DEAR YOGESHREE
Hi... this is the second in the related Tammy stories to help us toward getting some kind of grasp of the way children will often communicate.
The toilets on the boys and the girls floor were much the same. The children had a habit of forgetting to flush them especially as they always seemed to be in a hurry. They were often left with some fairly unpleasant surprises. Problem was .. few toilets and lots of children.
Downstairs as you entered the building from the rear was a single toilet. It would have been a maid's toilet in the Victorian apartheid hey-day of the Mansion now used as a Children's Home. It was outside in the typically South African tradition for domestics but discreetly still part of the building under a stairwell. The children used it if they were out in the grounds and needed a toilet. It saved the girls from going up two stories to find their toilet .... and when you got caught short, it was a blessing.
The staff always grumbled about having to use the same toilets as the children.
"They are always filthy. There is no way I'm going to use the toilets on the top floor when they are never properly flushed... toilet paper all over the place. When I go there they are always smelly> The toilet near the kitchen, under the steps. If we made that into a staff toilet and only the staff used it, we could keep it decent for ourselves."
So at the time it was a greed by a show of hands and a staff member went into town to buy some little curtains, a 'decent' working lock for the door, some smelly stuff to mask odours and a sign. The children were informed of the new arrangement and a staff member set about making the little room pleasant.
Tammy was five and a half at the time. A wee mite, and for all the world like a small doll... and very cute.
On a Saturday a staff member came in to put the final touches to the new staff facility. Tammy and I watched holding hands as the 'staff" sign was being screwed onto the door. Somehow , it seemed to me, at a place I couldn't then reach, that all was not well with the world . I had no words for it. just a vague sense that something was being proved in this whole thing... and in my newness into child and youth care , I couldn't say what.
Tammy watched with me in silence for a long time. There was a certain amount of struggle with the screws... these Victorian building were mad of stern stuff. So,out came a hammer to fix the sign 'STAFF'.
A break in the hammering gave Tammy a moment. Very quietly she filled the pause.
"Mr Lodge...." ( not 'Uncle Barrie' this time! )
"Is this toilet for human beings?"
Love
Barrie
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