And in the darkness, we read the most imperishable pages ...

AS students around the world drag home squashed sandwiches and roll their eyes at being nagged to do their homework, Mayiku Hamuzah turns on a kerosene lantern and squints at the pages of his books.

Straight away, you know, this is no ordinary teenager. And when you realise many of his friends are doing the same, you know this is no ordinary school.

Each day, Hamuzah tries to learn as much as he can before dark. Kerosene fuel is expensive, is as bad for his lungs as smoking two packs of cigarettes a day, is not good for his eyes and isn’t very bright anyway. But without electricity, it’s the best lighting source he has once the sun goes down.

In fact, in his tiny village of Kitoola, hidden amongst the butterflies of Uganda’s emerald green Mabira Forest, the only signs of a western education are the coloured paper posters on the walls, the English words written in chalk, and some vintage school desks donated by an American Rotary Club.

There’s no lights, no internet, no fridges, no computers, no play equipment, no library, no running water.

Despite this, the 35 final year primary school children at Hopeland have been ranked 13 out of 185 schools in the district. And the astonishing results don’t end there. Scoring distinctions and high distinctions in all of his subjects, Hamuzah was one of the best performing students in the country.

But Hamuzah is just so thankful he can go to school at all. It hasn’t always been the case for the children of Kitoola. In fact, he is so excited about learning he jogs 50 minutes to and from YOFAFO’s Hopeland Primary School just so he can arrive on time.

And it is now starting to pay off. Despite his challenges, Hamuzah recently scored some of the highest marks in the country in Uganda’s national exams, with distinctions and high distinctions in every subject.

“Hopeland Junior School has lovely and devoted teachers who have made it possible for me to make it and my life has been transformed from zero to hero,” Hamuzah said.

“I want to become an electrical engineer so that I can support my family and I will continue to work hard, even in high school, so that I can achieve my dream.”

But it wasn’t just YOFAFO, his teachers and his mother who he thanked. It was a young girl called Maddy Burns from Boone in North Carolina.

Hamuzah and Maddy met in 2012 when her university organised a volunteer trip to Uganda.

“We were sitting on the front steps of his primary school and he asked me about American foreign policy with Libya and my jaw dropped,” she said.

Their friendship grew over the next week as they played football together and Maddy sat in on his classes. She called her family at the end of the week and they agreed to sponsor him.

A year later, she paid him a surprise visit.

“I will never forget that day, as I walked around the corner with Innocent and we came upon Hamuzah’s house. He was outside studying,” she said.

“When he looked up from his books, he saw me and dropped them on the ground and we ran to each other and were both in tears.

“I am so proud of him and though I’m a bit older than him, I admire and look up to him for inspiration and hope.

“Sponsoring Hamuzah has been by far the best decision I’ve ever made in my life.

“I believe in him and know that he will do whatever he wants in life, especially because he has people like Valence, Innocent, and the teachers at Hopeland guiding him to success.”

To sponsor a child with YOFAFO or make a donation to the organisation, visit www.yofafo.org or email Valence Lutaisire at info@yofafo.org

Black Magic for Brunch

I can't do anything for you today. There's a nausea uprising.

I read these words this morning:

"I have friends who watched everyone they loved violently humiliated and then slaughtered right before their childhood eyes.

I've got friends who believe that when you are a positive person the universe will provide you with positivity and good.

One of my friends, the most kind and gentle person I've ever met who lost everything, is laying in a hospital bed right now with a potentially deadly disease that doesn't exist in the countries where my 'The Gift' friends float around smiling in the sun.

There is no gift, there is no positive force.

There is good luck or bad luck - decided for you at the moment of conception.

History is an unrelenting two faced cunt."

- Facebook.

Armed with a vivid imagination and a sharp mind, Matilda took a stand to change her destiny.

The tsunami wipes out the just and the unjust alike. And in the deepest parts of the ocean where they now lie, it is dark. Where your agony is, it is worse than black. It is memory, it is seeing in vivid colours, of your mother's dress, the mahogany blood, his wild brown eyes. It is excruciating pain that
should put the whole world under a dark grey cloud, but instead unfurls it under blazing blue skies and sucks you in while half the globe heads out to brunch.

"And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you...

There was once a little boy, whose head was found in one corner of the reserve, his clavicle another.

Two young girls, thought to be in a peaceful Autumn slumber under a giant Victorian gum tree, kept asleep by the ropes around their necks.

A woman so fierce she kept standing up. Crawled around for six hours, while she was ripped apart and beaten over and over and over with a pole, a chair. Over and over and over. Until her brain lost to a large rock.

"...because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places... 

