on exchange to Yenworthy Lodge, Exmoor, Somerset, United Kingdom, 1993-’94
(published with permssion from Pathways, Vol. 6, No. 6, pp. 23-24, 1994)
Monday June 27: -a wonderful day at Yenworthy!–certainly one of the highlights of the year! I worked all day with three wheelchair kids, Sarah, Paul, and Helen, all about 14 years old and disabled by cerebral palsy. Three kids and nine staff: myself, two Year 10 girls on work experience, and six staff from the special needs school. (You can imagine the requirements of looking after three kids around the clock for a week…)
-Thank goodness for warm, sunny and dry weather! We put climbing harnesses on the kids and lowered them down the Tube (an 8m long fibreglass tunnel that kids use to slide down the hillside )–screams of joy and excitement! –and many repeats! Then we abseiled/rappelled them in their wheelchairs down a steep grassy slope. I belayed them–they were all somewhat in control themselves, though there was always one staff behind the chair guiding it. Sarah was fully in control with her strong right hand and her wonderful attitude! Paul’s hands were not quite so reliable but he was all enthusiasm! And Helen in her excitement (she’s non-verbal and uses Bliss symbols to communicate) would grip the rope so tightly that one of the staff would have to go along beside her, prying her fingers loose… But the thrills!…
-Then after lunch we took nearly two hours to put them all repeatedly down the zip-wire! I think we used as much climbing hardware on them as we could possibly fit, to keep them upright on the board seat: a climbing harness, a broad sling seat, at least four climbing slings, and up to ten carabiners! But at least they all stayed on the seat, somewhat uncomfortable but more than bomb-proof safe. The screams of excitement and the looks of joy were heart-warmingly wonderful! The smile in Helen’s eyes as she was launched over the chasm!!! Sarah said as I hoisted her up onto the seat all trussed up: “This is the most disabled I’ve ever been!” in a real tone of wonder and appreciation! Somehow that stands out as one of the quotes of the year–though it may not sound like much…
-Lastly, we got them ‘climbing’ up the wall, Pete climbing up beside them, guiding, and me hauling them up using a Z-hoist affair rigged with carabiners. This was the highlight of the day for Paul–he’d been waiting for months to do this! Not much, perhaps, to haul a kid up, but the experience for him was certainly very powerful!
-I described three options for the evening to the combined group of Year 8’s and Special Needs kids: short walk with reflection time / North American Native games and stone tools / the Web of Life Game. Helen had a question for me, which she shakily but with great concentration pointed out on her Bliss board: “What Fire Make?”–How would I make fire?
So after we rinsed all the surfing gear (Paul and I had a spraying match with the hose!–which he loved!; the rest of the kids loved to see him get me!; and Helen was in constant stitches of laughter!) I gathered everyone on the pavement outside the bootroom and did the fire-by-friction thing, concentrating mainly on the fire and not too much on the stone tool technology stuff. I passed the ember around, ending by blowing it into flame right in front of Helen–the look in her eyes! She was actually able to relax enough to give a sort of puff too! And Sarah got down from her wheelchair onto the ground and tried the fire-bow, as did Paul, showing much more willingness than the regular kids–though after that example, the regular kids did get much more involved… I also got Helen ‘trying’ by setting the hearth board on her wheelchair tray and doing the best I could to gently move her rigid-with-excitement arms
-What a lesson!–the whole evening programme coming from a simple but good question from a disabled kid whom most of us didn’t think could even communicate! …a little sermon to that effect to the kids…
-And the whole day earlier surfing at Puttsborough with the three kids was amazing! Phenomenal rewards working with these kids: the look of glee mixed with terror on Helen’s face as she saw waves coming at her, followed by screams of adrenalinized joy as they washed over her!; the pure exuberance of Paul!; the trust of Sarah, who also had a very childish–difficult for her!–time playing with drip-castles and ‘trombones’ with Cathy.
-a day of canoeing on Wistlandpound with the disabled kids–more sedate than the exhilaration of the last two days, but still new experiences with great thrills and fears. -tied two wooden poles across ‘Canadian’ or ‘open’ canoes (as opposed to kayaks, which are “canoes” to most folk here…) to make a catamaran so sturdy that I could walk along the outside gunwales, and then made an A-frame with poles rigged fore-and-aft to haul up a fly-sheet as a sail -David took the wheels off the wheelchairs and used electricians ties to strap the chairs into the canoes–the kids wouldn’t have been comfortable down on the bottom of the canoes, needing lateral stability and something to keep them from sliding forwards, Helen especially, as she becomes rigid with excitement…
Gillian came with me today, ‘skiving’ from school to be my other sternsperson–a good experience for her as she worked with the different people and carried out the various responsibilities.
-carrying the kids into the canoes, strapping them in, splashing them ceremonially, paddling away from the jetty, encouraging them as they splashed away sorting out some kind of stroke, helping Helen relax her excited muscles enough to grip a paddle (hard enough for just one hand, but for two to relax…!), having them hold the sail and feel the tug and pull of the wind…, Helen’s eyes as I waltzed with her across the jetty when we landed for lunch, Paul trying to splash me–and them Helen desperately trying to get her co-ordination together enough to join in–what a wicked sense of humour that kid has!!! The capping event–for me as much as for them–was oh-so-slowly lowering each in turn into the water with mock helplessness on my part: “Oh no, you’re falling into the water! Help!! Help!!!” Paul nearly wriggled out of my grasp with delight as he felt the water flowing over the tops of his wellies!; even marmish Sarah let herself enjoy that silliness; and Helen went stiff with gleeful excitement as I came to lift her out in a bear-hug embrace. I got the very powerful feeling that if I didn’t soak her to the knees too… So I waltzed her across the jetty, “stumbling” her into the water, she with a huge smile and a body stiff with excitement!
So is this wrong, loosing these birds out of their wheelchaired and sheltered cages, only having them return home at the end of the weeks experience perhaps dissatisfied and shackled? No. Cathy’s analogy is with us going on a vacation–or this whole year!–and then coming back to everyday life, enriched by the experiences and memories of that unfettered time. As Helen asked: "What fire make?"–How do we set that flame of liveliness going?
“Thanks to the human heart by
which we live,
Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,
To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.”
William Wordsworth,
Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood