Salsa for salsa

Nicola is a dance addict and has been chafing at the bit to teach Tony and me.  I don't have a dancing bone in my body and a self-diagnosed form of tone deafness makes dancing seem like a futile activity for me.  Also I didn't want to waste Nicola's time.  

     I'd missed the opportunity to learn dance in year ten.  We had to attend dance lessons with boys from Ashgrove, the brother school to Stuarthome.  We'd had dances each term with the Ashgrove boys and there was no way I was doing dance lessons with them.   I had just turned 15 and I decided they were either immature or inarticulate or both or they were bevans.  But I took the school note home on the holidays and gave it to Mum, hoping she'd forget.

     My parents farewelled me at Lae airport as I was about to board the first of two planes back to Brisbane.

     "I almost forgot," said Mum pulling two fifty dollar notes from her bilum.  "This is for the dance lessons you are doing this term.  You have to give it to Mrs Crossley."

     I accepted the money with deep gratitude.  It was the most I had ever held.  It was mine.

     Mrs Crossley never saw it.  She was a well spoken, proper boarding mistress.  She even had a posh English accent and wore court shoes.  She probably thought my parents were crass Australians who had no interest in the essential skills young ladies needed to function successfully in life.

    I did well out of that hundred bucks.  A good deal of it was spent when I snuck out of school and caught the bus into town. It paid for yoghut cones at Wendys, cups of coffee at Jimmy's on the Mall, a packet or two of Alpine Lights and Beedies, both yuck, a pair of bright red Lipstick winklepickers and the remainder on editions of TIME magazine till I flew home for the Christmas holidays.

     Over the years I regretted not handing Mrs Crossley the hundred dollars because there have been times when I really wish I knew how to dance formally such as weddings or being at dance clubs.  The older I got, the less inclined I was to risk the humiliation of learning to dance. 

     I am not a fan of movies or even watching TV, but one of my favourite movies (of the whole ten I have watched in the last 25 years) is Strictly Ballroom  I even bought the CD. I wasn't brave enough to sway to the music, even when I was alone, but I did decide that by the time I was 70, I wanted to be able to do the salsa, samba, rumba, cha cha cha and of course, the pasodoble.

     Back to the present.  Nicola was keen to teach and her enthusiasm was infections.  And deep inside me, there is a Tina Sparkle waiting to twirl out in shimmering glory.  And Tony was keen to learn and he needed a partner.  

     We started last week.  After the first night, I was addicted and had one blister and a toe threatening to pull away from my foot.  At the moment we are fixated on salsa.  The other night, I made salsa which was fitting. 

All the ingredients came from the garden except the dressing and the half zucchini which was $4.99/kg from IBIS, a steal.

     Each night we clear the lounge and dining room of furniture and I apply a few BandAids and Fixomull. 

Dancing the salsa.  I am wearing my best dancing frock, not quite Tina Sparkle. I should wear socks for my foot injury, but they wouldn't look the part.

Tony and Nicola's stamina outdoes Henry's and mine.

     After lessons, I bring Pepper up, feed her and put her to bed inside. Tony gets onto Youtube and studies dance moves.  Henry goes downstairs and plans the next evening's footwork and music.  And Nicola helps Henry and searches for our salsa dresses.

     I have decided I want to do the salsa, samba, rumba, cha cha cha and of course, the pasodoble, by the time I am 46!

In a class, at a school, on an island #2

Teacher:  I am so impressed you are all sitting quietly on the mat.  Now we have five minutes till home time so we are going to play a maths game.
(All students groan)
Student 1:  Aaaw, Miss, we wanna play Sleeping Lions.
All students:  Sleeping Lions.  Sleeping Lions.
Student 1:  Can we play Sleeping Lions?
Teacher:  I don't think so.
All students:  Pleeease.
Teacher:  Well, how do you play Sleeping Lions?
Student 1:  We all lay on the floor and pretend to be sleeping.
Teacher:  But what do you do?
Student 1:  We sleep.
Teacher:  You beauty, umm, very well then.  Let's play Sleeping Lions.
Student 1:  You have to watch us and if we move you have to pick us and we're out.
Teacher:  Sorry, I want to play, too.
Student 1: Okay, I'll pick.
(Students lay sleeping on the mat)
Student 1:  Richard, you moved.  You too, Courtney.
(Student 1 picks out students one by one)
Student 2:  Miss is really good at this game.
Student 1: Taylor, you moved.  Ella.  Briony. Will.  You're all out.
Student 3:  Miss isn't moving at all.  
Student 4:  She is a good sleeping lion.
(Home bell sounds)
Student 1:  Miss, you won, you won.  And it's time to go home.