In this western world, if you focus on a car park being there, it will be there for you. Across the artificial borders, under the same sky, sharing the same oceans, a child wills a cup to move. Matilda had a vivid imagination and a mind as sharp as the knife the child wills to be withdrawn with her eyes. She stares down time, begging it to stop. To reverse. But she can't. And you roll happily into your parallel park, barely negotiating any other traffic in your tree-lined school zone street.

"...Those who don't believe in magic will never find it."

- Roald Dahl

I'm consumed and blinded by you right now, but I'll be back tomorrow.

SHARK SHOOTING

When I first started studying medicine, I was determined not to be caught up in the 'medicine bubble' and to focus on friends from outside of my university cohort. It's a demanding course and spending time with a whole bunch of 'Type As' surely couldn't be healthy.

But then I ran into some problems.

The people I study with are smart. They are funny. They are beautiful. They have lived. And worst of all, they have stories.

Yep, it turns out many of them are just curious misfits like me, trying to find their way in their world, asking endless questions, seeking copious amounts of adventure, and desperate to make some kind of positive contribution to the world around them.

So I thought I would kick off Easter with a small story about one of my favourites - the one James Paratore. 

James is a Fremantle boy. Cray fisherman first. Sicilian second. Gardener third. Collector, restorer, displayer of family heirlooms fourth (including framing his grandmother's recipes). Chief cocktail maker and basil pesto crusher fifth. Dedicated uncle sixth. Garden waterer seventh (I know I mentioned gardening, but he really does spend a lot of time out there). Salsa dancer / Spanish student / Traveller eighth. Medical student ninth. Pharmacist 10th. 

James loves the ocean. Even more than he loves his garden. Which is a lot. And for the past few months he has been doing what he does every Summer. Wrapped in ocean breeze, summer sunrise, and an air so fresh you could shower in it, James and his father Joe head out on their 48 foot cray vessel, the Vanessa James. Each day, they pull their traps out south of Rottnest Island.

This week, James had a particularly special moment when he captured some amazing footage of more than 30 sharks. 

This is his story.

 They can smell blood from kilometres away, circle their victims before they rip them to shreds, and are instinct driven machines. Right??

To cull or not to cull has been the question shaking every drum line in Western Australia in the past couple of years.

But a young Fremantle fisherman is saying it is time we completely rethink the conversation.

In some lively footage taken out at sea this week, medical student and second- generation cray fisherman James Paratore shows the inquisitive and playful nature of these mysterious creatures.

“Perhaps that dialogue needs to shift to a yearn for understanding, and for appreciation as to how these animals operate and how we interact with them,” James says.

“There is still so much we do not understand about the ocean, the animals it holds, and the broader ecosystem.

“They say space is the final frontier, but I’d suggest that perhaps the true final frontier is understanding the ocean.”

James, 31, heads out on the Vanessa James with his father Joe Paratore on weekends and between university classes. His family migrated to Fremantle from Italy and his father has been fishing here since the 1960s.

He says seeing bronze and whaler sharks in groups of more than 30 is now a daily occurrence at sea, whereas five years ago you would be lucky to see sharks once every fishing season.

He is posting his footage on YouTube in order to educate the community and all money raised from views of the footage will go towards research into shark behaviour.

Watch and share the shark video here

More recent studies have indicated sharks have powerful problem-solving skills, possess social complexity and curiosity and work together as teams.

They’ve also been known to engage in playful activities and contrary to popular belief, only a handful of the 360 species of shark have been known to be involved in human attacks.

Research has also found shark activity and feeding behaviour is heavily influenced by electrical signals, water temperatures, full moons and the activities of fisherman.

“The purpose of the footage I took a few days ago was not to shock and awe the public but more just to raise awareness about the natural environment - about how we are pretty lucky to be immersed basically in the arms of mother nature, especially as a fisherman,” James says.

Western Australia’s shark debate grabbed international attention last year when Australia’s Federal Environment Minister Greg Hunt granted the state government a temporary exemption from national environment laws protecting Great White Sharks, to allow otherwise illegal acts of harming or killing the species.

The policy was in response to seven fatal shark attacks off the WA coast between 2010 and 2013.

It authorised and funded the deployment of drum lines near popular beaches with baited mid-water hooks designed to catch and kill. All sharks found hooked but still alive and measuring more than three metres in length were to be shot and disposed of at sea.

More than 70 drum lines were in place from January until April 30, 2014. During that time, 172 sharks were caught. Of those, 50 were Tiger sharks greater than three metres in length, which were then killed. According to the state government’s SharkSmart website, Tiger Sharks may only have been response for one non-fatal shark bite in WA since 1980.

None of the sharks caught were Great White Sharks. Eight other animals were also captured, including stingrays.

In September 2014 the Western Australian Environment Protection Authority recommended against the setting of drum lines in the following two summers. The government has retained the option to deploy lines under certain circumstances under its ‘imminent threat’ policy.

