PRE-COVID CHRISTMAS IN CARE ...CHILD AND YOUTH CARE IN SOUTH AFRICA

 

"My children have sorted out their old toys. We wanted them to learn how to give to the less fortunate".

 There their children stood. Boxes in hand. Old, often worn and broken toys. '' This is for the poor children".  they would say.

"I'm sure you can fix them," say the parents

The intention, I suppose is good. The reality longer term - I'm not sure.

 With this kind of experience in mind, a newspaper journalist who wrote at Christmas referred to the children in care as   "weggooi kinders" (throw-away children). It was an insulting, irresponsible choice of word to highlight abandonment and neglect...and to encourage people to give of their unwanted toys and children's clothing.

The children and youth in the facility picked it up. The children read what she wrote, as "she says we are garbage. We are throw-away children"

The delegation came to the office. They wanted action from the newspaper reporter, an apology and a firm agreement with the newspaper that nothing would be printed in the press without them. "Nothing about us, without us". Quite right!

Meanwhile broken toys and worn clothing streamed in.

 What the children and youth wanted was NEW CLOTHES. It was predictable. Every year "Christmas clothes, chosen by us". 

Miracles, I always would say, happen in the helping profession - especially for children. The Board of Management made it their annual project. Child and youth care workers accompanied children and young people to the clothing retail shops. It was a memory making event. Some of the young people in care at the time, now 45 to 50 something years old still remember. 

For some reason there appeared to be a certain leniency at Christmas in the granting of leave of absence. Was it in some cases sentiment over professionality on the part of the Department of Welfare? "Families must be together at Christmas."  And if it wasn't direct family, hosts abounded. "We would like to have an orphan with us at Christmas.'

Then came the many happy returns. "Please come and get me. Things are bad here".

'Twas so. Weddings funerals and Christmas, alcohol flows freely. It starts out OK. Then family feuds often raise themselves all over again.

Christmas day then, was often a day of suprises.

The policy was that staff got away every second Christmas, Christmas  "off".  That included me. We took it in turns to host Christmas lunch for the left behinds and the otherwise unexpected number of many happy returns. who could have had to be fetched on Christmas day itself. The numbers game.

 No wine on the table that year...and no turkey leftovers !!.

 Oh, I forgot to tell you. Before the end of the fourth term, the Board of Management insisted that they join the children for a Christmas dinner. They wanted that the children should meet them and that they saw the children in the newly bought Christmas clothes. The children saw the faces of the gift givers. Thanks were the order of the occasion

At some point, Father Christmas arrived. Ho, Ho Ho. - bag full of wrapped presents for each child.

Every year at Christmas the motorbike boys in Johannesburg have what they call the Toy Run. They buy toys and bike en-masse to some place to hand them to  poor children.

One year the chose St Goodenough for their handout. There was any amount of preparation needed for this high profile event. St Goodenough had the responsibility of getting some other child and youth care facilities and programmes to come on that day, to provide catering and to accomodate 300 - 500 motorbikes 600 - 1000 counting riders and their pavilion passengers. Father Christmas would arrive in a helicopter landed on the soccer-fields.

 First came the motorbikes and bikers. Hell's Angels, in fact all manner of Angels, Christian bikers and skinheads and whosoever more. Then the wrapped parcels were made into piles. Boy, Girls aged 4-13, boys ,girls 13 and over. They          formed small mountains of wrapped gifts. Then came the helicopter. The bearded man in the red outfit appeared.

 There was some semblance of order created with long queues of children and young people regulated by child and youth care workers to meet, one by one with Father Christmas and be given a present.

Things happened which disrupted the intended good order of the event. Many a child and young person stashed the gift away and joined the queue again. On leaving I saw children and young people carrying up to five presents in their arms. "It's for my cousins at home. They couldn't come", 

 There was the problem of the bread rolls filled with our traditional sausage (boerewors). The St Goodenough Old-Boys ran out. Had to out to buy more and all their money was stolen.

 Then for the final blow. After the event the organisers came to see me. 'We will never come back here again.  There were far too many black children getting presents!"

Christmas giving is never intended to do this. We all know. But in child and youth care work It seems to me to be a difficult balance, creating memorable Christmas moments, exampling the spirit of giving against the possibility, the risk, of a life-span world view. A risk of of learned dependency, the handout mentality and "I'm deprived, you must, you owe me".

 I wonder?

I wonder also, has Christmas 2020, the Covid Christmas presented us with any lessons?

DISTORTED...DAMAGING OR DIFFERENT...CHILD AND YOUTH CARE IN SOUTH AFRICA.