The wet has arrived

I was dreaming I was sleeping in the cockpit of a JAL flight and came to as it landed momentarily, in error on the wrong runway (no doubt the result of this news article).  My plane took off immediately then landed, in poor weather, on the correct runway.

     “We’ll have to stay here,” said the captain.  “The weather is too bad to keep flying.”

     Rain was lashing the plane like a wet rag, swoosh, swoosh, swoosh.  

     At that point I came to and realised there was a soggy gale raging except I was in bed.  A quick glance at the louvres, all open on the eastern side of the house and bone dry, told me it was the first of the north-west rain for the year. 

     I was groggy, the result of waking at 4.30 with Pepper Zen. 

     “Stop quacking,” I said, tersely.

     She did till I was about to drop off.  Then she kept making the odd, quack, quack, as if she was desperately trying to be quiet, but the roosters next door were heralding a new dawn and telling her to rejoice.

     At 5.30 and still awake, I scooped her up, kissed her and deposited her in her cage.

     “I’m sorry,” I said and returned to bed, falling into a deep sleep where I was flying with two Japanese pilots and landing in a storm.

     A storm?  I raced down the back stairs to rescue Pepper Zen.  She was in the northern-most corner of the cage, chest against the wire as if she was trying to lap up as much rain as possible.

     “What are you doing, Pepper?” I screamed as she avoided my hand. “I’ll save you.”

     My sarong had fallen around my waist as I leaned into the cage.  Why was she avoiding me?  Finally I grabbed her and clutched her to my wet chest as we raced upstairs to the warmth and safety of the back veranda table to dry out. 

      Then into the kitchen.

      Breakfast time.  She has grown so much.

     Compared to a month ago.

      The only problem with big ducks is not just that they do bigger poo.  They also poo much more frequently.  So Pepper Zen needed to be confined.

     I text a photo of a confined Pepper Zen to Detta, a fellow carrier of the Duck Appreciation Gene (known medically as DAG777).  Seffy was having a sleepover with Detta, one of her two godmothers.

     “Pepper Zen inside warm and safe having a cup of tea with me.”

     Detta text back immediately, “Perfect weather for ducks.”

     No wonder she was avoiding me! 

Are black people dumb? he asked

There were two certainties about the children Tony, my Torres Strait Islander husband and I would raise. Firstly they would have brown skin, eyes and hair, from Tony.  Secondly they would have an insatiable thirst for reading and learning, from me.  The first I got right, the second I got hopelessly wrong.

     Trying to understand why my children have not embraced reading and learning has involved a fourteen year journey, a teaching qualification and changing strategies to make them learn.  But a comment by a friend while I was mulling over writing this story has almost solved this decade-plus conundrum … and the egg is on my face.

     “I could do anything and I could learn anything before I got to school,” she said.

     Here is my experience of education in the Torres Strait, that is, a remote Indigenous community.  The account relates to our two oldest boys.  

     Our children grew up in a house full of books and were read to constantly in the early years.  They loved reading.  In fact the oldest boy was an early reader before age 5.    

     There were no TVs, Xbox, DS or other screen devices till they were much older and then use was heavily controlled.  The boys spent most of their waking hours outside, in the yard, in the street, on the oval, on the reef or on the water, being children.

     By the time they entered school they could drive a dinghy and catch a fish, couple and uncouple the dinghy trailer from the ute and spear crayfish, tie and bait a hook and gut a fish, assess the wind and lunar cycle and read the solwata.  All this they had learnt from their father who had learned similar things from his father and so on.

     At school, they were suddenly corralled into small, artificially lit rooms with low ceilings, along with 24 other students.  They couldn’t use their existing knowledge as they were taught to sound out, count in twenties, read books about rabbits and snowmen and make tiny earths that circled massive suns and so on.

     Is there any wonder that my sons disliked school, rejected all it taught and disengaged?

     “Don’t make us read, Mum,” said the oldest boy often. “We don’t like it.  And other parents don’t make their kids read.”

     Both our older boys attended boarding school in Cairns following primary school on Thursday Island where they did well if As and Bs are indication.  Both failed when faced with mainland education standards in their first term away.  I have had conversations with other parents who’ve had the same experiences.

     Why did the boys fail?  In a nut shell, they failed because they quite simply had not learned all they needed to in primary school.  Why?  The curriculum failed to engage them and it disregarded the vast knowledge they had on day one of their formal education.  And that repelled them from learning, kolleh style, the European way.