Drum lines have been deployed in Western Australia on at least three occasions since then, including at Esperance and Albany.

For James, a qualified pharmacist who made the switch to medicine in 2013 but who retains the ocean as his first love, this is a nagging source of sadness.

“These streamlined prehistoric creatures are absolutely fascinating. The way they move, the way they behave – they are a sight to behold,” he says.

“We are truly privileged to be able to interact with these awesome animals in their natural habitat. I’d hate to see that change.”

The Writing's On the Wall

CLICK ON THE PAGE TO READ IN LARGER VIEW

The Caterpillar Caught the Bus

**This is a fictional piece of writing and the characters do not reflect any one person or event specifically but are rather a collection and metaphorical entanglement of characters, stories, conversations, emotions, thoughts**


Dear Caterpillar,

I told you I used to sneak into the neighbours’ garden. I would climb the wood stack beside the shed, climb over and land in their cubby house. I didn’t have a cubby house. I would play in their sandpit. If I was lucky, other children would be in it. Until Mum turned up after frantically knocking on all the neighbours’ doors trying to work out who I had visited this time. She was busy with my sister. I was three and I had lots of questions. I wanted someone to talk to and someone to tell stories with.

We pretended I was in your garden. I watered your old Polish roses. You passed me out some fruit and nut chocolate, and a sparkling water with an umbrella in it. I liked the way you saw the stars from a sideways gaze. You told me something of your tears, and you were not even sure how it came out. It was like voodoo, you said. You wouldn’t be the first to say so.

I snuck into your garden. I wanted to someone to talk to. Someone to tell stories with.

Yesterday I lived with a girl. She once brought me coloured straws to sip through, all tied up in brown string. She bought another friend a hammock. She doesn’t keep cutlery in the top drawer. I like her a lot. She’s my friend. A month of settled bliss with a dog rolling around on our coriander, eating stolen figs and riding bikes to school. But today she said she doesn’t want to be my friend anymore, and I don’t know why.  

And my sister across the ocean lost her baby. Again.

And a woman came to ask for a pill. She couldn’t bear to lose any more.

Another didn't want to take hers anymore. Her son had decided to leave this world. Her other was taken. She thought maybe she could make another one. She didn’t know what else to do.

I didn’t take a breath.

I saw you and knew I’d known you before.

I met you for coffee. I couldn’t have coffee. I needed a breath.

We walked through the garden and you talked of worlds I knew and didn’t know. Did I respond? I don’t know. My mind was hyperventilating and I couldn’t quite hear. I walked the wrong way. And then again. Did I say anything back? The hair on your head was blonde, and in your beard it was ginger. “Are you confident?” you asked. I thought I was. Where was I? My backpack was almost bigger than me and I suddenly felt very tiny in my small high-top sneakers. You had headphones around your neck and sparkle in your eye. You waited for me to tell a story. Sounds came out. Were there words? You saw a gnome. The rooster I’d promised to show you wasn’t as big as I remembered it. Or maybe that was just because you were so tall? I felt so small on this stage.

The bus pulled away. The black jeans and denim shirt weren’t standing there with your small brown book after it did.

I didn't need a breath. I needed to breath out. Long and deep. And in again. And out again. Did I respond? 

Too late.

My friend wants to know why I’m not angry at the friend who gave me the straws. She was almost crying saying that if I won’t get angry for myself, she feels she has to do it for me. Everyone is angry for me and at each other.

But I’m not angry.

I’m crying. For the questions I don’t get to ask and the answers I don't get to hear. For the hands I’ve held in mine that are too far away to grasp. I’m crying because she’s not okay. I’m crying for your black dog and the stories that brought you to your knees. For my sister across the ocean.  I’m crying because my friend around the corner can’t get out of bed. Because she’s crying too. For the days my Mum couldn’t get out of bed. For the Polish roses and brown dog I may never meet. The garden I didn’t get to play in.

I just wanted to talk. Someone to tell stories with.

I wanted to tell you I’ve changed so many times since this morning. But you sat on the mushroom, your pipe puffing. And you didn’t ask “and who are you?” Or did you? Did I respond?

My Granny once told a boy I love he was allowed to lie to me, as long as it was a good one. I love him and his heart and his good lies. He knows how many times I have changed since this morning. My Granny had tea with yours. She told me not to worry - you’re just a sensitive boy. She said I remind her of the son she lost. 

She just wanted to talk. Someone to tell stories to.

We said goodbye. And then she was gone. I still write her letters. I just don’t know where to post them to.

