Strictly for the birds: Learning some universal lessons about helping

We live on the waters of the Marina da Gama, which is a part of a large lake and wetland system which empties itself into False Bay south of Cape Town. Here, we are daily intrigued by the many varieties of waterfowl who live, half tame, half wild, amongst us. There are ducks of all kinds and colours, red-knobbed coots, cormorants, great crested grebes and little grebes, kingfishers, Egyptian geese, herons and egrets. Some will happily approach humans and even eat from their hands; others are more guarded and keep their distance. Each has its own customs. The cormorants, grebes and kingfishers share no commerce with us. The Egyptian geese are coldly aloof, unless very hungry.

Parenting
The coots aggressively defend their territory, literally fighting insurgents to the death when necessary – but they are the most wonderful parents to their young, both the male and the female spending weeks of total devotion to their chicks' learning and upbringing, before, one day quite suddenly, they send them packing to fend for themselves. The ducks, on the other hand, make dreadful parents, often gliding off to rejoin their friends within minutes of hatching their eggs. The ducklings that catch up with their mothers are the lucky ones; those too slow simply get left behind and die within hours. The ducks are by far the most accessible to humans. We just have to step into view for them to quack out their welcome and hurry towards us, just to say hello, perhaps expecting a crust of bread. They will gather around our feet, gossiping away, enjoying the crumbs and the social get-together for a while before becoming bored and, with a shake of their tail feathers, sailing off to another attraction.

Trouble
Recently I had an unhappy meeting with one of the ducks. She had somehow got a length of fishing line knotted around her neck, and in trying to get it off she had caught her lower beak in the loop and couldn't get it free. She was trapped in this awkward position, desperate to free herself, unable to eat, her condition leaving her bewildered, terrified. It would have been the easiest thing for me to snip the fishing line with a pair of scissors, but when I approached her, she squawked angrily at me, flapped her wings and sped off across the water. Then the other ducks became alarmed by her changed behaviour, and they, in turn, clucked about together and chased her away. l tried several times that day to get close to her (talking soothingly, approaching her in what I considered an unthreatening way) and to lure her towards me so that I could help. Each time she became suspicious and angry, and swam off with ruffled feathers. On the water she was in her own element and I couldn't get to her. Even in a canoe I would not be able to catch up to her, let alone be able to do anything for her if I did. The next day she was nowhere to be found.

* * *

Inevitably, my mind turned to many of the children we work with. Something goes badly wrong in their lives, often something which they don't fully grasp, but which nevertheless affects their composure and their function. In their immediate attempts to deal with it (by their attacking behaviour, their panic or their flight) they make things worse. Others around them react negatively – out of their own anxiety, out of ignorance, or fear of the strange behaviour. Our attempts to 'get close' and to help are mistrusted and strongly rejected. The world has let them down; they are going to rely only on themselves now. The children also move away from us into their own place, apart, separate, 'safe'. In their own medium they retain some survival skills, some sense of autonomy; in their medium we are clumsy and awkward, out of our depth, and of little help.

There is no happy ending to this small story. Perhaps some creativity to be born out of our frustration, perhaps more questions seeking answers, as we reach across the divides of health, culture and society in our wanting to be of help to troubled kids.