Frogs in a fire

The room we sat in was painted a peachy pink. There was a man and a fridge to my right, a woman sitting on the desk behind me, and nine others squished in a rough circle between the standing fan and the door. The door led to the kitchen, where plastic bowls of porridge walked from the one side of the room to the other in an endless cycle of feeding. When we left, the children in the room outside lay in neat rows with their little legs and arms splayed like a frog's. I assume that the porridge was for them.

We were there, from our respective organisations, to help this centre conceptualise a programme for unemployed youth. I balanced my notepad and my backpack on my lap, and tried not to spill water out of the thick amber glass clenched between my knees.

(As happens at these kinds of events, it turns out the host knew the man three seats to my right.
"I know your brother!" He exclaimed initially, and hardly had to lean forward to extend his hand.
"Yes!" The man replied.
"Yes!" The host chorused in reply.
"But it wasn't my brother, it was me." The shaking hands paused. Laughter burst out and met the peachy pink walls.
"You're right, you're right, I was at Pen Tech and you at UCT?"
"Yes, YES!"
More laughter, more hand-shaking.
"We have a story to tell," the host tells us all, "HAH, we have a story to tell!" The man three seats right of me smacks his knee, the host smiles and smiles.)

We start talking first about who constitutes youth, then the challenges they face and the potential they hold within them. We talk about ambitions and aspirations, and how to build a programme that builds on hope, not despondency. The older participants lament: in the 1980s, the youth had something to fight for, to live for. They had a cause. The younger participants, we do what we do when the older ones talk: we look down, we listen, we try to create a memory from which to draw thought. And we wait, patiently, for the lament to pass.

Values and visions only get you so far, so we shift to talking programmatic design. Structure, resources, programme participants. We set up timelines, we make the commitments we can. I'll work on the budget and help with costing. It's a good meeting, a productive one. We had the chat about youth and about change, and used it to inform a programme idea. It's a seed at most, but it will be nurtured and it will grow, and will offer opportunity for existing potential to flourish.

The man three seats to the right of me sent me a poem this morning. His nephew died in a gang shootout last night, and he wrote him a poem to say good bye.

"Ooh I wish this day was never gonna come
Ooh how I wish that I will never hear these words
Ooh how I wish that I will never see this scene
Ooh how I wish that I will never have to say I told you so..."

We spoke just yesterday about creating options for youth. About building an environment that enables them to live a life that won't get them killed. We spoke in a room painted a peachy pink, next door to a room filled with well-fed frog children. Part of me feels that our words are now ash, seared and burnt and destroyed by a bullet, but they're not. Not really. They feel more like a fire that needs to rage and burn into being a change. Before the frog children grow-up.