Last night was a long night at work. It was a wonderful night that ended in a brawl.
On Tuesday nights for work I run a youth club for young unaccompanied refugees and asylum seekers. On average we have about 33 boys attend. They come in and have a soda and play pool, surf on the net, play video games, mix music and chat with volunteers. They are a great group of guys and I always enjoy my hours in the club. In the past few weeks we have had a number of fights with last night being the worse, where two of the boys ganged up on one of the others and broke a pool stick over his head and on his back. They waited till one of the volunteers’ back was turned and WHAM, WHAM… no eye witnesses.
CRISIS?!
I’m pretty good with responding to crisis situations, but I didn’t see this one coming… with no one who saw what happened and a boy with a banged head, a broken pool stick and a lot of language problems what do you do?? I kept thinking over and over in my head… “noble being, noble being. Clare you must remember that they are noble beings, and you must uphold justice.” I was like great, so now I know WHAT to do, just not HOW to do it. whatever isn’t dealt with now will resurface later and it could be worse.
The power of a name
After initial examination we have understood that the all the recent fights have been in response to something that has happened in school and that wasn’t dealt with. In this case, it was because one boy allegedly called another boy Bit$%. Imagine? This is a word that the boys did not even know 6 months ago before they arrived in this country and yet the word has such a powerful force that they are willing to risk their asylum claim in order to save face? What does this say about their identity? What does this say about the need to develop language skills and a strong moral framework?
on Feb 12th, 2009 at 1:03 am
How do you do it Clare? Trying to change the world one soul at a time and yet so far to go. I admire your spirit and determination and asking yourself the hard questions. This sort of thing is what I found working with youth and jr youth, and that is the garbage that they bring in from outside that isn’t dealt with by the family or the school. If you had all of them full time, you could have more ability to change the dynamics. As it is I think you are doing the right thing by realizing if you don’t deal with it it will come back. I always liked to sit them all down and get it out in the open and learn more positive ways to deal with the conflict without having any of them feel less than noble. Sometimes it worked and sometimes not. Good luck and I will keep you in my prayers.