There’s a current that runs through all of us. From one life to the next, he said. If you have met before, it will light up the night sky for a moment. Like the sky above your sand dune. He said he tries so hard to hold onto the light, because he knows it will be black again soon. He's the space between the stars and one day that space will swallow him whole. I told him he was a star lighting up the dark spaces. That sunlight will always run faster than moonlight. He said those words were like being able to hear your own music for the first time. 

You never get to hear your own song for the first time.

This is how I heard it.

Ruby.

New cushions

The fan is spreading a breeze under the clothes horse, airing my machine washed clothes. The handles on my carbon frame road bike look eagerly at me, the frame ready to jump and race out the door if I even mouth the word 'ride'. The 'Beaches' soundtrack we found on vinyl on a recent op-shop fossick is adding some oomph to the scent of spiced carrot cake wax melts.

I'm not in Uganda anymore.

No, this is Australia. Where trying to find the right colour / texture combination of cushions to match your new reclining lounge suite can not only become the focus of your day, but also cause a 'domestic'.

"I said from the start that lounge suite wasn't right for the carpet."

It's been five months since I left Lugazi, Uganda. And I haven't written a blog since.

Actually, that's not true. I've written a couple, but I haven't posted them.

The readjustment and reverse culture shock has been nowhere near as difficult, and simultaneously excruciatingly harder, than I imagined it to be.

I can't even reveal to those closest to me what I really think most of the time - for fear of sounding hypocritical, offensive, holier than thou, idealistic, negative, naive, bleeding heart, optimist. And did I mention hypocrital?

I will post the unfinished blogs. It's just every time I think to write one, I tell myself I'm not allowed until I finish the one I started when I first came home.

Today, I'm throwing out my self-imposed rule and starting from here. Sometimes I'll jump back. Sometimes forward. Sometimes things are not going to make a whole lot of chronological or creative sense.

But here it is. A letter.

When I started this blog, I wrote it as letters to my grandmothers: Betty Marshall and Sylvia Toohey.  As Betty's mother's name was Ruby, and Sylvia's maiden surname was Dove, thus the name of the blog (it was either that or Silver Betty...but since I've had a penchant for ruby coloured items for some time, it seemed apt).

These women are two of my favourite story-tellers. One has a timeless and tireless imagination for fairytales - the secret lives of the creatures who live in her garden, and her thousands of dolls who chatter to each other as she sleeps. I do not doubt there are fairies under her Maidenhair ferns. The other, has a wicked memory which stores names, relationships and most importantly, moments of joy, tragedy, tears and hilarity in a filing system only she can see. For those who listen, she will work her magic so that her true stories become your own - a gift to pass on if you open it.

But tonight, I am making an exception, and addressing a letter to Doreen, in Uganda.

Dear Doreen,

I am sitting here in Yeppoon, on the woven mat you gave me, looking at a pineapple. How could I not think of you? Despite the fact I can wander downstairs to the supermarket and buy a large pineapple juice from the fridge, I am tempted to boil the skin, wait for it to cool down, drink my 'juice' and think of you. Truth be told, I prefer your ginger tea.

I am currently employed as the Digital Producer at the newspaper I work for in Queensland, which means I edit online stories and try to grow our online audience by engaging with our community through our stories, and social media. Part of the challenge of building this audience, is to inspire the community to tell their own stories.

So, one of the things I'm asking people to do in the lead-up to Christmas is write a letter. They are being asked to log onto our website and write a letter to someone they won't be spending time with this Christmas. It might be someone they are far away from, or someone who has passed away. They are also asked to upload a photo of something which reminds them of that person. They can write about a shared memory, about what they'll be doing for Christmas, or just what it is they love about that person.

This is me kicking things off.

I wanted to write to you and say even though I may not be there, even though it may seem I am caught up in my life back home, even though I may not write every day, I have not forgotten you. Sometimes, I wish I could.

If I could forget you, I could complain more. I could buy more meaningless things. I could block out what is happening in the rest of the world. I could enjoy a gelati on the beach without wondering what you were doing and wishing you were here to soak everything up with me. I could block out the fact so many people don't have the privileges, opportunities and love that is available to me. I could forget how inspiring, selfless, determined and generous you are and just get on with the job of being a cynical self-absorbed mzungu (white person).

I wish you could all come to my place for Christmas. I know Jo and Beth have never been to the beach, and I'd still love to teach you to swim. You must be nearly due to have number three, and I would love to give you a holiday, and send you off to a foot masseuse and a spa. I will never forget how much Erin had to go through to organise a massage for you. You never had the time to leave the children long enough to leave the house, so she had to bring the masseuse to you. And then you still proceeded to scrub the floors, bring us tea and cook for everyone with two children running around your feet and claiming to be 'helping' you whilst really throwing rice, knives and soapy water from one side of the kitchen to the other.

So I just wanted to let you know, I am thinking of you Christmas Day and every day, and love you and your family with all my heart.

Amy.