In the last posting, I hinted at trouble in Paradise. As many of you will have heard by now, Terry and I have left Robinson River and are slowly meandering home. (It feels hard to get used to the idea that 'home' is no longer Robinson River.)
This blog will become a travelogue for a while - not Bill Bryson standard I'm afraid (I wish!), but then Bill Bryson didn't have pictures- and then I will finish it. But before I do, I will try to explain what happened. There is both a language warning for the following posting, and the use of extreme sarcasm which will undoubtedly offend a few of my newer readers.
Those of you who know my maninganja, Terry, may be surprised to know that within that mild mannered, grey-bearded bespectacled 61 year old, beats the heart of a trouble maker and miscreant.
These are some of the misdemeanours he committed at Robinson River:-
(i) When he arrived, the Head of Management made quite clear to him whom he was permitted to talk to, whom he was to socialise with, who was (and I quote) "a dickhead" in the community, and therefore to be avoided. Instead of appreciating this clear and useful directive (which would have helped him avoid trouble from the start), he decided that he was big enough and old enough to make his own friends and contacts. He therefore went ahead and talked to said dickheads, and found he liked them for their sanity, common sense and kindness.
(ii) He socialised with all the wrong people, including, and you may not realise how inappropriate this is in a community that is less than 10% white, the black residents. They even came into his house and had cups of tea and bikkies at his table, disregarding unwritten laws passed down from the good old days of the 19th century when everyone knew their place.. His partner, completely out of control with an unseemly and unwifely will of her own, even invited black children into the house. (What was I meant to do when mobs of bright eyed, lively, curious, friendly kids clustered around the door, just busting to come in and check out the toilet, the huge double bed, the white walls, my earring collection, as well as help themselves to the bulging fruit basket? Tell them to bugger off? I can't find that response in my book of Decent Manners. I was living in their country after all)
(iii) Terry was well liked and beginning to be trusted by the black community, giving the lie to the Party Line that "they all hate us , ya know". Now, I felt mistrust at times, I felt shyness, I felt indifference, but I only ever heard and felt hatred directed towards certain members of Management. And we did not include ourselves in that "us"
(iv) Terry was obviously unwilling to submit the very popular community newsletter, which he started as a literacy exercise, and which the community quickly and proudly came to regard as their voice, to the appropriate authority for identification and removal of offensive content which may have disturbed the Social Order. The Chief Censor, who also doubled as Head of Management- he's a busy guy ensuring Social Harmony and controlling incipient anarchy- did not believe that Terry was spending his time with interested members of the community (the numbers increasing with every issue), teaching them how to use computers and the internet, giving them confidence with their self expression and introducing them to the joys of writing and reading. The CC knew, as he knew everything that was happening in every corner of his little empire, as well as everything else in the known universe, that Terry was writing it all himself, instead of doing what he was paid for.
(v) While Terry was writing the community newsletter, while pretending that it was being written by his students, his errant missus, over whom he had no control because he is not a Real Man, was distributing offensive and disturbing material, including pictures of naked children, on the internet via her blog. Now, you readers may have missed that and thought you were reading a harmless personal diary, with words carefully chosen to not offend my hosts, the Aboriginal residents of RR, and seen some sweet pictures of kids playing in the river (while wearing, incidentally, swimmers or knickers). And members of the Aboriginal Council, many of whom are not great readers and none of whom had access to the internet anyway, claimed, when asked, that they had never heard of the blog and therefore could not have been offended by its content. They needed to be informed of my wickedness, because I took the blog down until Terry had left the community. Of course, once told by the CC that I was publishing pictures of their naked children for strangers to peruse, their desired offence was assured.
(vi) Terry had the temerity to assume that his many years of teaching in remote aboriginal communities, and his Masters degree in communication and literacy gave him the odd notion that he knew something about teaching literacy. He had the notion that it takes time- especially in aboriginal communities, and involves developing -earning- trust, the flexibility to respond to individual needs and abilities and personalities, and required the arousal of love of the written word and the existence in the community of stuff that people are eager to read.
He didn't realise that the 19th century missionary style of treating adult students as ignorant children and forcing them to sit at desks in classrooms learning their letters and practising their handwriting so they could read the limited amount of dull material available to them, and fill out Centrelink forms, was the only way to teach people to read.
Terry did actually agree that formal classes had a place in the teaching of literacy, but he also believed that learning to become comfortable with the written word was empowering and opened the door to self determination. See what I mean about him being a trouble maker? He probably voted Labor as well. Or worse.
There were many more misdemeanours, (including his desire to keep the Garrawa language and stories alive) but suffice it to say, he was clearly offered a place on the (white) Team- a chance to unquestioningly follow the Party line- and knocked it back, thus ensuring his own downfall. He has joined the long line of 'dickheads' that have fallen foul of Head of Management over the years. The tears and anger at his departure were simply evidence that the locals didn't know what was good for them.
Terry didn't understand that zero tolerance of different points of view, or mindless non-questioning of the ultimate authority of the Head of Management, was the only way to stop the community descending into social chaos and dysfunction. In that funny way of his, Terry believes that a healthy functioning community is one in which lots of different ideas are valued, discussion is encouraged, disagreements are settled without threats and intimidation, and co-operation is achieved by listening, consultation and consensus, rather than control and coercion.
Silly boy.
Till next time.
