The end of Fairy Dancing

There are many instances in the last 6 years when I remembered thinking 'I'd have never believed this would happen in a first world country'.  This is one of them, something that is a warning but really just something that in my opinion should have been avoided. I'm not trying to blame anyone. As an historian I know the future usually just notes in these instances it was just a fail and a product of how we think and do things.

My daughter was 4 years old when the second big earthquake hit Christchurch.  She was half an hour before going to the highlight of her week: Fairy Dancing.  I never understood Fairy Dancing as a discipline - It was learning steps to Dancing to music while dressed as fairies.  It was and has been the only thing Charlotte was prepared to rehearse for.

When the 22 Feb quake hit, of course it was off.  So the ground shook for ages, she wanted to go to Fairy Dancing and she couldn't.

What was really upsetting was that the aged brick hall / church on Linwood Ave she was just about to leave for was flattened, leaving a pile of debris.  Charlotte and her fairies were incredibly lucky.  She was upset when she went passed the hall, but I think it was one of us that told her, in shock, that was where Fairy Dancing was.   She's never Fairy danced again.  As far as I know she's not seriously rehearsed anything since.

Little children are constructing the world.  This is the shop.  This is the street.  That is my school, that is another school, that is kindy, that is the church....  the world is small.  As they develop they understand what is constant and what they can rely on.  As time goes on like building blocks, the world grows, the specific classes and sets get bigger and they learn.

In the case of kids from earthquake zones, and I imagine war zones and other disaster areas, the construction of their world, their certainties, get broken.  The things they have started to count on are wrong.  The school isn't going, the shop is a pile of bricks, Fairy Dancing is gone.   And in our case tangentially, my parents don't love each other and daddy lives somewhere else- although that was 2 years away.
In Charlotte's story she went from being very excited and bubbly to reserved, moody and sad.  I'm sure my struggling also contributed, but she ended up in counselling and intervention with a range of professionals.  She started school the following year and 6 years later she still has fear issues but it's hard to pick what has caused what in her mosaic life.  But it has altered her.

Charlotte has done ok. We lived in the east; poorest, most affected. Some kids around us from broken houses, blended crisis families, living on the knife edge of poverty and gangs anyway may never recover; with a life of crime, mental issues and substance abuse beckoning already.

What I really wanted to say though was we did at least one thing right.  We enrolled Charlotte in a school that wasn't earthquake affected - over the other side of town.  Her brother was already there and Tim's earthquake story is another story.  Why was this good?  Because the government decided to review schools with an aim to closing a number in 2013.  Only in Christchurch : in the earthquake zones.  And in the poorest part of town.  Not in Auckland, Wellington or anywhere not broken by fault lines. And not schools that couldn't reopen.

So the children around us, got back to the School, their school, THE school, to have it closed in a protracted process that now seems disgusting. Many had lost their houses, their friends had moved, their parks had gone, and their parents traumatised. The one physical certainty many of them had or held onto was gone.   Adults also like certainty and things they can trust and the sight of crying mothers and other whanau will be with me as long as I hold my mind together.  And the children sobbing was gutting.  One leading example of many was Phillipstown School which had a vibrant Maori community, and merged with a larger, by reputation rougher, school.  It was closed, probably contributing to some big issues for the children that went there and I'd imagine any dollars saved will be spent in future years many-fold more as a result.  The rock for many will have been school opening again and going back. Little kids don't care about politics,they are learning about life and what they can trust; and the lesson we as adults gave them was bitter and brutal.

Was this a project someone had in their hard drive for a rainy day, or what was it?  Could rationalising schools have waited 5 years (after all repairing houses has)?

Whatever : it happened.  I believe WE as a nation failed. We failed people that didn't deserve bad treatment.  So my lesson from Fairy Dancing is when we think about crises and opportunities, we need to think about people first.

In any major disasters think about people, particularly the young, the old, the weak feel, as that is what a society (or community if you must), has to be judged on.