Chlamydia

Suddenly I'm back in London. The crowded basement dining-room of a cheap hostel - stuffy and fluorescently lit - is seething with foreign languages and sexual tension. I'm feeling lethargic from my diet of carbohydrates and cigarettes. I don't really remember the last time I took a shit.

Someone tries to talk to me. I try subversively to make it obvious I'm not a fun person to talk to - I'm either too subtle or irrepressibly charismatic. One can't help but suspect the latter. The conversation reads like a bad play that gives away all its plot twists in the first act. A group has formed. A plan is made. We all end up drunk and I realise my first impressions were uncharacteristically shortsighted - these people are bigger dicks than my paltry imagination ventured. I wonder, for the fourth time today, 'what the fuck am I doing here?'

Maningrida is still hot and the evenings are still long. Never being one to shy away from new things the laptop has made its maiden voyage to the toilet with me. It's a test of endurance - butt vs. batteries. The light is awful, the fan is too loud and the unmistakable yet mystifying odour of catfood hangs thick in the air. Still, its an opportunity to take advantage of time spent sitting down, and it was too much trouble to drag the piano in. Some might have hygienic concerns - I don't. It's not my laptop.

On hygiene, the dirt up here is really dirty - who'da thunk? It's said, if you get enough of it in your blood stream it can give you all kinds of diseases... and dirty blood. I'm not a doctor - technically my qualifications are not recognised in this country - and I'm not sure if you can actually contract anything from eating dirt, but Chlamydia was a sand-garnish I've heard mentioned that caught my attention. Chlamydia is a bitch. Half the time you'll never know you have it and it almost always leaves you completely sterile. Not that I'll have to worry, my plums will shrivel up and drop off from neglect long before then. 'Call it; time of death, October 06...'

Chlamydia has always been battling with Gonorrhoea for the title of 'Coolest Name' of all STDs. It's a tough match up. They're equally fun to say and hard to spell. And the idea that you can get this little 'thumb-twister' (what's a better epithet for things that are hard to spell?) just from walking on the ground is kinda scary. There's dirt on everything. It's dusty as a dead woman's diaphragm around here. The slightest breeze leaves a layer of silt on every surface. I heard a story of a cat curling up for a nap one windy day - 3 hours later it was a fossil. A lesser writer would have used an exclamation mark.

Filth is an inescapable reality of community life. Dust gets in everything. The sand is so fine you can actually use it to lubricate a car engine - a very cool sounding yet inexplicable falsehood. Pertinently, every spare foot of earth is also covered in rubbish. Wrappers, paper, cigarette butts, broken toys and shattered dreams. *stares into the middle-distance as a single tear rolls down cheek*

I've heard Balandas lament, 'I always thought that Aboriginals were more connected to the land than us, but then you see them just throw rubbish on the ground.' I'd argue that even the most diligent environmentalists would struggle to compete with the roaming packs of dogs that scavenge through the bins on a nightly basis. Besides - without wanting to offer this as an 'excuse' - I'm not exactly sure that the streets of Maningrida are the 'land' that any traditional owners feel connected to.

The Council here is working on the issue. I'm sure they have initiatives or some such bureaucratic bullshit in 'action'. It'd be nice to get the place cleaned up, but that's far from the root of the community's problems. Overcrowding seems to be a central issue. Maningrida has a housing backlog that would take up an entire year's Aboriginal Housing budget to fulfill.

An average of 17 people (average! - who's the lesser writer now?) live in the sheds that pass for houses here. That produces a lot of rubbish, which causes sickness, which causes crowding as families are called on to care for each other, which spreads sickness, which cause more crowding, which causes more rubbish, which keeps those fucking dogs alive. I've oversimplified to the point of stupidity here, but you can see how so many well-intentioned people can arrive at a community and stumble - 'Where the fuck can you start?'

I like Maningrida. Though it's dirty, stuff and fluorescently lit, it's a place where life happens. People just go about whateverthefuck it is they do. Happiness, sadness, grief, laughter, worry, hope - all the problems and politics of just being a person. Not half of the bullshit that reality is often buried under elsewhere. I've never once asked myself, 'what the fuck am I doing here?' Nor should I. I probably had more chance of contracting chlamydia in a hostel in London.