This week for the children was a particularly difficult week. Drug-related gang violence presented itself in several rounds of bullets that lasted hours at a time. The children explained that they had to "sink" during the night, forcing them to find sleep on the cold cemented floor. The violence had begun between "merchants" (drug-dealers/gangsters) from differing blocks who were fighting over drug-selling territory. But of course this is just the tip of the ice-berg. What lies beneath the surface is seemingly a moving mass that holds layers of traumatic experiences that for now I can only describe as the residual effects of inherited generational trauma.
When I arrived to pick them up, we greeted each other as we always do - with hugs, smiles and laughter. I had heard the night before from a friend of mine about the gang war that had broken out. Had I not received the news the night before I would never have guessed that their experience that week was terrifying. They were their usual candid selves. It was only when we began the 30 min drive into the city that they began to tell me about the shootings. In their re-telling of the past events, they expressed the details in a manner that reflected their own fascination of the unfolding drama. Additionally, they told me about a young girl of 10 who was found hung in her tin home. One of the children had witnessed the girl pass from life into death and had heard her last whispered words.
Even to write about it I find difficult. How can express the complexity of human emotion I felt and still feel as I digest these stories. Their stories remind me of a time when I was about their age and I was staying in Ghana. We were living near a military training school and on a few of the evenings the soldiers would have shooting practice. I remember the complete and utter terror that enclosed my racing thoughts. I was immobilized in my bed, and so wrapped in fear. The reality in that situation was no where near their reality. I was in a double-storey house two huge blocks away from the military school. I was in no danger.
It was the sound that ripped recklessly through my ears. The sound of the bullets cracked every defense I had, shatterring any logical thought. I just remember being too afraid to breathe. So, when the children tell me these stories I remember those moments of fear that were only remedied with the reaffirmation that I was adequately sheltered, and situated very far from the bullets, which is not the same for the children.
They say when the sun sets they have to be indoors. Anyone seen walking at night will immediately be ambushed and knifed as it is assumed that if you're walking around at night then you are a drug-dealer. So not only have the kids been imprisoned internally with fear they are also locked behind doors after 6pm.
It was with this emotional charge that we arrived at the University of Cape Town (UCT). I had chosen this place as we have no formal working space and so it was the next best learning environment that I could think of. My intention was for us to work through their new play that they developed on camp and talk about what needed to be done in order for it to materialise into a wonderful performance. In reflection, our day together now seems like a perfectly situated deviation from a fear-full week. It makes complete sense to me now how they just wanted to lie languidly in the sun. How for them doing absolutely nothing but lying in the sun on the green grass was their way of coping. The day was beautiful. The sun shone without intimidation and the quiteness of campus on a Saturday morning nursed the children's unspoken emotions.
Subsequently, they have chosen not to perform a play. They have chosen instead to write a book. As we sat altogether, a volunteer and I tried to encourage them to plug into exploring their creativity. I realised that their minds and hearts are too full for now. Their creative expression is seemingly under strain as they continue to load their lived experience with one trauma after the other. Perhaps there is a link between ones capacity to learn new things and ones level of experienced suffering. I worry that their disengagement from learning new things, is the beginning of a dangerous dance that may lead them to a precarious edge. Should I have been more insistent that they stay focused on using their creativity?
I see them again in one months time and it is then they have said they will hand me their written book ready for typing-up and publishing. My suspicion is that the book will not be written in my absence, but this is an assumption and assumptions have never gotten me anywhere.
I'm left wondering if I should continue seeing them every weekend, providing them with what they have requested (a space to just hang out in) or stick to my time allocation for Creative Education. Technically, our time together is approaching the end, and our last two months together signal my "exit" plan which means I only see them twice in one month as opposed to every weekend.
Should I stay with them every weekend or should I go? What should I do? How do I go?
How do I leave knowing their world is hanging between a great divide.
When I arrived to pick them up, we greeted each other as we always do - with hugs, smiles and laughter. I had heard the night before from a friend of mine about the gang war that had broken out. Had I not received the news the night before I would never have guessed that their experience that week was terrifying. They were their usual candid selves. It was only when we began the 30 min drive into the city that they began to tell me about the shootings. In their re-telling of the past events, they expressed the details in a manner that reflected their own fascination of the unfolding drama. Additionally, they told me about a young girl of 10 who was found hung in her tin home. One of the children had witnessed the girl pass from life into death and had heard her last whispered words.
Even to write about it I find difficult. How can express the complexity of human emotion I felt and still feel as I digest these stories. Their stories remind me of a time when I was about their age and I was staying in Ghana. We were living near a military training school and on a few of the evenings the soldiers would have shooting practice. I remember the complete and utter terror that enclosed my racing thoughts. I was immobilized in my bed, and so wrapped in fear. The reality in that situation was no where near their reality. I was in a double-storey house two huge blocks away from the military school. I was in no danger.
It was the sound that ripped recklessly through my ears. The sound of the bullets cracked every defense I had, shatterring any logical thought. I just remember being too afraid to breathe. So, when the children tell me these stories I remember those moments of fear that were only remedied with the reaffirmation that I was adequately sheltered, and situated very far from the bullets, which is not the same for the children.
They say when the sun sets they have to be indoors. Anyone seen walking at night will immediately be ambushed and knifed as it is assumed that if you're walking around at night then you are a drug-dealer. So not only have the kids been imprisoned internally with fear they are also locked behind doors after 6pm.
It was with this emotional charge that we arrived at the University of Cape Town (UCT). I had chosen this place as we have no formal working space and so it was the next best learning environment that I could think of. My intention was for us to work through their new play that they developed on camp and talk about what needed to be done in order for it to materialise into a wonderful performance. In reflection, our day together now seems like a perfectly situated deviation from a fear-full week. It makes complete sense to me now how they just wanted to lie languidly in the sun. How for them doing absolutely nothing but lying in the sun on the green grass was their way of coping. The day was beautiful. The sun shone without intimidation and the quiteness of campus on a Saturday morning nursed the children's unspoken emotions.
Subsequently, they have chosen not to perform a play. They have chosen instead to write a book. As we sat altogether, a volunteer and I tried to encourage them to plug into exploring their creativity. I realised that their minds and hearts are too full for now. Their creative expression is seemingly under strain as they continue to load their lived experience with one trauma after the other. Perhaps there is a link between ones capacity to learn new things and ones level of experienced suffering. I worry that their disengagement from learning new things, is the beginning of a dangerous dance that may lead them to a precarious edge. Should I have been more insistent that they stay focused on using their creativity?
I see them again in one months time and it is then they have said they will hand me their written book ready for typing-up and publishing. My suspicion is that the book will not be written in my absence, but this is an assumption and assumptions have never gotten me anywhere.
I'm left wondering if I should continue seeing them every weekend, providing them with what they have requested (a space to just hang out in) or stick to my time allocation for Creative Education. Technically, our time together is approaching the end, and our last two months together signal my "exit" plan which means I only see them twice in one month as opposed to every weekend.
Should I stay with them every weekend or should I go? What should I do? How do I go?
How do I leave knowing their world is hanging between a great divide.
