Down Time

I spent Friday afternoon sprawled on a parquet floor with some probationers as they drew out plans for a bout of community service to come. Armed with large sheets of thin paper and markers that smelt sharply of alcohol, they embroidered budgets, timelines and duty rosters. I leaned on my elbow and helped them along when they got lost at the price of rice or a tin of cheap oats. Now and then, I would raise suggestions for where they could shop for cheap food, only to be shouted down by the voices that knew better because they spent so much of their time hanging out there anyway (“Not Giant Ma’am! Sheng Siong lah!”). I forget sometimes, what it is like to be that age, forget just how much can be learnt from just listening sometimes.

It was a strange amalgam of compliance and anarchy, most of them were obliging enough to do the work and patient enough to take orders. Yet they ran around the room chasing each other with felt tip pens and sometimes refused to sit down when asked, pushed each other playfully against walls and hid illegal tails of hair by buttoning their collars over them. It was somewhat surreal having to oversee their activity and I went from being apprehensive to wising-up in one hour flat.

At the end of the day, I was noticing how they sized me up and tried to climb all over me because I was new while they treated the probation officers with a kind of grudging admiration and deference. My favourite moment of the afternoon was when they asked me innocently, “Ma’am, ma’am, are you a Probation Officer?”

“Not yet,” I replied, trying to be cryptic until I figured out their real intent.

“You want to be Probation Officer ah Ma’am?”

“Maybe,” I grinned.

“Don’t lah Ma’am,” one of the more unruly boys told me with an air of confidentiality. He looked over his shoulder, then mimed putting a gun to his head. “Probation Officer like want to kill yourself like that.”

“Then why you give them so much heartache?” I retorted, knowing full well it wouldn’t make a difference to his nonchalance anyway, and half-admiring him for it.

On Saturday I sat in a meeting for Volunteer Probation Officers, blinking sleep out of my eyes, forcing myself to concentrate absolutely on what the instructors were saying, despite the doodles that traipsed through my head and onto the paper.

On Sunday, I literally crawled from the sheets to be present at another event that involved both parents and probationers. At a Buddhist organisation, I stood with a large sign hanging around my neck while very old buddhist people and monks glared at me when I asked if they were involved in the probation (well maybe the monks didn’t glare, it could well be against their Code of Monkery or something, but one of them had a really nifty camera phone, so there). Women kept coming up to me and asking where the toilet was, while two couples actually put their hands together and bowed to me in Buddhist greeting, which I frankly didn’t know how to respond to except to say, “Uh… thanks.”

Later, we helped oversee the probationers while they noisily tagged each other with glue and coloured sprinkles and then spoke to their parents about their progress and listened to their questions about problems that they faced. It was difficult to sympathise with them when I could still remember wanting to rebel all the time and hating having to be home all the time and I actually fought to hide my giggles when one father lamented his son’s inexplicable affinity for convent school girls.

Today, I stepped into a Singaporean prison for the first time and gaped openly at the metal gates that rattled and swung by while police officers sent us through metal detectors and examined our cards. If you’re ever thinking of committing a crime, don’t. The prison smelt strongly of air that hadn’t flowed smoothly for a long time and the dirty white gates that rose like jaws from the ground and ceiling crossed crazily around the corridors and rooms, heightening trapped, claustrophobic feelings.

We sat in a tiny room that reeked of old metal and air-conditioning and talked to two boys who sat patiently, handcuffed to the wall. I tried to remind myself to push my emotions behind a glass wall and be calm and pragmatic about what I was doing, but it was difficult. It’s getting easier, but I still want to believe that everybody is good, is telling the truth, is as repentant as they claim to be. I’m still emotionally invested. And that takes energy.

It’s the most exhausting thing I’ve ever done. Seven day weeks are not uncommon here, after all, probationers never stop comitting crimes, people never stop needing someone to talk to. Real life doesn’t operate on a time-off basis.

And unlike physical hard labour which is tiring but easily rectified by rest, this job is emotionally and mentally draining too. There are no hard and fast rewards, or problems that are easily solved with equations, theories or in writing. There is seldom any thanks for the effort that is put in, rather the clients are defiant, reluctant, angry.

The whole enterprise comes together in a conundrum. How do you help the parents be better parents without telling them how to do their job or taking away the authority that is rightfully theirs? How do you explain to a teenager that his lifestyle is harmful to many people in many ways even though it breaks no moral code or dictum? How can you have any time to yourself at all when you have to be there day and night, reachable by phone or email anytime of the week?

There are many things to love about this job. It never ceases to be challenging and working with young people breeds wonderful ideas and an unflagging sense of energy. Eventually, with perseverance, differences are made to most people and there is a variety about this job that staves off the boredom of being crouched over a desk all day. Most of all, there are people to talk to, people to work with, people who need help and who can help in return.

But all this comes at a price. I once wondered if people who gave up their personal lives for other people ever felt a deep sense of regret at the end of the day because they were missing out on the wonderful feeling of ego-centricity. Despite all that is waxed lyrical about spending time on people and helping being its own reward, there is a kind of dogged exhaustion that persists through it all.

I watch my colleagues go about their jobs and troop to court, prison, hostels and homes, write policies, laugh, cry and scream over their cases and I am filled with a deep sense of admiration for the spirit that they possess.

I like this job, a lot (says the girl who can barely keep her eyes open).

But I have to be frank with myself. And to be frank is to admit that I may not be able to cope with the intensity of it all. Worse than that, I couldn’t see myself giving up the chance for a life that is all my own, a world in which a seven day week is a normality, in which being let down and fought against is expected. I want to possess the same madness and tenacity, but it’s growing increasingly clear that I may not have what it takes.
Somehow, it all seems to fall back on the age old maxim “It’s a dirty job, but someone’s got to do it”.

Which then begs the question, “Will that someone ever be me?”.