The stories usually begin with me saying:
"Once upon a time, there was a young and idealistic lad in his early twenties who found himself unexpectedly playing God in a tropical island paradise."
I am no longer a young lad but I remain idealistic. I look back on those times through rose-coloured spectacles and, when I relate my adventures, it is as if every day was warm and every moment was touched with magic. It is high time I paid tribute to the imperfections of my island home because they were no less a part of Paradise than the good times were.
Imagine, if you will, a small island off the north-west coast of Australia; an island almost entirely comprised of iron ore. Now add in a small community of workers - most of them young single men but also a few married couples with children. By some quirk of fate, it became my job to manage what was called "The Township"; I was charged with ensuring that this remote village - where everything was owned by "the company" - chugged along sweetly in its tropical setting while large machines on the other side of the island scooped out ore for export to China.
Absurd as it might sound, I was somehow expected to oversee all the married housing and the single men's quarters, the company-owned supermarket, the mess hall and kitchens, the swimming pool, the gardens, the "canned" television channel, the local newspaper, the medical centre, the outdoor cinema, the use of company vehicles, the tennis courts, the cleaning and building maintenance crews, the local boozer, the fire station, and whatever else is required to keep a community ticking along. In addition to this, in my spare time, I was also charged with the hiring and firing of employees and the delivery of training courses. Even more absurd than the scope of the job is the fact that I actually managed to enjoy it, perform it quite well and still have the time of my life.
Now there is an endless list of nasties that can lie below the surface in such a community. A ratio of 300 young men for every single woman brings several problems. Most of the guys drank very heavily when not at work; at least once a month I accompanied our under-worked police officer while he searched the single men's quarters for drugs; fifteen year old girls would routinely escape their family homes and take on a legion of horny young guys in one night; even some of the married women would climb the hill in darkness to bring "comfort" - and not always free of charge - to guys desperate for a fuck or a blow-job; some guys embraced sex with each other as a temporary measure and occasionally fought over a particularly popular "bitch"; married couples drank heavily too and fought so furiously that the wives might sport a black eye for several days; young girls went from deckchair to deckchair giving head jobs to young guys at the Starlight Gardens outdoor cinema; and, inevitably, fist-fights were a common occurrence amongst the single men in their barracks on the hill overlooking the town site.
As if I didn't have enough to do, I decided to implement an Employee Assistance Program. It seemed draconian to me that anyone caught fighting should automatically lose his job and be flown out. I thought we should at least offer those with drug or alcohol problems the option of attending rehab and a chance to return if the intervention went well. This eventually came to pass and we had some successes as well as a few failures. It gladdened the social worker deep inside me that something was being done to help people whose problems were funded by the company's high wages and exacerbated by our extreme isolation.
One day one of the young single guys - a quarry labourer - came to see me in my office. I will call him Jake. He said he had come to resign. It was impossible to ignore his face - it was badly bruised, cut and swollen. He had obviously been beaten up. I asked what had happened and he said a few guys had banded together to punch him about early that morning.
"Well, Jake" I said, "you shouldn't have to resign because of this. The guys who attacked you are definitely as much in the wrong as you are, and they outnumbered you too." I was very much in Employee Assistance mode, just longing to resolve this poor man's plight.
"No" he said. "They were entitled to be angry with me. I deserved it and I'd much rather just leave right away."
I asked the obvious question.
"What have you done that you deserve to be beaten up by these guys?"
"I've been annoying them. They reckon they're sick of all my shit."
Naive young man that I was, I assumed that here the word shit was a euphemism for mucking about, creating a mess or snooping. Further questioning, however, revealed that Jake was actually speaking literally - he had been entering guys' rooms while they were out and depositing neat little turds on their beds or in their wardrobes or even in their chests of drawers! Small wonder they were sick of all his shit!
I was gob-smacked. This was something way beyond my worst imaginings, let alone beyond my scant knowledge of mental illness. Jake seemed relatively unembarrassed. This was obviously some weird idiosyncrasy with which he had lived for several years. I, on the other hand, felt acutely embarrassed and I found myself agreeing that perhaps it was best that he leave the island straight away. And he did.
I knew of no place to which I could send him for help. I could only suggest that he see a doctor and seek treatment once he reached civilisation. As a psychologist, I have encountered several similarly unwell people since that long-ago discussion with poor young Jake and I now know much more about his condition. In simple terms, his compulsion to deliver faecal "gifts" is linked to a stage when adults applauded him for doing the right thing in his potty.
So there - I've admitted it. There was occasionally a bad smell in paradise, and my beloved Employee Assistance Program came perilously close to drowning in a shower of shit!
Now that I'm finally accepting that problems did sometimes arise during my wonder years in the wild north-west, perhaps I might write one day of how I came to be "responsible for dead bodies" and how even that came to have its lighter moments. Paradise can be hell without a sense of humour!