     Okay, there is much research into why Indigenous children in remote communities disengage or fail to attend school.  We also know that the sample sizes of research are not sufficiently high, programs and projects haven’t been fully monitored and the research hasn’t been subject to rigorous evaluation.  But there are some factors that I have experienced and these factors are within the influence of educators and policy makers.

• Children have English as a second or third language and lessons are delivered in SAE.  For many children, the only time they hear spoken English is at school.
• Primary languages are oral (don’t forget to be able to read Broken English, you need a fairly good level of literacy, that is, phonetics).
• A curriculum and lessons that bear little connection to the children’s real world.
• High turnover of teachers, overwhelmingly European in the Torres Strait to gain permanency with Education Queensland.
• The power of the peer group who may not value education because, like my boys, see it as foreign to all the learning they did before they started school.
• The humiliation of being mocked for being "like them kolleh people" if students make an effort at learning and studying.
• A departmental behaviour management system that is fraught with problems as it is applied by the predominant European staff to Indigenous students. 

     It’s no surprise that Dr Martin Nakata (Torres Strait’s first Doctor of Philosophy) wrote in a 2008 paper, “Indigenous people live in very complex places.” 

     Both our oldest boys received Indigenous scholarships to attend boarding school.  As far as I know, neither boy received from the school or the scholarship, tutoring to fill gaps in their learning from primary school which resulted in them failing in first term. In fact, I didn't know what those gaps were, apart from substantial.

     “Mum, it’s so hard,” our first son cried to me on the phone in his first term.

     Fast forward three years to when second son attended boarding school.  He’s the observer, the laconic one.

     “Mum,” he asked me a month into his first term, “are black people dumb?”

     “What are you talking about?”

     “Well, the white kids can do the work, but the black kids can’t.”

     Interesting observation, yes?  Potential to consider himself dumb because he is black and couldn’t do the work, yes?

     I urged the boys to work hard and do their best because they needed education if they wished to live between their island home and mainland communities.  I disregarded the amazing wealth of knowledge they had as Torres Strait Islander children living on a remote island.  I hadn’t studied education at this time nor had I met my friend who said those powerful words.

     I now understand our sons’ failures at school are not theirs, but failures of the system.        It was not fair they had to make up their lost learning through intensive tutoring to compete in the mainstream because schools Australia-wide are delivering a Euro-centric curriculum in a Euro-centric framework.  

     Oh, the national curriculum and academic rhetoric laud the merits of Australian education that values diversity and caters to individual children.  Why then have I experienced the opposite on Thursday Island and why do experienced teachers whisper, “all that stuff about diversity, well, it’s not really possible”?

     There is much Closing the Gap rhetoric and we know by closing the education gap, other gaps are reduced such as offending, health and employment.

     My boys entered school with a smorgasbord of skills their urban counterparts almost certainly would not have had.  But their skills were disregarded as they were taught to sound out, count in twenties, read books about rabbits and snowmen and make tiny earths that circled massive suns.

     I acknowledge the diligence of teachers in the Torres Strait, past and present.  In fact, I have been in awe of their professional commitment in what may be described as difficult circumstances.  But they can only teach within a system they know and are professionally bound by.  And, hold onto your chairs, they do not receive ESL in the Torres Strait!

     “I could learn anything and do anything before I got to school,” said my friend as I struggled to put words together for this post.  I didn't want to become becoming angry at how the education system has failed my boys and worse, many other children in the Torres Strait.  

     My sons had an insatiable thirst for reading and learning before they went to school.  It’s just that they were taught in a small, stuffy classroom and the lessons had no bearing on what they learned from their father and their environment.

     In trying to Close the Gap and improve educational outcomes for Indigenous children, I have seen we are we forcing the children to change to fit the education system.  

     I believe we should be changing the system to fit the children and the wealth of learning they gain in their communities, which learning they bring to school at the tender ages of five and six.  We need to acknowledge how they learn, often in nature and make all formal learning relevant to them.

     Only then will they take pride in what they know and what they can do.  And if they go to boarding school with overwhelmingly white, middle-class children they can be proud learners and not one Indigenous child will ever think or ask, “Are black people dumb?”

One boy, one brain, two boys, half a brain

Days after I gave birth to my third son, I was given a copy of Steve Biddulph’s, Raising Boys.  With three boys I needed to find out how to deal with them because I had never understood the first two.

     Pages into chapter one, Biddulph lists the dangers that boys face between the ages of 15 and 25; they are more likely to die in car accidents, from drug over-doses or from an activity involving risk, especially one involving alcohol (read this) or become quadriplegic from a diving accident.   

     I was breastfeeding while reading and I am sure it was at this point my milk started to dry up.  I put the book down, unable to keep reading.

