Delta40
01-13-2011, 09:19 AM
Have you ever come in contact with a person where, for some reason that you couldn't understand, you just felt evil in your bones, or sensed that they were dangerous and up to no good? Now I don't mean someone who looks mean or malicious. Take me for example, I am not evil at all but there are people who look normal, if you like but there is something just not right about them. They make the hairs on the back of my neck rise, my skin crawls if they come too near. My heart quickens when they speak. Sometimes, I think I can even smell evil. It makes my nose wrinkle and there doesn’t seem to be any real reason why other than I know they are evil.
Young Henry had that perception. It is a gift because so many people fail to see it, I think. He was a very sensitive boy. When I first took him from his mother, she chased us down that dusty red track screaming 'Sista, Sista' oh for at least half a mile I would say. Henry did not move an inch the whole journey back to the chidlren’s hostel. He wouldn’t take any food or drink and was sent to bed early. I have had alot of experience with aborigines and it is not unusual for them to be quite shy. One understands that they know no better than the disgusting envrionment they have lived in. It can take a while before they get settled. Henry was not easily bought with food, drink and clothing. Probably because he was around 12 or 13. The younger ones think their new home is exciting but not for Henry. He cast his clothes off as soon as he was dressed and would not touch the food presented to him on a plate. We received very little funding. More and more children were subject to the awful outback conditions. You can understand the waste not want not policy that we had to uphold. If a child would not eat, then they did not as work was the next best thing to give them a hearty appetite. Henry worked in the yard with the other boys while the girls cleaned the dorms each day. He was reluctant I must say and refused to eat even then. I suspected the other children were sneaking him food. I cannot abide defiance so I was discussing the best strategy for dealing with sly deceptive behaviour when the children ran to the fence surrounding the camp.
A grizzled haggard aborigine came to the gate. His face was as dry as the landscape and these people all look like they’re 100 years old. They stink too. Often starving, no water, and quite uncivilised. It was when I faced spectacles like this (their people would refer to him as an Elder) that I truly believed the government's intervention to remove aboriginal children from their families was the greatest of mercies. The job of rounding up poor souls was most certainly not for the faint hearted. I don’t mean heart breaking. One was carrying out the Lords work, after all. But it was pitiful to see the lengths these sorry people would go to keep their children in filthy abject poverty. We targeted the light skinned ones. They at least had a chance in society. To avoid capture the mothers would cover their children in dark mud, in the hope we would miss them. Anytime we arrived at at a camp, children would run off in all directions. Obviously the parents had told them to. It was a relief to finally lay our hands on them. I don’t like violence but it is a necessary evil if it will yield the best results. The best results being to allow civilised people like myself to remove the children and take them under wing where they will learn to read, write, speak properly and maybe one day be put to work as labourers and domestics.
Often, relatives would stray into the compound in search of family members but it was no time to get sentimental. I tried to keep them away of course but most times, the child saw their relative and would make a run for it. Their little bodies scaled the wire only to be shred by jagged barbs at the top. This boy Henry, when he spotted the ancient looking man approaching, he nearly jumped out of his skin and tried to escape in the other direction. I almost twisted his arms out of his sockets just to keep him still! Goodness me, what a feral child he was! Luckily, the Lord endowed me with incredible strength. I struggled and held him firm while Henry yabbered in his native tongue. The elderly relative nodded, squatted at the fence and made markings in the sand. He stood and pointed past us both to the tiny cemetery behind the homestead. He spat on the earthy picture and told me, ‘I feel the poisonous snake moving over my back. Round my neck. You make this boy body cold.’ I held Henry even closer to me ‘Is that what he just told you now?’ I asked. Henry was jumping hard enough for me to resort to a chokehold. ‘This boy longs for country.’ He swept his hand across the barren horizon. ‘Be off with you’ I hissed. ‘Can't you see how you're scaring the child? Take your evil witchcraft with you. This boy will get all the care he needs here. Don’t come back again.’ The old man muttered something to Henry then turned and walked away from the camp. Henry had relaxed a little. It was like he was defeated after that. I slapped the boy and dragged him back to the dorm where I employed the usefulness of Spare the rod, spoil the child to my best ability. He was not allowed to eat until I found out which children were slipping him food.
It was tragic but Henry had sensed the evil in that strange man just as I had. He was not the sort of child who would talk and lessons were very trying. Each time I recited the Lords Prayer, he put his hands together and uttered, ‘Our Father, snake, crawl on my skin. Snakes all around. I am men'. He took the punishments I meted out as if it were nothing and I exhausted myself many times. Henry was my greatest challenge. What else could he be? I loved that boy but he was thankless that I had rescued him by the grace of God. I gave him much of my time and attention but he never said anything other than the crawling snakes. My colleagues agreed how important it was to keep family members away. That so-called elder, scared Henry to the point where no amount of effort or discipline on behalf of the Lord could change what he was in his blood. Set in his heathen ways and lost to a pious existence, he faded from life, his soul left him bit by bit, neither a word uttered nor a tear shed. He was buried hastily and without fuss so as to avoid upsetting the other children who stood a much better chance than Henry. But my heart aches in rememberance of him. He is a testimony to the fact that one has the tiniest opportunity to save souls and the reminder that I failed at times is the true test of my faith in the Lord.
