Monday, April 8, 2013

A Trip to the Outback


         The safari truck bounced along the red dirt, along a path that could barely be considered a road.  All around stood bare brown bushes, yellowing grass, and miles of red dirt.  The 45-minute drive from the mines “airport” to Laverton began to grow frightening as the sun began to fade and visibility grew worse.  The danger of running into a kangaroo also became more present, though I was hopeful that this monster of a truck would do more damage to it then it might to us.
Our four-person crew would be out in the desert of Western Australia for four days, interacting with the Aboriginal community, specifically the children.  Three hours in a twenty some seat plane and this guesswork drive brought us to the mining encampment in the town of Laverton.  The mining company sponsored our little humanitarian visit, paying for all of our food and providing housing, which was troubling in context. 
            The weekend passed by quickly, in a mix of cricket, arts and crafts, and bags of lollies.  The children were loving, friendly, and fiercely protective of one another.  As with most small communities, families meld together into one giant community family.  The last day arrived, our final duty to the community being a cookout for the whole community.  In this small village of sorts, there was no grocery store.  Those who did not live in the mining camp or who did not have a car to drive several hours to the next big city, lived mostly off of a fried chicken restaurant or gas station staples.  This cookout was sometimes the only real food many of the adults would eat for weeks.   
            Describing the relations between Aboriginal and white Australians is an impossible task for an outsider, and possibly even for many insiders.  In this community, the Aboriginal community lived in a fenced in “preserve” of sorts where dozens of people shared a home and children played outside amongst garbage and broken glass.  Outsiders, read white people, were not welcome inside the fence.  Meanwhile, the white miners came for 10-14 days at a time, lived, ate, and slept at the mining site and never interacted with the community.  Miners are some of the highest paid professionals in Australia, making hundreds of thousands of dollars that they then spend back in the cities where their families and friends reside.
The only important aspect to this story is that it made no difference in casual interaction that my friend and I were Americans, it simply mattered that we were white.  During a spring break trip to another city in Western Australia, my boyfriend and I were called at by a large group of Aboriginal people sitting in a park across the way. “Wajala, wajala,” they called at us, the term for white people in the Noongar, local tribe’s language, and certainly not one used for endearment. 
            We served the adults and children sausages, steak, hamburgers, and salad.  The children hovered around us while the adults sat far away and sent the children to fetch more or to translate between us.  I began to feel uncomfortable to be categorized just by the color of my skin, and yet we as humans do this every day.  It’s so much easier to make assumptions based on what you can see visually.  Being part of a majority makes it easy to dismiss the way in which what we say or do, how we look at people a little too long may be making them feel.
            During a ride around the outback with twenty adorable and energetic Aboriginal children and the sole Aboriginal policeman of the community, the idea of color became even more surprising.  My friend Nathalie had a young girl sitting on her lap since the back of our car was very full, and because children really enjoy crawling all over your laps, especially when they are dirty and wet from a dip in a salt lake.  “My skin is normal but yours is white,” remarked the girl as she put her arm next to Nathalie’s comparing their complexions.  In this moment a young girl completely make me reevaluate my thinking in such a casual way.  This girl saw a whole different world then the one I thought I was living in.
            On the last night, my companions and I drove out to into the Outback, laid on top of the truck, and stared at the Milky Way and all the stars that I had never seen before for a while.  If you’ve ever seen the Milky Way, you will know that it makes you feel very small, especially thinking about the multitude of solar systems in our galaxy and then the even greater amount of galaxies in the universe and possibly the existence of other universes somewhere in the abyss of space.  Egocentric views can make our world seem very small, just like our planet in the grand scheme of the universe. 

Intended Publication:  Lives, The New York Times

8 comments:

  1. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  2. This is really interesting, Cassie, and I think you have a good entry point for what you want to talk about. I think you've just chosen something very tricky to navigate. "Otherness" as approached by a white speaker is difficult.

    The biggest thing that I grappled with while reading it was where the speaker comes into the narrative. I feel like it happens late, and when it does it's very explicit (third graph from the bottom). Blanket statements about whiteness sometimes feel obvious, and I wonder if you could ease us into the sort of quiet, casual revelation that you experienced instead. I don't know the answer to whether or not that's plausible. Just thinking.

    Excited to talk about this—

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  3. You've certainly got a lot of good raw material here. There are lots of moments in time contained within this piece that have clearly affected the narrator deeply and present excellent opportunities for writing about otherness.

