Robs Blog
Good Morning all. It has been more than a week since I graced my fingers on the key board. When I was lonely and isolated in the other islands without my family, the blog seemed so easy to maintain because it was my only real connection to Jo and the Kids with my adventures, observations and stories. In a sense, the Blogspot website became a proxy family. Since being here on Darnley with my family, I have seldom had motivation to type, and have really enjoyed kicking back and reading Jo’s reflections and excellent photography. I think what I am enjoying the most about this experience is watching the pennies drop with her and the kids. I recently read back some of my earlier Saibai blogs and they are reminiscent of the observations, and comments that Jo and I chat about in the evenings here. As she pieces the reflections of her own adventure together, I am almost reliving the wonder of this place all over again.
To blogspot.com, I know you must feel neglected, and that eBay.com is the “other woman” but I still love you. But Jo does such a good job at telling our story.
The clinical lessons for me continue. I am astounded that I am still climbing the Everest of knowledge in this place. As an emergency nurse, and a text book zealot, I genuinely believed that my knowing was deep and wide. Well may that be, but this place has been given to me to experience so much more than that which is written in a cold, clinical manual. Together Jo and I have dealt with some issues clinically that are both rich feasts of learning, but also issues that are raw and confronting. My blogs in the early days were littered with the specs of the ugly side of a community, but for the most part, and so I wasn’t offending my Island hosts, they were penned in a positive light. If the cold hard truth is to be told, this place struggles with all the same ugliness that we endure on the mainland. Only, it is in our face a bit more.
When alcoholism manifests as violence, child neglect, domestic violence and medical deterioration, happens on the mainland; It seems to be streamed into a “department” that looks after the aftermath. For the most part, general nurses wont play a large role in picking up the pieces of broken people and broken families. But here, and all the Islands (and I dare say all remote communities), the fall out from alcohol fuelled shenanigans, is managed by the remote area nurses (RANs). The role of a RAN is complex. There is on one sense an expectation that you are a man (or woman) with many hats. A confidant, a counselor, a nurturer, a comforter, a custodian, a protector, a medic, a friend. This list could go on and on, and mine is not to define nursing up here, but to survive doing it.
It is probably the reason why, sitting on my verandah, in the beautiful breeze, gazing at the magnificent ocean, with my Kin inside still sleeping, that I reflect. And my reflections are one of content. I have my soul mate here. She feels like a fish out of water at the moment, but she has a gentle way with these people that are subjected to awful sequelae of the nasty side of this job. For the women and children here, that may struggle to accept health care from a male nurse, Jo is phenomenal in her calm and confident approach to the situations that make me cringe.
I was fishing on Friday evening, just 200m away on the jetty. Amy wandered down to me to tell me the ‘Mum’ had a call out. A young mother with a 2 month old baby had been the subject of physical domestic violence. She had come to the health centre to seek shelter, safety and medical help. Jo was there, doing it with a confidence that I had not seen before. This woman was in her excellent hands. Would she or could she had come to me for this help?? I doubt it. It is complicated. The relationships between island women and men would almost make it impossible for me to do anything more than stitch her wounds. But Joanne is the whole package, and she inspires me.
It is a tough place for Jo to walk out of a community nursing role in a flash private hospital, and into a clinic in the tropics with nothing familiar. Home sick takes on a whole new meaning and one which permeates your psyche. It is not just missing comforts of home, or shops, and places of familiarity, smells, friends that are readily available for a pop in or chat, and a ‘normal work life’. It is a place that is alien, yet inspiring and beautiful, and challenging. But, gee Id love to just stop at the Meringandan Pub for a good steak, or the BCF and laugh at the small fish hooks, or the cinema for a good flick, or Gloria Jeans for a proper coffee!! And I know Jo and the kids feel the same.
The fish trap this morning is starting to fill again. As the tide rolls in, the trap fills up with water, and fish. Amy and another little girl went snorkeling in it yesterday, and said that the experience was ‘prapa deadly’, I think that means good, I cant be sure, she is turning into a creole speaking Ilan gel. How blessed we are that we can sit on our verandah to supervise her swimming just 40 m from the house. Did I say this was an amazing place. On Friday morning Jo and I sat here to have our coffee break, and the trap was full (high tide or what the locals call ‘hiwata’). Right where the girls were swimming yesterday, a pod of 5-6 dolphins played in the shallow (4ft deep) water. It was surreal. The sea is flattening off. In a few weeks it will be like glass, and then the Big game fishing season starts. The Mackerel that Ben caught yesterday at 110cm will be considered undersize, and thrown back in disgust. The monsters of the deep will be hauled into dingies, with the pelagic beasts needing two men to lift into the boat. 1.6 m long and 30 kg Spanish mackerels, will start being processed and sent south. There is an anticipation in the air, and an optimism that the ‘calm’ before the storms has come early, and that the fishing is about to go “off ”.
Today, as I sit here, listening to the church bell calling us to worship, I ponder our time here as a family, the learning curve for us all, and the changes in our perspective that makes us all stronger. Emotionally we all run up and down, hot and cold. But blessed to be here and making the very most of what can only be described as an awesome place.
Yawo !!
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