     What bizarre and unpredictable creatures (horrid came to mind), I thought and I’m raising three … without the benefit of parenting advice from experts because it’s too frightening to read. 

     Sometime after the chilling realisation that boys are different (the long title of Biddulph’s book is, Raising Boys: Why boys are different and how to help them become happy and well-balanced men) the truth came to me: The worse a woman has been in a past life, the more sons she will have.  It’s all about working off bad karma.  Well, I'm a good Christian and I'll bear my cross.  And with my guru, Pepper Zen the duck, I am in luck!

     I’ve considered the girlish tantrums, rolled eyes, head tosses and the ‘whatever’ my friends with daughters face.  Not to mention the silences one minute and sharp-tongued rebukes the next. 

     It’s nothing compared to the terror of watching a son speed down a hill on a bike with no brakes (yes, after he’s been told a thousand times not to ride it) and skid to a bloodied and horizontal stop.

     Or another son bounce off a trampoline and land face down, unmoving (I’d seen enough episodes of All Saints to know to tickle his feet and watch his toes curl to be satisfied wasn’t paralysed).

     Or the last one dive a metre head first from a dressing table.  It helped that a doctor friend was there (yes, he needed stitches).

     Or seeing blue froth bubble from my precious one year-old daughter’s mouth, smelling of surface cleaner and basil??? 

     “Boys,” I screamed.  “Come here, now.”  They must have sensed the terror in my voice because they actually responded.  “What happened to Seffy?”

     They turned to each other, shrugged and the oldest whispered, “we made a potion.”

     “What was in the potion?” I asked, trying to stay calm.  On All Saints, only calm people do well in  emergencies.

     I jotted down the ingredients: Morning Fresh, Spray and Wipe, blue food colouring and basil.

     I dialled 13 11 26, the poisons information line, a number I knew by heart because, with two sons, I was a regular caller. 

     “Mrs Catherine Titasey?” the man on the end asked me before he’d even asked why I was calling.

     “How do you know my name?”

     “You’ve called before on this number.  How can I help you?”

     I was hysterical, but I “needn’t worry.”  Of course, the basil and the food colouring were fine.  The Spray and Wipe was nothing to worry about (at this point I burst into tears) and Seffy might have a bit of diarrhoea from the Morning Fresh.

     Not only do boys put themselves at risk, and long before they are 15-25.  They put others at risk. 

     Recently, I learned about the ‘latest research.’  Parents must let their children, especially boys, take risks when they are young.  They must be allowed to test out their physical capabilities and learn their limits when they climb trees, race bikes and go-carts (without brakes?), do stupid somersaults before bomb diving in the pools, swing on ropes, play-fight with cricket bats and tennis rackets (why not play cricket and tennis?) and climb furniture (even if the bookshelf falls forward) and so on. Yes, even if it means visits to A&E for fractured and broken bones, not just one, either.   And waiting for the surgery to end.  

     If children, especially boys are not allowed to take these ‘safe’ risks when they are young, they don’t learn how to assess risk and so are more likely to take risks as adolescents which inevitably involve speeding, drugs, alcohol and all the things I’d read about in Raising Boys six years earlier.

     Psychologist Celia Lashlie wrote a book about boys with a more reassuring title, He’ll be okay.  I bought that one a year ago and am still working up the guts to read it.  I bought it because I googled Ms Lashlie and immediately liked her for her wisdom.  She said in an interview, “One boy, one brain. Two boys, half a brain.”

     However, it’s mango season and the tree in the backyard is weighted with plump fruit.  Kibbim, son #3 spends a good part of his day climbing the tree picking green mangoes (which become weapons against his friends).  The neighbours spend a good part of the day listening to me screaming, “Not so high.  Come down a few branches.”

     I know Kibbim has to climb trees now when he’s eight so he doesn’t drink alcohol and speed when he is 18.

     “Don’t climb the arterial branches.  Stay on the central, thick ones.”

     On the weekend, I was eating lunch on the veranda with Nicola and Frances and there were four boys in the tree. Query: a quarter brain? I kept trying to divert my eyes until I saw Kibby at the top speaking into a walkie-talkie. 

     “Get out right now,” I screamed. 

     He appeared to skip onto another branch and whoosh, disappear as the branch dropped under his sudden weight.  I was certain he’d fallen ten metres to the ground only I couldn’t see behind the massive trunk.

     “Where’s Kibby?”  I jumped up.  “Kibbim, come here right now.  I’ve had it with you climbing.”

     At that point, a piece of chick pea lodged in my bronchi and I coughed and coughed and tried to scream at Kibby to “ca.. here righ… …ow.”  I motioned for water.

