After Saturday’s relatively uneventful but long drive from
Darwin during which I was only once utterly convinced of my impending death in
an assuredly very large, fiery troopie explosion, we arrived at our
much-anticipated destination. We dropped by the Riley mob en route to the
school, where Robin showed his pig-dog Rumbo and promised to take Gunners,
Jason and I hunting for pig and kangaroo and Rita and Georgi were reunited with
their favourite pint-sized smiley local, Josebeth, and her Mum, Mickayla.
Upon arrival at the school we unloaded our rugged vehicles –
the bags tied on to the top of Gunners’ troopie, having taken Rita and I about
half an hour to tie on to our exacting standards, unfortunately took a similar
length of time for Gunners and I to dismantle in the afternoon sun. Needless to
say, I was a dripping mess by the time we had settled in with, among our many
items of cargo, 350-odd pieces of fruit, 50 ping pong balls, planks of wood,
many litres of paint, PVA glue, tealight candles, microscope, glitter, paper,
pens, tealight candles, mixed beans, straws, pop-tops, zooper doopers,
band-aids, t-shirts and handwash. Sunday was spent preparing for the week to
come, with activity planning, meeting, among many others who dropped by to say
hello, Johanan, Jerome, Lorenzo, Alonso, Victor and Kyle, and having a kick of
the footy with Marcianne, Tyrone, Patricia, Savannah.
Monday was day one of activities, and arrival number one was
Lorenzo, who we found waiting for us in the shade just outside the gate on the
way to the basketball court. He was followed by another 22 enthusiastic,
smiling faces gathering for a game of basketball with the dulcet tones of Katy
Perry, Jessica Mauboy and Justice Crew blaring in the background. Our first 23
oranges went like hot cakes. After we made our introductions, and heard the
kids’ first impressions of us aired (Jason: “big man. girl hair” and myself,
with my unfortunately large pool of back sweat spreading to my shorts, “sweaty
gunda (bum)”) we began what will surely be a week-long struggle with putting a
litany of names to faces. From there, a day of rhythm, goo, t-shirt designing
and water fighting ensued. Needless to say, we were all exhausted after our
first half-day of activities.
The pace did not slacken for day two, and after almost
losing Jason to some excitable local dogs on our morning jog, we jumped right
back into the thick of it. Food dye was leeched into celery, much glitter was
spilt making posters, and I nearly had a heart attack running 3 rotations of
‘Octopus’. Amazing kaleidoscopic patterns were made in Gunners’ and Jason’s
activity involving cloth, permanent markers, solvent and supposedly
carefully-measured segments of PVC pipe which each ended up about as uniform as
the patterns themselves. In the afternoon, we got acquainted with our sing
along song, Roar, and then turned over a stack of new t-shirts to the kids.
They proceeded to cover them with some very artistic patterns, colours and
pictures as I saw my own t-shirt become more and more disappointing with every brush-stroke.
All in all, a very exciting time has been had by all so far
– let the good times roll!
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