"Once upon a time, there was a young and idealistic lad in his early twenties who found himself unexpectedly playing God in a tropical island paradise."
I am no longer a young lad but I remain idealistic. I look back on those times through rose-coloured spectacles and, when I relate my adventures, it is as if every day was warm and every moment was touched with magic. It is high time I paid tribute to the imperfections of my island home because they were no less a part of Paradise than the good times were.
Imagine, if you will, a small island off the north-west coast of Australia; an island almost entirely comprised of iron ore. Now add in a small community of workers - most of them young single men but also a few married couples with children. By some quirk of fate, it became my job to manage what was called "The Township"; I was charged with ensuring that this remote village - where everything was owned by "the company" - chugged along sweetly in its tropical setting while large machines on the other side of the island scooped out ore for export to China.
Absurd as it might sound, I was somehow expected to oversee all the married housing and the single men's quarters, the company-owned supermarket, the mess hall and kitchens, the swimming pool, the gardens, the "canned" television channel, the local newspaper, the medical centre, the outdoor cinema, the use of company vehicles, the tennis courts, the cleaning and building maintenance crews, the local boozer, the fire station, and whatever else is required to keep a community ticking along. In addition to this, in my spare time, I was also charged with the hiring and firing of employees and the delivery of training courses. Even more absurd than the scope of the job is the fact that I actually managed to enjoy it, perform it quite well and still have the time of my life.
Now there is an endless list of nasties that can lie below the surface in such a community. A ratio of 300 young men for every single woman brings several problems. Most of the guys drank very heavily when not at work; at least once a month I accompanied our under-worked police officer while he searched the single men's quarters for drugs; fifteen year old girls would routinely escape their family homes and take on a legion of horny young guys in one night; even some of the married women would climb the hill in darkness to bring "comfort" - and not always free of charge - to guys desperate for a fuck or a blow-job; some guys embraced sex with each other as a temporary measure and occasionally fought over a particularly popular "bitch"; married couples drank heavily too and fought so furiously that the wives might sport a black eye for several days; young girls went from deckchair to deckchair giving head jobs to young guys at the Starlight Gardens outdoor cinema; and, inevitably, fist-fights were a common occurrence amongst the single men in their barracks on the hill overlooking the town site.
As if I didn't have enough to do, I decided to implement an Employee Assistance Program. It seemed draconian to me that anyone caught fighting should automatically lose his job and be flown out. I thought we should at least offer those with drug or alcohol problems the option of attending rehab and a chance to return if the intervention went well. This eventually came to pass and we had some successes as well as a few failures. It gladdened the social worker deep inside me that something was being done to help people whose problems were funded by the company's high wages and exacerbated by our extreme isolation.
One day one of the young single guys - a quarry labourer - came to see me in my office. I will call him Jake. He said he had come to resign. It was impossible to ignore his face - it was badly bruised, cut and swollen. He had obviously been beaten up. I asked what had happened and he said a few guys had banded together to punch him about early that morning.
"Well, Jake" I said, "you shouldn't have to resign because of this. The guys who attacked you are definitely as much in the wrong as you are, and they outnumbered you too." I was very much in Employee Assistance mode, just longing to resolve this poor man's plight.
"No" he said. "They were entitled to be angry with me. I deserved it and I'd much rather just leave right away."
I asked the obvious question.
"What have you done that you deserve to be beaten up by these guys?"
"I've been annoying them. They reckon they're sick of all my shit."
Naive young man that I was, I assumed that here the word shit was a euphemism for mucking about, creating a mess or snooping. Further questioning, however, revealed that Jake was actually speaking literally - he had been entering guys' rooms while they were out and depositing neat little turds on their beds or in their wardrobes or even in their chests of drawers! Small wonder they were sick of all his shit!
I was gob-smacked. This was something way beyond my worst imaginings, let alone beyond my scant knowledge of mental illness. Jake seemed relatively unembarrassed. This was obviously some weird idiosyncrasy with which he had lived for several years. I, on the other hand, felt acutely embarrassed and I found myself agreeing that perhaps it was best that he leave the island straight away. And he did.
I knew of no place to which I could send him for help. I could only suggest that he see a doctor and seek treatment once he reached civilisation. As a psychologist, I have encountered several similarly unwell people since that long-ago discussion with poor young Jake and I now know much more about his condition. In simple terms, his compulsion to deliver faecal "gifts" is linked to a stage when adults applauded him for doing the right thing in his potty.
So there - I've admitted it. There was occasionally a bad smell in paradise, and my beloved Employee Assistance Program came perilously close to drowning in a shower of shit!
Now that I'm finally accepting that problems did sometimes arise during my wonder years in the wild north-west, perhaps I might write one day of how I came to be "responsible for dead bodies" and how even that came to have its lighter moments. Paradise can be hell without a sense of humour!
