Well how did the trip turn out? How accurate were my predictions?
They will remember me, but they will be too shy to make meaningful contact.
Within 10 minutes of driving into the community, our old students started to appear and gather around us. Messengers were sent out to let the others know we had finally arrived. I found myself surrounded by 10 gorgeous young men in their mid to late twenties with big smiles, looking healthy, washed, hair combed, wearing clean clothes, well fed. They didnt have much to say for themselves, but then they never were talkers. I found it easy to see my 'five year old image' in their faces and recognised most of them straight away. The photo album we brought of old photos plus some from cape trib broke the ice very quickly. And as the word went out, and we walked around the community, others who we had not taught, or mothers of the kids came up to see the photos.
I expect that most of them will be still there, with loads of kids.
About half of them were still at E. The missing ones had moved to other communities, or Tennant Creek or Katherine. Most of them had children - one or two kids. We took lots of photos of them with their children to mail back. The brightest girl we had taught had no kids. Married but no kids. One of the students, Kelvin who would have been one of the most outgoing, had stayed an extra week at E just to see us when he saw our letter posted up on the store noticeboard. He normally lived at Amaroo, about 3 hours drive to the south.
The education we gave them will be all they have had. No one will have gone on to secondary or tertiary education.
This turned out to be wrong - they had all gone on to secondary school at Tennant Creek with the opening of a hostel in TC. Heather at the station said that special classes were put on for them at the high school because their level was not up to secondary standard. It would have been a great experience for them just to get away and live independently for a few years. None had gone onto tertiary education. But maybe this will happen in the next generation, which is considerably louder, bouncier and more confident in they way they related to us, compared to their parents.
i hope their living conditions will be better. i dont have high hopes.
This was a dramatic change - there were now 20 houses where there were once 5 basic shelters. Many of the houses now had power. Several had fridges and TVs. Some had stoves. The houses had water into each house. We remembered one tap for the whole community. The dogs were still everywhere, but now they had hair. When we were there, most had bare skin showing with no hair at all. There was a huge amount of wrecked cars scattered through the yards, and lots of rubbish which shocked me at first, but by the second day, I had got used to it and saw past it to the good things that were happening.
The surprises
There was now a health clinic staffed by a white nurse. The school was now a real school with two classrooms, 30 computers with satellite internet connection, loads of resources - it made us feel that the new generation would be in good hands. The two new teachers were keen and dedicated and young! Three hundred lived in the community whereas we had only 80.
World Vision was there running a feeding program at the school.
There was a 'women's centre, though it didnt seem very active
Blonde dyed peroxided hair was all the rage.
Some of the mothers I knew 20 years ago were still having babies - now up to 8 children in their family.
One of my students - Anthony - had died from pneumonia only 12 months before, leaving it too late to get medical attention.
The caravan where we lived had gone and in its place was a workers barracks for the station where we stayed - they had phone and TV.
| 
