DEAR YOGESHREE Feelings, thoughts and behaviour...connecting the dots.. a child and youth care challenge..

DEAR YOGESHREE

This is the last in a series of letters that have focused on feelings as clues to the finding of meaning in the behaviour of children and of ourselves. This letter calls that exercise a 'challenge' for us as child and youth care workers. .. and it is. It is one of those elements of our practice which may well sometimes be the most difficult of all. But one, which in the immediacy of our life-space work with children combines empathy and intellect to make child and youth care work more satisfying than anything else I had ever done.... including my work as an academic at the university and my work as a therapist in the Child Guidance and Research Centre.

Every instinct in my body said "Get out and get out fast!".Just as the other boys in the dormitory had done. But my intuition said "Sit !". So, I sat. On a bed close to the dormitory door.

 Sibonga carried on flicking the knotted wet towel in every direction around the room and toward me as he shouted abuse. Sometimes directly at me and sometimes into the walls of the echoing dormitory of the old house.

 It wasn't submission my sitting on the bed. It was meant to tell Sibonga that I wasn't afraid and that I wasn't going to to threaten him with any of the languages of confrontation.

I'd been close to Sibonga with this type of behaviour before. He was allergic to bee stings, and one day whilst the 'bee man' was removing bees from an electricity box, I saw this same look on Sibongas face. Eyes widened, dark complexion grey.And when we were least expecting it Sibonga darted forward and pushed his arm into the box. He was stung twice. I dashed him to hospital. I was more worried about him than he was about himself.

It was that same wide-eyed look now,so I knew to expect the nexpected.

 I scanned the room _ especially the doors looking for my best escape posion, and watched every move.

 Flying around the room, Sibonga continued to shout and lick the towel menacingly. I couldn't hear the words except for the occasional 'f' and 'p' words.... it sounded like growling and barking.Twice in this ritual dance, he pulled down long curtains from the dormitory windows with a clutter that significantly hightened the tension in that cavernous room.

 At last I started to make out words, but couldn't make sense of them. I only know they were directed at me.

"It's alright Sibonga, it's OK" .... as calmly as I could.

 Even though it had happened so very long ago, the bees in the electricity box image came to me again. The same signals going up started to make this situation more scary.

 The inarticulate noise of a human in distress, slowly started to form into words I had heard all to often from adolescents especially.

" You don't know nothing; You don't know nothing" getting louder and louder.

 Sibonga was now focusing more often on me, making some glancing eye contact. I kept my eyes averted but still watched every move.

 "Its OK. We can sort this out somehow" repeated quietly.

 Then came the full barrage. Floodgates and emergency doors wide open now. Sibonga sobbed, yelled paced yanked on bed blankets, and it all came tumbling out.

" You don't know fucking anythi9ng. - what it's like. You think you know everything. . You think its alright, but it's not. It's not alright. You think "go home" and it's not alright"

Now at last it started to make some sense.

Sibonga had lived with his mother in Idukwe. His mother , so the story is told 'dropped out', 'hit the road' and the bottle to live on park benches in the big city. Sibonga was placed 'in care'  as a fairly small boy and  he was told by the extended family that his mother was dead. Well actually that is what we all understood... that mom had died.

 Then one day she pitched at the door of the 'Home' to claim her boychild

Sibonga was called , but fled upstairs and hid in a wardrobe.

 I was not part of the family re-unification. In those days what was called 'the external social worker'.I was however impressed by mom's sobriety, level headedness and determination to get family life together again for Sobonga. She had found employment in Idukwe and could clearly support him. He had been 'going home for weekends and holidays for over a year now and plans were underway to make this a permanent arrangement by the end of this year. The end of the year was approaching fast. Today was Friday and Sibonga was to go home for the weekend. Within the next hour mom would arrive at the front door just as she did when she came back from the dead. The last weekend visit before being home permanently.

 As far as I could make out there were no social, bonding, caring, safety, provisional reasons for Sibonga NOT to live at home now, with his mom. all the externals suggested that permanency was ensured.

I was clearly wrong. Inside Sibonga was residing unresolved distrust...the unfinished business of.deeply buried feelings of abandonment, fear and loss. Mom's expected appearance today and the proximity of losing the now familiar security of the 'Home" triggered this scary display of feelings.

"We're together at home. You die. You disappear.You die, You come back from the dead. We go home together now. When you're not there... I don't exist. Whenever you  leave you die  .Death follows life. dark follows light ....and you say its alright.... Shit !!"

Sibonga sat on the bed opposite me, his body limp and sobbed into his wet towel .

Sibonga was right. Barrie doesn't know a fucking thing!


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