An alternate look at the locals

Ironically, after writing part of the previous post in my notebook (parts of it were written a few nights ago and I only uploaded it a couple of minutes ago) I felt the scaredest I've been out here. Now, I can see why Robert, my old boss, said not to get too complacent.

And not that I was scared shitless, but I learnt that I will not go back to the PTM camp* via the backstreets again for tea. I left here straight after putting down my notebook and started to drive into town. There were heaps of locals walking around town, and so I went off the main road.

I turned into the main side street I take, though I can't remember the name, and heaps more were down there so I slowed to around 10km/h, with my window down (that was probably my first mistake) and they were hardly moving off the road for me. So I try not to stop completely but then get told to "slow down mate", when I was going pretty slow as was. I slowed down a bit more where a bunch of kids were yelling and playing, also just off the road, and then they started throwing stuff at or in the tray of my ute.

It does scare you a bit when you are one (white at that) and they are many and clearly annoyed and I think you'd be lying if you said you weren't fussed at all by them. Then as I rounded the next bend, near the footy oval, more of them decide to either wave or give me the equivalent of the middle finger salute.

So I won't say I'm not still a bit cautious driving around but it's something to think about.

The other thing is driving back from the PTM camp. At dusk it's hard, but at night, you are seeing silhouettes and that's about it. Really, that is about it. At least first thing in the morning whilst it's dark, no one is about.

Overall it's been good though. Like earlier yesterday, after I left the office to go home sick, I had my 'Sammy' award (will speak on that later) with me and there was a young boy about 6 or 7 outside the door.

He said 'rock' and smiled, and I said, not rock, 'concrete' and then pointed at the stones and said, they are little rocks. And I said as I pointed to the aggregate in the concrete, these are little rocks too. And I pointed to my name carved into the concrete, S-A-M, and said, S, A, M. I'm Sam, and pointed to myself. And he said 'Sam'. And I said, that's me, and he repeated 'me', as he had with 'concrete'.

Little things like that make me forget the hostility of the night before.

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* The PTM camp is where all of us were staying when we first got here, but some are near the TDC - local subcontractor - workshop and others were at the PTM camp, now I am camping at our proper construction camp, although I wouldn't normally have got here so soon but we ran out of beds at the PTM camp. That means that we still have to eat at the PTM camp for all meals, so in other words we come home to our rooms here on one side of town and have to drive to the other side (a couple of minutes' drive) of town to eat. It's annoying, and especially since I've had a cold the last couple of days, meant I couldn't just go back to my room to rest, my room had mini excavators working literally outside my window. Today was better, I was down at the PTM camp most of the day and came back here for a couple of hours until tea time.