This morning it was only a short ride to Benalla and the idyllic scenery kept me distracted from over-analysing the gradient of the road. I passed fluffy sheep eating the grass on the hills, flocks of birds, clear blue lakes, and children being towed behind speed boats (in a recreational, fun, non-abusive way).
Tomorrow I would ride out of Victoria. I had made it through the state in less than two weeks. Thanks to minimalist results in the school-booking department, I had pushed through the quiet countryside at a steady pace with Geelong as my only extended stop. It was worrying me that a state with such a significant proportion of Australia’s population wasn’t interested in me; or rather, that I hadn’t captured any interest.
There was not much to do though, but keep pedalling and hope that some better marketing skills developed along with my leg muscles, or that I would become more interesting the further I got from home.
Thursday 24 February
Albury to Walla Walla, New South Wales
52 kilometres – 2 hours 53 minutes
This morning’s dark 6 am start for a high school in Walla Walla provided me with not only the chance to use my beloved three-function headlamp but also to ride through a breathtaking sunrise as I went up and over the Jindera Gap. I spoke during an assembly which was themed “How much stuff do we need to be happy?” I was tempted to base my talk on the fact that everyone needs a three-function headlamp to be truly happy, but instead shared some of what I had observed during my time in Kodaikanal.
On the one hand there is definitely a lot of “stuff” that most of us have in Australia that families around Kodaikanal happily do without. On the other hand, there are things that, through poverty and social inequality, some families miss out on: easy access to clean water, adequate nutrition and health care, the opportunity to go to school, political rights and, quite often, three-function headlamps. These aren’t luxuries, but things that everyone should have the right to.
Wary of the fact that I was not an expert in Indian sociology, poverty or development, I tried to base the majority of my talks on information given to me by the PEAK team and on interviews I conducted with students when I returned to Kodaikanal for the second time.
Return to Kodaikanal
For this fact-finding return visit I navigated the Tamil Nadu trains, buses and sweet shops to retrace my steps back to Kodaikanal where the women wear fragrant strings of jasmine in their hair; men enquire after your “good name”; children either stare with horror at you or laugh with bewilderment; you get asked “You came here alone?” with a certain tone of disapproval, and “The food here is very pungent, yes?” with a certain smugness; and the hilly location means it is cool enough to not be sweating all the time as you do in the plains.
At Sacred Heart College, PEAK’s headquarters, I was welcomed once again into the ill-defined role I had occupied three years previously: something between a student, a nun, a man, a tourist, a visiting academic and a performing monkey. As there were grains of truth in a few of those, I couldn’t complain. I caught up with fatherly and brotherly friends of the Roman Catholic persuasion, and was warmly welcomed by the children in the hostels again. True, this was mainly due to my skills of pretending to eat imaginary head lice, killing real ones the kids brought to me, owning a watch with a button that lit up the screen, and singing my limited range of Tamil songs – but I still felt welcomed.
My lateral neck muscles reawakened to assist with at least 80% of my communication. I have considered compiling a phrase book with instructions for the head wobbles with meanings from “Yes, I’d love some more fried congealed goat’s blood with my rice” to “Thanks for asking. My diarrhoea is now painful but not inconvenient” to “Good morning. Yes I am a strange white person walking through your village” to “Mm, that was a tasty head louse”.
I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect when I began conducting interviews with hostel students. With the help of staff with translating, I collected a range of stories revealing the students’ love for their villages and families, the conditions their people live and work under, their hopes for the future and their feelings about living away from home and studying in the PEAK hostels.
A few students became upset while they were telling me about their families. Obviously, the children in the hostels love their families and miss them dearly. Talking about their father’s illness or the abuse their family has suffered through caste discrimination brought some to tears and others close. Hearing the children speak about their hopes for the future was a mixed experience for me. Nearly every young person I interviewed had grand dreams: to become a teacher, become a doctor, get a job with the government, teach and heal their people, and free them from the suffering that exists in their villages now.
The reality, however, is that while some of these students will continue their studies and maybe finish high school and maybe go on for further training and maybe have the career that they dreamed of, many of them won’t. Family needs will bring many of them back to their villages to work alongside their parents as coolies. Tradition often calls on girls to get married in their early teens, bringing their chances of formal education to an end. In school and college exams, these students are competing against students from literate families with uninterrupted schooling and more resources. Only a tiny proportion of the cost of education, particularly past the high-school level, can be met by the Dalit and Adhivasi families. So when the PEAK team put forward the idea of establishing a trust fund for the ever-growing number of students that finish primary school and are ready to go on to high school and beyond, I felt so excited at the thought that Cycle of Learning would contribute to something that would be sustainable, on-going and meet a real need for the people of the Kodai hills.
Back in New South Wales, I finished my talk and rode out of Walla Walla. A few minutes down the road, my Albury host – my godmother Maureen – pulled up in a ute and we surreptitiously hauled Bike and Trailer into the back to return to Albury in time for another round of school visits that Maureen had lined up for me. Not only is Maureen a fantastic godmother, she is also a hurricane of organisation and action.
I arrived in Albury on Monday to the reception of Maureen and her brother Philip (Mum’s cousins) and his wife Marie sitting on Maureen’s front fence cheering me in. Before I even had my gear out of Trailer, Maureen was on the phone lining up appointments with schools, church groups and newspapers. During most of the phone calls she made some sort of connection with the person on the other end of the phone – “You’re a Cunningham are you? Is your family from Corowa? Oh yes, my son Steven has been shearing in Culcairn with your father.” She gave a masterclass in networking.
Maureen is one of the people I admire most. She’s interested in everyone and everything she encounters, and if she notices any situation that needs someone to do something, she’ll be the person to do it. A few years ago she came across some newly arrived Bhutanese refugees who lived nearby and set to giving them all driving lessons. There was no one to do the church bulletin, so she taught herself how to use the computer software and now puts it together every week. When she visits her sons’ homes she’ll busy herself with cleaning out the fridge or doing some ironing (whether they want her to or not). She visits her mother in a nursing home every day and usually ends up spending a few hours feeding other residents, helping organise entertainment and popping in on people who need some company. Keep in mind Maureen’s mum is close to 100 and Maureen herself is 72. And chose to go skydiving for her 70th birthday.
On her trips to visit my family in Adelaide, Maureen starts chatting to people wherever we take her. She came down once for a wrestling competition I was in. I had spent the morning being intimidated by all the fit, muscly interstate wrestlers milling about waiting for their rounds. Within half an hour of Maureen’s arrival at the stadium, she had got to know a dozen or so