    However, I found myself wanting these moments to be expanded and made more vivid in order for them to resonate more. Furthermore, I wanted more of the speaker's personality to come through as a force that shapes and curates these moments. Doing this will allow the piece to be more thematically focused.

    I also think that it's dangerous to try and encapsulate so many things in such a small space. You could probably write a bazillion words about a bazillion words about this trip (because it's so interesting). I think you either need to drop some things and expand others or, alternately, expand all of them and increase the scope of the piece.

    Well done!

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  4. Hey Cassie,
    These are really loaded issues you are trying to write about, so great job going for it. It was really cool to read about your experience. I really like your descriptions and how openly you talk about the dynamic between you and the people you were with. I also like the way you ended with your thinking about the starts and solar system, it is thought provoking. I also like the dialogue you chose to include.
    Overall, I feel some essay-like thoughts coming out that maybe could be organized a bit better, or set up for epiphany if there was one. I kind of just felt a plateau of description throughout the whole piece, and it would be cool if there was some build or climax. I would like to hear what would come of the other piece if that is the one you want to write. I really enjoyed it!

    Charlotte

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  5. Howdy Cassie,
    I enjoy the voice you employ in your writing. I can hear/ see you reading the piece in my head which signifies, in my mind, a writer who is comfortable with themselves and their style, however, I can "turn it off" and simply read your piece as a reader (not someone who knows you). It has a professional quality to it that is tough to achieve, especially in a piece of writing that is very personal.
    That being said, that professional quality isn't always appropriate. It is of course always good to be well spoken and understandable, but at times I felt like you were news reporting instead of writing a narrative piece. Part of that I think is because I didn't get a strong sense of narrative throughout your piece. It didn't feel like a story to me. By your final paragraph it was clear to me the change that happened within you, but only because your final paragraph was so well written. If you narrow the topic of your piece (i know this is unclear but i will explain in person) I think you will have a lot more success.

    TL;DR: Work on you sense of narrative, it didn't feel like a story.

    Woody

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  6. I started to learn things from this piece. You did a great job of describing the area where you were- the relationships made there, the food and colors, and giving the reader a great visual (especially at the beginning).

    Also, I’d like to hear more about you in this story. How are you feeling? You mention how you feel something about being white, and I’m curious to hear about this, as a common theme for many people on study abroad.

    In relation to rewriting your story, I wish you the best of luck. Here, I’d love to hear about your experience before and after you came to K. What were peoples reaction to your boyfriend? How did you view yourself dating this person? Make sure to tell us about yourself and him, to make us understand the relationship.

    I’d encourage you to put yourself out there.

    Thanks,
    Laurel

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  7. Cassie,

    I think that you chose a difficult topic to put down into words and you have done a good job with it. I think there are a lot of layers here that come out during different points in the story because so much underlies the context. For one, there is you as the American protagonist in a foreign country, then there are the underlying relations between white Australians and the indigenous peoples; there is your lived experience in Australia, and there is you pre-existing base of knowledge of race relations within the United States. All of that can be a lot to grapple with at one time and I commend you for taking it on. I think that perhaps it would be better to hone in on one or two of these conflicts so that it clearer for the reader to follow what you want them to get out of the piece.

    I have to say, I really love the imagery in the beginning of the story about the atmosphere of the location and I think that is something that you can definitely bring into the rest of the piece. I want to know more about your background and other experiences you have had regarding the topic of race. It could be interesting to hear what white Australians think about the indigenous people, as well. As a reader I wanted to know what the social and political climate is that makes the relations the way that they are.

    The story was very interesting read and left me hungry for more. I can't wait to talk about it in class! Great work!

    -Matt

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  8. This is a topic that a lot of us at K come to find ourselves questioning and discussing at least once in our careers here. It's a tough question to attack, especially since a lot of us are used to living in a place that is pretty white bread (read as "all white").

    Just like Matt's piece, the word limit seems to be the biggest opponent. There is a lot you have the opportunity to write about, but not much space in which to do it. Every word, all 800 I guess, should be the exact word you're looking for. Specificity is key. I digress.

    The content of this is really good. I have a lot of questions that arise from the structure of this essay, but I'll ask those in class.

    Like I've been saying for everyone else, remember that we know absolutely nothing of what you describe, so dumb it all down for us. I have trouble imagining exactly what's going on in some parts, since I know nothing of Australia of the culture (besides the fact that the whites hate the Aborigines). Try to delve a little deeper into the most sensitive and surprising and troubling and shocking parts of this story!

    chandler

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