May Already...

After all the excitement I am finally feeling like I have found my feet- and now it is time to start pulling everything together, double checking and getting ready to go back. Of course, now it is so close, I really want to stay for a while longer, spend a bit more time with some of the Old people, get a car across the river so we can go on some trips ( that one to Kookaburra Creek is the only time I have left Ngukurr for this whole time!). Actually I am coming up to the longest stretch of time I have ever stayed in Ngukurr without going into Katherine, apart from getting used to 'Ngukurr store food', (where you can only buy flour in ten kilo sacks, a box of cereal is nearly nine dollars, and when they get eggs or fresh milk in everyone talks about it for days!), it is not too bad. The main problem is going to be the culture shock of leaving. The suddenness of cars everywhere, people everywhere, mobile phones broadband internet, media and 'stuff', everywhere! Talking of leaving I really don't know how I am going to get out! The river is still up too high to drive across, though I could catch the store boat across, but then I will be stuck at Roper Bar with no car (and a 300k drive to Katherine). Or maybe there will be a plane flying ( though they seem harder to come across now)....

All the pressure of going to live so far away is heavy at the moment, I can't really justify a twenty thousand k round trip back here when I find 'oops! I forgot to elicit such and such' or 'did he mean this or this??'. I have been showing some Old people where I am going on the world map, and they purse their lips and say 'tut-tut too far!', 'how long will it take you in a plane?'.. but then when I explain how big the plane is- this is no three seater plane with one propeller and windows that open ( I can't imagine 14 hours in that!), everyone apart from my mami F doesn't like the sound of it. My mami on the other hand, I can see it in her eyes- she is an adventurer and I bet she would love to come with me if she could, just to have a look, you know? She tells me stories sometimes about when she was young, canoeing down the river in a dug-out canoe (I wish I could do that with her)...

It is such a challenge to really enjoy what you are doing in the moment and not be anticipating the future, I feel like everything until I submit my thesis, is already kind of determined, I just have to follow through and breathe life into it. But then again (as my baba N would say)- you just never know what adventures lie around the corner...