus. No kidding. It's like Mississippi here. To be fair, they got on after the white passengers so it's possible that it's just a coincidence. But I also didn't understand why the white passengers were boarded first.

After arriving in Katherine John my housemate and fellow lawyer came and picked me up and took me to my new home. It's a biggish, newish 3 bedroom house with 2 verandas and a big garden. Also 2 adorable cats. One is an adult called Cheeky and the other is about 12 weeks old called Minidjar which is the local indigenous word for kitten. They are both the cutest things ever.

John gave me a brief intro to Katherine and went back to work (as a criminal lawyer for another community legal service).

I then hopped on one of the household bikes and rode into town (about 2 kms away). I locked up the bike and went for a walk around Katherine. It was a big of a shock. There's huge numbers (well, proportionately to the size of the town) of homeless people sitting on the footpaths, on the nature strips and local parks. They are almost exclusively aboriginal. Apparently because of the intervention there's no alcohol in the indigenous communities. Which means that all the alcoholics have simply left their communities, families and children behind to come and live on the street of Katherine (and Darwin) where they can get a drink. Interestingly, the communities view this as a good and bad thing. Because on the one hand its sad for them to have people leave the places where they belong. On the other hand supposedly some of the families are benefiting from having abusive or difficult family members leave them alone. 

I wandered around the main street of Ktown, taking it all in, sometimes feeling a bit intimidated. But generally being surprised at how small the town is. It's basically one street of shops. And they aren't great shops.

So I went to the Woolworths. I bought all the necessities including things for Shabbat (candles, bread rolls etc..) I rode my bike home and started getting ready for the Sabbath. I cooked vegetarian bolognaise. I then grabbed my camera and went for a walk along the river bank near my house. The sun was pretty strong though so I quickly returned home to shower.

After showering I lit candles and davened kabbalat shabbat all on my lonesome (to be honest, after 3 months of it in Africa, I'm used to it by now).

At about  7ish, John my housemate came home from work. We had dinner together, I did kiddush and hamotzi for him. We had a brief chat about being a traditional Jew on shabbat and how I won't be turning on or off any lights or using electricity. I turns out that he is dating another Melbourne Jew who is up in Katherine doing Teach For Australia. Her name is Gaby, but I didn't ask for a surname coz I thought it'd be too J-Comm nosey to do that. She's on school holidays now so is returning to Melbourne anyway.

After dinner John went out and I settled in to read my book (The Help - pretty fitting given my location I reckon).

Shabbat day I got up about 9ish. Davened, breakfasted and went out for a long walk. There are some cute markets in town that I wandered through. They were selling the usual arts and crafts and candles n the like. As well as some great home grown fruit and vegetables that looked super fresh. I continued walked across Katherine bridge and by the river. It was really exceptionally beautiful.

I came home and read some more.

Just as shabbat was going out, John came home (he'd worked that day, poor guy). He invited me along to the party he was going to. I graciously accepted and after shabz we picked up some of his (fellow lawyer) friends and off we went.

The party was on a homestead nearby. It had huge paddocks and the stars were incredible. You could see all of the marbling from the milky way. The woman whose party it was, was turning 30 and she used to work for NAAFVLS, the organisation that I'm volunteering for. As it was the party was full of community lawyers. One was an editor for the Alternative Law Journal, another writes policy for the NT government regarding child protection.

I had a good chat with a bloke called Daniel by the bon fire about NAAFVLS. I knew it was under administration but I didn't know why. Turns out Daniel had been working there at that time. The CEO had been incredibly corrupt using the organisation's money to fund overseas trips to the Philippines and to 'employ' family members. When it came to light, all the employees (other than the fake family ones who were fired) quit in protest except for Rhonda. Luckily, the CEO was fired and replaced and the board dissolved. Hopefully in the next few weeks it should come out of administration.

All in all it was a fun party, the people were very friendly.

Today (Sunday the 24th of June), I got up early(ish) did the usual morning things got dressed and rode the bike the half hour down to the local hot springs. They were great fun. I went for a bit of a hike around the nature reserve around them and along the Katherine river. I then spent the rest of the day swimming in the hot springs and lying on the banks in the sun reading a book about the aboriginal resistance to white colonisation and settlement. It's pretty interesting.

I then rode home, made some pancakes and rice pudding. Yummy.

Tonight I'm having pasta bake for dinner with my housemate John.

Tomorrow it all starts at NAAFVLS. I'm pretty excited I guess.

An Education

The past two days have been above average interesting.

Tuesday night the lawyer came home late and we had a great long chat about the Northern Territory and about The Intervention and about being a female lawyer. She told me that there are some really serious cases of child abuse in the communities but social workers and government agencies are hesitant to remove children from their families because of the Stolen Generation guilt. I can understand how it's pretty uncomfortable to be put in a situation where you have to remove Aboriginal children from their families given how much hurt that's caused previously. But at the same time, maybe we are letting down this generation of indigenous Australians by leaving them in abusive situations.

In our conversation she also advised me to become a barrister. She reckons that as a woman it's more suitable since you are independent and can have more flexible hours.  She makes a good point.

Wednesday I was in the office again. I prepared a volunteers' handbook, and a 'how to' guide to using CLSIS (our client database) as well as a bunch of community education programs one about family law and another more general  youth education one.