 

Radio 2020 FM

"We apologise for that. there was distortion on that last tune we played. It wasn't the disk. The disk is fine. It was the motor that drives it. It was irregular. It caused WOW. We'll fix it.

 I knew the tune well. Not quite as I was accustomed to hear it. It's called the Unchained Melody.  

A South African couple in London were eating takeaway cooked chicken as they walked through the streets. A stranger, a Londoner stopped them. "Are you from South Africa?" he asked. "Yes. How do you know?"

"Only South Africans eat chicken with their fingers walking in the streets and crunch on the chicken bones." 

 Wasn't the bones exactly, but those crunchy bits of bone at the joints.

It was not quite as Londoners were accustomed to see chicken eaten. It was another normal.

 It was a policy change. "As at the new term, we won't have Junior and Senior Houses. Younger or older brother siblings will be in the same House." All were duly briefed and prepared.

Day one - more accurately, night one, of the new term.

 Stones were thrown onto my roof. Being a galvanised metal roof, the hard metallic thuds could not be ignored.

 It was Moleta. "Tomorrow morning we'll talk".

"We were always together in the streets. We came in together. We were together, our beds next to each other, in the dormitory.  Now he's not next to me in the dorm. You took my friend from me and put him in another house. You have broken our friendship. It can't ever be same now".

I heard myself talking in my head.

"I have childhood and school friends. We live in different cities  even different Provinces. We see each other seldom. We are still and will always be. This is distorted relationship behaviour".

I heard my professional self say

"Let's see what we can do. Your friend is with his brother, I can see, you too are his brother, Let's find a bed for you in that other house as well. And Moleta,if you want to talk anytime, you can knock on my door, even it's at night. I'll listen."

I had to make a sideways step. 

"You had better come quickly. He's getting very aggressive, threatening. He says he'll beat us up now. He says he wants to talk with you.

He stood, feet firmly planted a little apart, his arms as if he had tennis- balls in his armpits. His pupils were narrow and his colour up...the fighting stance.

"You will take me home in the mini-bus"

It  was his weekend to go to his mother after a long time on the streets and a lot of reunion work.

 "We gave you money to get home in the taxi"

 I'll @@@ you up if you don't take me home in the mini-bus."

There was a very long verbal toing and froing when suddenly the main man burst into tears. "I don't know how to do it."

It's not that he didn't know the taxi bus ranks. He didn't know which taxi-bus to board and what to do to pay and get home..

Two professional steps backwards. It was a WOW. So much unlearning to be done. Unlearning about streetwise, learned dependency, adolescent independence, hand-out living, ... the world owes me, . - lots of misconceptions for us to relearn. And so we did. ,.. slowly but surely. 

He was said to be streetwise. It meant that he knew very well how to survive . His favourite haunt was the red-light area of Johannesburg.

 It was on his mother's insistence that social workers place  him in the facility. She said that he needed to be contained - not locked in, but to be managed, He needed to learn, she said, to live within some so-called normal societal behavioural constraints, to shift his behaviour from intolerable to be at least tolerable, acceptable to her and to most other people.

 Sounded reasonable.

Do's and don'ts, institutional rules made little sense to him. "Why?" 

US, "Because that's how it is". 

HIM "" You got it all wrong. Boring, very boring. In the streets I'm free. I live by being clever. About four days later he would reappear, "I'm back." It was an unchained melody in notes that we were unaccustomed to hearing. It was another normal for us.

It was all an unlearning and relearning experience for us, It asked us to look at our young people and children's worlds through their spectacles. Our thinking took a major shift. Our programmes, our approach had to meet the young people's world and their needs...not the young people fit our mould..fit our cookie cutter.

   

  

A GENEROSITY CULTURE LIVED...CHILD AND YOUTH CARE IN SOUTH AFRICA

 

"I'm preparing myself to have a kidney removed in November," she said. "I'm donating a kidney. I have two and I only need one."

 This is generosity.

As it turned out, the kidney removal was a success but the effects of the medication made her feel very ill.

This is generosity.

 It all cleared. She recovered and her life went on as before. Someone's life was saved.

 This is generosity.

In South Africa, we use the Circle of Courage as an assessment and as a planning tool. Four quadrants of positive experience make up the circle for wholeness in the life-span of children and young people. They read in this order: Belonging, Mastery, Independence, Generosity. Generosity completes the circle of wholeness. It is said that the first three must be experienced positively for Generosity to be developed and lived. 

