Ups and Downs.....
The week started well and then went downhill rapidly.
The group had a great meeting on Tuesday night.
Lots of projects running and the enthusiasm levels really high. The 'Living History' cookbook is about 90% complete, the strategic plan is well on it's way and we have support for setting up a professional information service in January. An interesting proposal for a 'language swop' program too.
Then M from site phones me on Friday morning. The staff had organised a childrens Christmas party, Santa, presents, goodies, the lot for Thursday night.
Some of the 'ladies' from a certain African country had decided that the presents were not of high enough quality and proceded to wreck the place, abusing and terrorising the staff.
Things got so bad that poor MS had to run and lock herself in her office.
We had planned on having a kids party in a school down town on Sunday but had to cancel it.
If this sort of riot happened there it would be very public and we would never, ever, live it down.
RIA has a 'solution' to these sorts of things, transfer the people involved to the furthest extremes of the country. I don't know if that has happened yet but I expect that it's just about to.
I can see how the fustrations of living on site can boil over. The poverty, lack of work, boredom, the eternal asylum process that will, most likely, result in a refusal.
Fustration will always be taken out on perfectly innocent parties too, people who are doing their best.
Illich wrote about the undeniable joys of giving and the bitter taste of receiving. That's definitely the case here.
As a group we can't and won't tolerate abuse of anyone, staff or residents.
If there are problems on site that can't be resolved directly with site management then we will
take it up with RIA and, if necessary, get the IRC and UNHCR involved.
What to do? I think that I'll suspend my own personal support group activities until the meeting on 13th January. I'll let a few people know why too!
posted by Carigeen at Monday, December 22, 2003