     Only when he was making his way from the great height and I had hoiked up the offending piece of chick pea could I speak.  “Well, I can’t choke and scream at the same time.”

     Kibbim made it to the veranda and spoke to the walkie-talkie.  “On the veranda.  Roger.”

     I crushed him to my chest and said, “don’t climb trees while holding anything and I love you dearly and I know you have to climb trees so he you don’t drink and drive and take drugs when you’re 18 , but no walkie-talkie in the mango tree.”

     He looked at me, half-confused, half-smiling. 

     “You need two hands free so you can hold on,” I said.

     He laughed and said, “But Mum, how can I hold the mangoes I pick.”

     “Don't pick mangoes,” I said.  “We’ll buy them.” 
     That's not the end.  Minutes after, I looked up and the wongai tree was swarming with the four boys and two girls.
     "They're in the wongai tree now, look," I said, panicked to Frances and Nicola.
     "Don't worry," said Frances, "wongai trees have so many branches if you fall, you land on a branch."
     "Oh, lovely," I said, "and just cleave a liver in two or crush a kidney to pulp."

In a class, at a school, on an island #1

Carpet time after lunch.  
Activity - Show and Share

Child 1:  Miss, you got a really big nose.
Teacher:  Thank you, Bailey.
Child 1:  It's so big it takes up the whole of your face.
Child 2:  Yeah, it's really big.
Child 3:  Can I see?
Child 4:  I wanna see too.
Teacher:  Would anyone else like to do their Show and Share?

Another statistic

Recently I was waiting at the wharf when a police vehicle pulled up.  Officers alighted and I assumed they were farewelling someone; an officer flying out, perhaps for holidays or perhaps they were leaving having completed their two-year contract.  My eyes then recoiled at the bright red t-shirt amongst the pale blue shirts.  Strange, I thought. Then my brain identified another anomaly; the forward curl of the red-shirted figure’s shoulders.  My heart sank.  I processed all this over a nanosecond.

     The figure was a prisoner, a twenty or so year old, Indigenous male, his hands cuffed at his front which accounted for the slight stoop.  He was being escorted to Horn Island for a one-way ticket to a correctional institution.

     Another young, Indigenous male entering our prisons, either on remand awaiting trial or being imprisoned following a plea or finding of guilt.

     Of course, I know nothing about the matter yet I do know imprisonment is an option of last resort as enshrined in the relevant legislation.

     I also know that Indigenous people are over represented in the criminal justice system and therefore prisons.  So I did a quick search to nail the most recent statistics.  I wish I hadn’t.  The stats were the same or similar to those of 18 years ago.  It was distressing.

     The Australian Institute of Criminology tells us that Indigenous people comprise less than 3% of the Australian population yet are twelve times more likely to be imprisoned than non-Indigenous people.  They make up 40% of those imprisoned for assault offences.

     A young Indigenous person (10-17 years) is 24 times more likely to be in detention than their non-Indigenous counterpart.

 We know Indigenous people come into contact with the law for a range of reasons; economic disadvantage, misuse of alcohol and drugs, violence, family and inter-generational trauma and more.

     Let’s rewind a bit.  On 19 December, 2000 the Queensland Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Justice Agreement was signed by agencies such as the ATSI Advisory Board, Premier and Cabinet, Corrective Services, Police Service and Families, Youth and Community Care.  The aim of the agreement was to reduce ATSI contact with the criminal justice system, but most importantly, reduce the Indigenous prison population by 50% by 2011.

     It didn’t work.  I knew at the time it wouldn’t work because it didn’t factor in what was needed to reduce offending.  

     I recall doing some research years ago. I found that rates of offending reduce with education.  This wasn’t rocket science. Therefore, to reduce rates of Indigenous people entering the CJS, there needed to be support for at-risk parents to parent, support for parents to send children to school from the early years, effective educational curriculum to engage Indigenous students and holistic support for children at school to prevent disengagement.
     I don't believe this is the case. And it's not my experience (Nothing's Changed).

     Here is a line from the draft assessment of the Justice Agreement (Department Communities). ‘Improving the level of support provided to Indigenous children and parents should be a focus of ongoing efforts to reduce Indigenous offending in Queensland at every possible stage in the criminal justice system.’

     It smacks of rhetoric.

     Tony and I are kinship carers for some children in care.  Our experience has been that the rhetoric is raging and real and effective support just isn’t there.  Therefore, it’s a slippery slope.

     Let's go back to the twenty year old male in the red shirt en route prison.  At the time the Justice Agreement was signed, he would have been about seven years old.  He should have benefitted from the aims of the agreement.  But the system failed him.  He is another statistic.