Wednesday night we cooked eggplant and pumpkin and rice and the lawyer and her husband had some guests over. Their daughter and fiance came as did a friend of theirs. Their daughter is a family lawyer and her husband is a public prosecutor. The friend works in the corrections system as a quasi social worker for prisoners on parole. Let me tell you, it was fascinating. The stories they had. It was particularly interesting hearing a public prosecutor and a parole officer chatting. Since they essentially deal with the two ends of the prison system - when people enter it - and when people leave it.

Today (Thursday) we had a cultural education seminar. An elder who does this professionally came out to talk to us. I learned many things.

For example - traditionally aborigines have highly gender segregated societies. It's patriarchal. The men make the decisions for the community (though, they might consult with the women). Men and women who aren't related to each other can't talk to each other or look at one another. indeed this applies even if you are related through marriage. Which means that you can't look at or talk to your mother/father-in-law.

Furthermore in these promise marriages there are multiple wives. Sometimes with a very large age gap between the husband and wife. Furthermore the wife can no say in getting married and within the marriage sex is his right and she has no right to refuse.

Also, aborigines have black magic. They have witch doctors who will curse people to become mentally ill, or sick in general and die (sometimes by killing themselves). So if you are in a fight with somebody  you can get the witch doctor to 'sing' them. But they also have good witch doctors who can cure you. Sometimes.

Lastly, and I found this particularly interesting, in the Tiwi Islands (Torres Strait Islanders) there's a group called 'sister-girls' of trans-gendered men. How interesting is that?!They have sex with otherwise straight men only and insist on being counted as the women. Very cool. It was also really surprising to hear about the gay people in these remote communities and how they are tolerated (if not fully accepted). Though, obviously, eventually they all seem to move to big cities. But it was great hearing how the indigenous communities are ok with variations of sexual identity.

Tomorrow I am (finally) off the Katherine.

Woot!

Day 2

So today was my second day in the Darwin office. It was certainly less interactive than yesterday. I spent most of the day working on educational material about domestic violence, sexual abuse and child abuse for when we go to remote communities and I started creating a volunteers handbook.

The sad news today was that one of our clients died. She lived in a remote community. She was young and healthy so they have sent her body up to Darwin to the coroner's office to try and work out the cause of death. Though the social workers reckon it's most likely suicide. We looked up her file so we could close it. She had a good decade-long string of various incidents and abuses. And then we saw her birth date. She was born in 1989. She was only 22.

I suppose that this incident really drove home what I began realising yesterday. That even if I've dealt with domestic violence and intervention orders before, up here, it's a whole new story. Here the injuries are really serious (already I've seen stabs to the head and an entire broken leg). Here, I guess, if we don't get the work done properly people might die. 

A Return to/from Obscurity

Hi all,

I'm sure you've been sincerely missing the lack of blog posts the past few months. Let me tell you, you weren't missing out on much. University, working as a waitress, volunteering in the Family Court. Nothing too exciting.

However, for the next month my life should become a bit more exciting. I'm interning for the North Australian Aboriginal Family Violence Legal Service. I'm starting off in Darwin for this week getting to know the organisation and doing some cultural awareness training. Then next week and until the middle of July, I'll be in Katherine (halfway between Darwin and Alice Springs) servicing the various remote communities in the area.

Last night I arrived in Darwin (after a nauseating flight, connection and then another flight). I was picked up by a lawyer for NAAFVLS. I'm staying at her house. That night I went down to some markets by the beach. I watched the sun set (beautiful) listened to a heap of indigenous bands and watched some aboriginal dancers (strangely dancing like Beyonce circa 'crazy in love'). I also got some great dahl and rice (praise be to vegetarian Indians!).

Today, I went into the office and had some training. I shadowed one of the social workers for most of the day, visiting clients and developing community education presentations.

Already I've seen some less-than-pleasant things. The first client we visited was staying at a women's shelter. It was this enormous complex of women and their many very young children living in fibro/corrugated iron cabins surrounded by barbed wire and security gates. The women were cut and bandaged and limping. What was most shocking was how large the complex was. Hundreds of people must be living there.

Later we went to visit a homeless Aborigines' hostel. Our client there had been stabbed in the head a number of times by her husband - who is now in prison - and has a hip to ankle cast from having her multiple breaks/fractures along her whole leg from a beating by her brother-in-law. The hostel was this large grey concrete institution with 4 people to a room, no privacy or safe places to keep your belongings. The place was very dirty with used nappies lying around the place.

I later learned that this woman's abusive husband was her Promise Husband. She comes from a remote community where when she was very young, or even before she was born she was promised as a wife to another community member, probably much older than her. When he demanded it she was given to live with him as his wife, no matter that she was very young (sometimes these girls can be as young at 6 or 7). She has said now that she doesn't want to return to him or to that life.

I suppose that this is only the very beginning. Apart from working in Katherine, I've been told that I will also get to visit the remote communities following the travelling courts so I can help with drafting and filing of court documents and applications.

I suppose that I'm enthusiastic and exited even if I'm also a bit apprehensive for what I will have to deal with.

Until next time,

Ms.B