Young Henry had that perception. It is a gift because so many people fail to see it, I think. He was a very sensitive boy. When I first took him from his mother, she chased us down that dusty red track screaming 'Sista, Sista' oh for at least half a mile I would say. Henry did not move an inch the whole journey back to the chidlren’s hostel. He wouldn’t take any food or drink and was sent to bed early. I have had alot of experience with aborigines and it is not unusual for them to be quite shy. One understands that they know no better than the disgusting envrionment they have lived in. It can take a while before they get settled. Henry was not easily bought with food, drink and clothing. Probably because he was around 12 or 13. The younger ones think their new home is exciting but not for Henry. He cast his clothes off as soon as he was dressed and would not touch the food presented to him on a plate. We received very little funding. More and more children were subject to the awful outback conditions. You can understand the waste not want not policy that we had to uphold. If a child would not eat, then they did not as work was the next best thing to give them a hearty appetite. Henry worked in the yard with the other boys while the girls cleaned the dorms each day. He was reluctant I must say and refused to eat even then. I suspected the other children were sneaking him food. I cannot abide defiance so I was discussing the best strategy for dealing with sly deceptive behaviour when the children ran to the fence surrounding the camp.
A grizzled haggard aborigine came to the gate. His face was as dry as the landscape and these people all look like they’re 100 years old. They stink too. Often starving, no water, and quite uncivilised. It was when I faced spectacles like this (their people would refer to him as an Elder) that I truly believed the government's intervention to remove aboriginal children from their families was the greatest of mercies. The job of rounding up poor souls was most certainly not for the faint hearted. I don’t mean heart breaking. One was carrying out the Lords work, after all. But it was pitiful to see the lengths these sorry people would go to keep their children in filthy abject poverty. We targeted the light skinned ones. They at least had a chance in society. To avoid capture the mothers would cover their children in dark mud, in the hope we would miss them. Anytime we arrived at at a camp, children would run off in all directions. Obviously the parents had told them to. It was a relief to finally lay our hands on them. I don’t like violence but it is a necessary evil if it will yield the best results. The best results being to allow civilised people like myself to remove the children and take them under wing where they will learn to read, write, speak properly and maybe one day be put to work as labourers and domestics.
Often, relatives would stray into the compound in search of family members but it was no time to get sentimental. I tried to keep them away of course but most times, the child saw their relative and would make a run for it. Their little bodies scaled the wire only to be shred by jagged barbs at the top. This boy Henry, when he spotted the ancient looking man approaching, he nearly jumped out of his skin and tried to escape in the other direction. I almost twisted his arms out of his sockets just to keep him still! Goodness me, what a feral child he was! Luckily, the Lord endowed me with incredible strength. I struggled and held him firm while Henry yabbered in his native tongue. The elderly relative nodded, squatted at the fence and made markings in the sand. He stood and pointed past us both to the tiny cemetery behind the homestead. He spat on the earthy picture and told me, ‘I feel the poisonous snake moving over my back. Round my neck. You make this boy body cold.’ I held Henry even closer to me ‘Is that what he just told you now?’ I asked. Henry was jumping hard enough for me to resort to a chokehold. ‘This boy longs for country.’ He swept his hand across the barren horizon. ‘Be off with you’ I hissed. ‘Can't you see how you're scaring the child? Take your evil witchcraft with you. This boy will get all the care he needs here. Don’t come back again.’ The old man muttered something to Henry then turned and walked away from the camp. Henry had relaxed a little. It was like he was defeated after that. I slapped the boy and dragged him back to the dorm where I employed the usefulness of Spare the rod, spoil the child to my best ability. He was not allowed to eat until I found out which children were slipping him food.
It was tragic but Henry had sensed the evil in that strange man just as I had. He was not the sort of child who would talk and lessons were very trying. Each time I recited the Lords Prayer, he put his hands together and uttered, ‘Our Father, snake, crawl on my skin. Snakes all around. I am men'. He took the punishments I meted out as if it were nothing and I exhausted myself many times. Henry was my greatest challenge. What else could he be? I loved that boy but he was thankless that I had rescued him by the grace of God. I gave him much of my time and attention but he never said anything other than the crawling snakes. My colleagues agreed how important it was to keep family members away. That so-called elder, scared Henry to the point where no amount of effort or discipline on behalf of the Lord could change what he was in his blood. Set in his heathen ways and lost to a pious existence, he faded from life, his soul left him bit by bit, neither a word uttered nor a tear shed. He was buried hastily and without fuss so as to avoid upsetting the other children who stood a much better chance than Henry. But my heart aches in rememberance of him. He is a testimony to the fact that one has the tiniest opportunity to save souls and the reminder that I failed at times is the true test of my faith in the Lord.