Home At Last
Selina is wearing a wig and will wear it home to give her mum a scare!I just dropped the girls at the airport. They leave Brisbane at 9.30pm, arrive in Darwin at 1.30am and Selina waits at the airport for a 7.30am flight to Snake Bay.
Noreen will go to Nguiu at 4.30pm and will spend time with her mum in Darwin. Mum has to live in Darwin because Noreen's brother is sick and in a wheel chair. Noreen lives with her sister and father on Bathurst Island - Dad is pretty crook too, nearly died last year!
I picked them up at Downlands at 1.15pm today, then we drove down to Brisbane to pick up my 9 year old after school. We went home for a meal, a game of tennis and some fun, then off to the airport at 7.30pm.
Education is pretty tough for these kids - not many kids would have such an arduous trip home at end of term, and most others would have a few more coins in the pocket for something to eat and drink along the way.
We have been running this program for four years now and we really have an elite in Selina and Noreen, they are an example to other aboriginal kids who come from non-traditional communities (where they do not speak language and do traditional ceremonies) and they are excelling at school.
It has taken the four years for Hope to rise up and for Tiwi to embrace the many gifts Downlands offer. Downlands is doing the job of teaching better and the Tiwi community back home are realizing what they must do to get the best from this opportunity.
Downlands College has refugee kids from Africa - who very quickly respond to what Downlands offers. The uptake has been more gradual for aborigines - but in so many ways their community experience, history and memory is different. Everyone feels good about what has been achieved this past six months!
We are committed to running this program for ten years praying that we can help Hope along !
If you have any ideas that would make this Tiwi project better, please drop me a line: phillipwh@gmail.com
We will be sending some more letters of request out soon, it is still costing us about $6,000 per kid per year to keep this program going and our bickie tin is almost empty!
posted by TiwiDownlands at 11:14 PM
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