Thursday 7 February 2008

Contact

I had to really force myself to go to school this morning - but I thought that if I didn't make it today I would probably never be able to face it again.

It made a huge difference as I came though the door that so many people came up and hugged me. It's funny how the traditional formality of school has been put to one side by what's happened - the feeling of mutual support and - if it's not too strong a word - "love" which exists between us all is something to be relished.

Since I'd been way we had been contacted by the local authority. Eve Anderson from the Emergency Team had first phoned and then arranged to visit today. I met with her and a couple of the other adults over lunch. She wanted to help us set up the school in a more organised manner as a place which could provide support to the local community in the form of food and medical care, whilst still educating the kids. Eve was so understanding about what we had been through and didn't push anything upon us but the ideas were so close to what we had already agreed that there was no objection.

Eve then spoke to the circle and explained to everyone how they all had a role to play in helping eachother anf their community. The kids wanted to talk with here for ages and were so excited that what we had set up by ourselves could now make difference to so many more people.

Eve's coming back tomorrow with some people from Health and Social Services to help us set up our Centre. In many ways her intervention has come at just the right time - the burden on me has lifted just be feeling that there's something else out there to which we are connected. I think I'd been kidding myself that we could do everything by ourselves - despite the attractiveness of doing our own thing.

1 comment:

KathyinFL said...

I'm curious. How is your access to electric and water?

We are having such serious problems with absenteeism of trained staff that some areas around here are suffering catastrophic failure of public utilities.

Everything appears to require electric at some point. Wells, cell towers, mainframes and their cooling equipment (required to keep the internet up and running), communication relay stations, etc.

I'm amazed that a city with nearly 500,000 residents hasn't started having problems with this. Especially given the number of infected and casualties that you quoted.

But, having no idea what Edinburgh's power sources are I'm probably missing a piece of the puzzle. Or, perhaps I missed your discussion of black outs and any communication issues. Its hard to cover everything we deal with on a daily basis in a blog. They just become part of the background and sometimes we don't mention them, especially if the problems are intermittent.