Friday, March 5, 2010

there MUST be something in the water!

it was a very crazy week at Limes...
Tuesday at boy brought a live bird tied up in his book bag (or his Jansport as the kids here call it... because pretty much anyone who has a book bag, has a jansport. they have a monopoly on the market. lol)
The girls kept saying a boy was bothering them (but they always are) so I didn't pay a ton of attention... until Amber heard them say something about a bird & forced the kid to open his bag & found a bird!!
It's legs were tied up and it was bleeding... it was awful. and I'm no animal rights activist... but to pointlessly tie a bird up in your bag and make it bleed? no thanks.
So I freed the bird and it finally flew away...

Wednesday. another bird in the book bag.
This time it was one of the regular kids who is usually really well behaved.... after asking him about it we found out it was for his mother... she asked him to catch a bird so she could have a pet... ???
So he was sent home with the bird and came back without it.

Thursday. field day.
Field day always has an element of chaos because there are so many kids and they just want to run and be crazy and wrestle.... and there are only about 5 of us.
The field we use is near a basketball court and a little snack stand and there are always older kids hanging around playing dominoes or cards or something....I've found that a lot of people in Grenada just hang out.  People are always just hanging out everywhere.  It's like they don't mind to just sit.  Maybe its because they don't have a TV or their house isn't air conditioned so they'd rather be outside in the shade where there is a breeze. If that's what they want to do, more power to them.  But I think that in the teenage years it's just room for trouble.... older boys are always just around and seem to be up to no good. 
Yesterday one of the older boys that comes to Limes (he's probably about 13) got a knife blade from an older guy (probably 17) and held it up to another kid.  Never mind the fact that it is illegal to carry a weapon in Grenada, but this is a 17yr old giving a knife to a 13yr old to threaten a 9yr old.  It just doesn't compute.... I was so angry, but a 13yr old isn't going to listen to me, he thought it was funny.  I tried to explain that he is older and the younger kids watch him & Limes is a priveldge & he isn't allowed to come back because we won't tolerate his behavior & that it's dangerous & he doesn't look cool doing stuff like that.... so he left (or went to the other end of the field, it's a big field) but I don't think he took me seriously.
Some of the other girls told an older lady who lives near by about what happened and she came out into the field furious & he saw her coming and tried to slink away but she caught him and I couldn't heard what was said, but hopefully she got to him.
I just don't know what to do to get more authority with some of the kids.  It's the older ones who are impossible, it's like you can't reason with them or even get them to understand that what they're doing is wrong... I think we all feel "too sorry" for the kids to crack down majorly. 
We talk about sending them home without snack some days when they are super out of control, but some of the kids really need the snack so we don't want to punish the ones who were good....I think in order to look like we mean business & if they want to be involved in Limes then they have to respect us, then we may have to ban some kids from Limes & send them home without snack when they're bad. It would also help I think if we had more male involvement from the other SOs, Alfonso is the only guy that goes... and the kids love him.

even thought it was a rough week, I still love the kids & can't wait for next week. 
Today we had a bake sale for the Limes program!  It went really well, we sold nearly every single thing we had donated!  I made rice crispy treats (because I don't have an oven) & they sold really quickly :)

Here's a photo recap of this week at Limes no birds or knives included.









 
 
 

The Bake Sale! 
 
 
Lee stopped by to enjoy some brownies :)

1 comment:

Reece said...

The pics with the kids look good. Glad the bake sale went well!

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