The kidney donor had a good, well connected support system, a connectedness to humanity and its needs  She had Mastery ..an  internalised knowing and confidence in what she was able to do. She was able to make difficult decisions on her own. The platform was set for her to develop her sense of generosity, of sharing, of giving, of self sacrifice, of feeling some struggle for the sake of another.

Martin Brokenleg and Larry Brentro came to South Africa to present the Circle of Courage and its application. They presented throughout the country. The story is told that in Durban ( then in the Province of Natal...then the last bastion of the British Empire in South Africa). Martin presented the Generosity component of the Circle. His presentation included reference to his own indigenous American culture. He would say that in his culture, if someone admired something of someone, the owner would take it and give it to the admirer without expectation of thanks. A woman in the hall shouted out "Martin, I like your earrings". Martin walked down the centre aisle, took off his earrings and put them into the woman's hand, turned, went back to the podium and said "I'm glad that nobody admired my trousers" 

Martin Brokenleg, I was told did not tell anyone that the earrings were given to him as part of the rite of passage of his admittance into his tribe. The story, Larry Brendtro told me, did not finish there. At the tea-break, in the foyer, another woman came up to Martin, took his hand and places a pair of pearl earrings into his palm. "I want you to have these", she said. "They have been in my family for generations. They are a family heirloom."

This is Generosity lived.

The question, then, is how in child and youth care  practice do we develop Generosity toward wholeness in the lives of the children and young people in our programmes?

I like Martin Brokenleg's use of the a 'Culture of Generosity' example. In South Africa, it's a culture we may have to design, to create and to live in our programmes so that the sense of Generosity is experienced by the children and young people.

On the other hand, sharing is embedded in our indigenous African culture. 

She was very young, small framed and child minding an unrelated toddler. I came out of the Community Centre to see her lifting, as well as she could, that heavy little one to the running tap to drink. It was a struggle. Then she took from her pocket a tiny tin of Zam-buk, a precious tiny tin of healing salve. With her finger smeared some onto the little one's dry cracked, summer lips  I was privileged to witness an act of generosity in so small a girl-child.

Largley, in indigenous Africa culture, that is the way it is I cannot say the same for Westernised culture which is more and more pervasive throughout. So much so that there is frequent fear expressed that much of indigenous culture, and so generous cultural acts of sharing could be lost. This then has implications for us in Child and Youth Care practice.

A nun in a convent retreat house said to me, "We eat in silence. At any meal we have to anticipate each other's needs to ensure everyone has a satisfying meal". 

It got me going.

Creating a culture of Generosity, of giving, of sharing especially when not asked, of anticipating the needs of others and doing what has to be done. 

That is a Generosity culture lived.

Meals were a good place to start. The practice was that awful line-up with an empty  plate in hand. Kitchen staff decided on portions and dished up for each child...highly regulated.

It was a major mind-shift for child and youth care workers and the children when serving bowls and serving spoons were put on the tables Young people were told, "You can dish up for yourself." Now the culture of sharing was to be practiced. At first, co-regulated by the child and youth care worker. Then came the time when the young people self-regulated their own need but in anticipation and in the serving the needs of the others. I saw some older children helping younger ones dish up. Like the child lifting the toddler to drink water at the tap.

I read in CYC-ONLINE in the December issue, someone said that to be loving in child and youth care work you have to be angry. It struck me that a strong sense of fairness and outrage around social  injustices has a connection to Generosity. I prefer the word outrage to the word anger. Outrage suggests being driven, most usually at some cost to self, to act in a way that makes good for others. Restoratively toward a better life for all. 

Children and young people may have, within a programme to be helped to recognise when the needs of another are unjustly deprived. Group residential living experiences expose young people to any number of situations, almost daily, where their grasp of unfairness can lead to acts of generosity often at some cost to themselves. Advocacy now become an act of generosity, to restorative justice and to speaking out, perhaps to their own disadvantage. I experienced this. The delegation "Why did they do that.....? It wasn't fair. Don't you know that a hurt to one of us is a hurt to all. What are we going to do to put this right now?" 

It's the kidney donation. It's a generosity culture lived.

Child and youth care workers can, and should be generous with physical and relational sharing but .... do I really need to say this in South Africa?.. I think not.. with the giving of self and in practices like, say "Each one teach one", speaking for another if necessary, accompanying another, peer support, buddying, "Here let me help you".

 Where does it start? rhetorical question because as child and youth care workers we all know the answer.

And so Generosity becomes the culture, the wall-paper of the programme, the kidney given, the tap, the Zambuk, the culture lived.