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.