Karriji-Kari Women's Conference (part One)

Wow, the last two days have totally changed my view of Tennant Creek.
After 4 weeks of living amongst drunks and street people, and seeing filthy starving clinic in the streets, i finally got to see the strong, powerful side of the place!
The Karriji-Kari women's conference was hosted by "Stronger Families" a local organization that functions as a support service for women and children, offering counseling, running a variety of groups such as traditional teaching outings into the bush, healthy cooking...
The idea behind the conference was to get all the local organizations together to show the local women what is actually available in the way of services.
I originally got in touch with Pamela, the head organizer, because as a short contract nurse here i was feeling pretty frustrated, not knowing who i could refer the people to who needed different help than i could offer them in a short consult in the clinic, and i wanted to know who else was offering what here....
Pamela was glad to have someone from the clinic inquiring, and after a bit of back and forth with me discovering id managed to step into a bit of a long going political stuff between various groups and managers in my usual blindly enthusiastic redheaded way, Sue and i ended up hosting a stall for the clinic ourselves.
It was very exciting walking in on the first day, seeing a whole room lined with stalls from every group from the red cross, over a hostel for young mothers to the local centrelink mob.
(I'll write in more detail about some of these in the next blogpost)
The day started with a smoking ceremony run by Dianne Stokes, Traditional Owner from the local Warramungu people and a seriously impressive woman. Tall, and imposingly strong, she spoke of how the smoking ceremony was one they did with new babies to make them strong, connect them to Land and Ancestors, and of how this had given her strength through her often hard life growing up. She told of how she now goes out bush and sits with her grandchildren and shares the traditions of their ancestors with them...
The passion with which she spoke was palpable, i was seriously impressed.
(the photo of her is with Linda Turner also known as "LT", another amazing woman who works for the red cross, but more about her later)
We all traipsed outside, and i watched with great interest as the buckets full of greenery were set alight, and all participants were shuttled through the sweet smoke.
The plants material used for the smoking was a kind of wattle, which it seems has healing properties and is quite different from the eucalyptus leaves that are used for cleansing smoke to clear out bad energies, similar to the smudging with sage that has become so popular amongst the new age community.
After we'd all come through the healing smoke, we came back inside and the event began.
The women who came were made up mostly of two distinct groups: The local high school girls, and a group of elderly ladies who sat quietly in the back row, watching everything with eagle eyes.
They were all given numbers, and sent around in rotation in small groups of around 5 to the individual stalls.
Sue and I had decided to focus on nutrition and contraception/STD's. The latter being my pick, having been through 5 teenagers and my own wild child youth. So for the next few hours we were engulfed in waves of giggling teenagers with me encouraging them to practice putting condoms on plastic bananas and leaf through the books full of pictures of female anatomy and teaching comics about STD's.
Every 15 mins or so, another speaker would get up and talk about their organization, and often share a bit of their own stories in the process. And boy, some of these women were pretty amazing.
People started to wander between the stalls, and some of the elders came by our stall too. The looked a lot, but spoke very little, often only indicating with a slight hand movement that they would like one of our drink bottles or cook books. Most declined my offer of condoms with a smile....
The girls came back repeatedly, in groups and on their own, and began to ask more detailed questions on things like menstruation and where the eggs grow in a woman's body etc...and they all loved Sue's setup where they would measure their height and weight and work out their BMI's.
Then lunch was served, and I earned a nod and a quiet thank you from Dianne the TO by taking some plates of food over too the lady elders before i sat down myself...
The afternoon was filled with more stories, and more quiet questions by the school girls and I went home feeling as though we'd managed to do something useful to further the communication and rust between the clinic and the local community.
And hopefully made a large number of girls feel far less embarrassed about using condoms when they eventually decide to have sex! There was method to my madness....my theory is if kids get to play with the things early, they are more likely to be comfortable talking about the idea with future boyfriends. And once you've giggled over plastic bananas, asking more serious questions isn't so daunting....

Anyway, we finally wandered home tired and exhausted, but exhilarated to have met so many wonderful strong local women, both young and old!