The body as fuel?

(This was written about August 8th or so...I havent had regular access to email--which has actually been quite nice--so these are just a few weeks outdated...cheers!)

One of my students from England, Chris, tells me that fat people burn better. That is, if people were ever to spontaneously combust on the street (have stranger things ever happened?), the fat ones would go first. This conversation erupted after a discussion we had on FIRE. What is fire? What are the benefits of fire as it relates to an ecosystem? See, most of us have grown up with Smokey and ‘fires are bad’ but most of the trees, and many of the plants, in Oz don’t drop seed without the aid of fire, or in some cases, the smoke.

Back to the body. See, fat is the fuel, and the body is the wick. If there is a buildup of methane (watch them beans!) anywhere in the body then the methane catches fire, and burns the fuel. I’m not sure how accurate this is but it sounded good enough to me, especially after a few Victoria Bitters. I actually think fat would burn longer, so the skinny folks would go first, but they wouldn’t burn completely (not enough fuel.) Chris also tells me he watches Body Shock (some warped bizarre medical show, in England) and relayed to us the other night another horrifying detail about a man that was able to perform head transplants with monkeys.

Apparently, we have all gone mad in Australia.

And I would suspect more is on the way. I am a bit more than halfway done with my time down south. I’m anxious about that—anxious to go home, anxious to stay longer. For now I'm seriously enjoying the fishing-village scenery and small port town life. This past weekend the students and I headed east along the Great Ocean Road, one of the most scenic drives in Australia, with outstanding rock formations and epic ocean views such as those of the famous Twelve Apostles. The drive is a real killer, and I do mean killer. Last year 265 car accidents, and 65 deaths, along the winding road, most of those from head-on collisions with other vehicles. The greatest cause of the head-on collision?

Foreigners.

That’s right. All of us tourons traveling from overseas and crossing the line either because we forget we are supposed to stay left, or be cause we are trying to sneak a peak at the view out the window. Pretty scary actually and I admit I was a bit nervous, and extra cautious, all day.

The last week of my previous project, in Portland, Vic was perhaps one of the best weeks I have ever had in Australia (at this point, I have almost 6 months of experience here). That was in most part due to our work with the Winda-Marrah Aboriginal Co-op.

Ever since coming to Australia I’ve craved an understanding of the connection between aboriginal people and the land. After working with the Winda-Marrah, and meeting several aboriginal people and talking with them about their experiences and their present day fight with the Australia Government, I came to a new appreciation for people, and passion, and family and history. For instance I know that the aboriginal people are thought to have come to Australia forty to sixty THOUSAND years ago. But ask me how long the Native Americans have been in America? I got nothing. So I found out: 11,000 years. I never gave a hoot about history in school until I began working with ISV and had to know a fair bit so that I could share it with the students. But I have made some acquaintances and have had a few experiences down here that make me realize how far away I am from ever understanding their lives. I am reminded of how privileged I am—to have the education and the time and the confidence to do a job like this; to have a recognized culture, and identity, and family history; to be respected for who I am, not who I could or should become. Every country in the world has a native population, it seems, that at one time was largely ignored. What can be done about that, now?