Juks in Meaninglessness

Juks

Juks is the name of the support centre where I did my civil service. Their mission statement is the following: “The quality of life of all people with disabilities should match the quality they deserve and the skills they have.” Juks offers sevices to around 130 clients with different mental disorders, autism and Down syndrome being the most common ones. Around 50 people are among the staff members and, when I first started there, all of them were women.

My civil service was an amazing experience. There was one thing that Juks reminded me almost every day - enjoy the simple things in life. So many of the people there were, or at least seemed to be, just happy (edit: joyful). So many authentic emotions and laughter together with them, be it with singing, dancing, acting, sports, arts, working or just talking with friends and family. Some of the clients always hugged me when they saw me (although it’s not really allowed). There’s one guy who told me every day that Nele-Liis Vaiksoo (an Estonian singer) is her girlfriend. Yet another fellow told me with a big smile on his face how, at home, he likes to sit on top of his cupboard so he can be right under the ceiling, how he likes to watch horror movies (and I’m too afraid to watch horror movies myself), and how he really likes to listen to music from the Prodigy.

I noticed the pleasure from simple things already on my first day there and that’s why I will never forget the bus ride home after my first day in Juks. With every stop further away from Juks, and closer to the city centre, the buildings got fancier and the faces of the people stepping onto the bus seemed more serious. During that bus ride I realised how silly some of my worries are. I have a home, I have a job, I have food, I have friends and family - what else do I need?

Juks also offered me the opportunity to try out many different things. I was a handyman, a hockey coach, the host and organizer of several events, a DJ, a teacher for arts, a teacher for poetry, a teacher for cooking. I took clients for walks, I replaced missing instructors, I helped carry out interviews about client satisfaction, and I’ve even just been someone for my colleagues to talk to. The variety of experiences and emotions that can be experienced and felt when you multiply all these different activities with all the different and colourful personalities involved is almost undescribable. In my head it looks something like this:

By colourful I really do mean all colours, from the brighter ones to the darker ones. I’ll share one sad moment from my Juks experience, and one story that has entertained people the most so far.

Attachment. While most clients in the centre are there only during the daytime, there was a group of clients who were living in the centre - for whom it was home - when I started there and with whom I went walking almost every day. Among them was a girl with Down syndrome and severe autism. She cannot speak properly, and it doesn’t seem like she understands much when you talk to her. She smiles quite often, but she often looks at you with what seems like confusion. She likes watching pictures of her family, arranging things in her room and holding hands with one of the other clients while walking. She’s also very strong-willed. Sometimes it was impossible to stop her from doing an activity or to get something back from her that she had taken from someone else.

It was common for members of family (for those who had them) to come and visit the clients for whom the centre was a home. Many times I had seen the mother of this girl visit the centre, and always leave after a hug with her daughter.

Another one of those visits came up. The mother took her daughter for a walk and to the store, and just spent quality time with her for a couple of hours. Until it was time for the mother to leave again. She put her clothes on and went to hug her daughter who was hugging her back strongly. It was a heartwarming sight.

At one point the mother said that it’s time for her to go. She stopped the hug, but her daughter didn’t let go. The mother kindly told her daughter again that she has to get going, because otherwise she will miss her bus, but the daughter kept holding on tight and she started repeating “Mom” while doing it. One of the workers also told the daughter to let go. The mother started gently pulling her daughter’s arms off from around her, but the daughter was holding on very strong. She isn’t a small girl either, she’s actually quite strong. The worker started helping out as well, but the daughter locked her fingers together behind her mother’s back while still crying “Mom” over and over again. I went to help out too until there were three of us trying to untangle the girl. That’s how strong she is. We finally had to work with two of us to open up her fingers that were locked together, then both pull away one arm so the mother could step back, then hold back the girl with force while the mother would exit the door and finally - the hardest part for me - see her cry behind the door from where her mother just left.

It was an extraordinary sight for me to witness. The pain of the girl, the pain of the mother. The uniqueness of the relationship between the mother and the daughter - how love has been adapted to the inability to exchange and understand each other’s thoughts… At least not the way most people would in a parent-daughter relationship? The way I would think I would understand my kids? Such a specific situation that I don’t even know how to or want to compare it to anything.

That day it was part of my job to tear a crying daughter away from her mother. I can’t say I ever expected to do that in my life.

Surprise. Let’s head to a more care-free story. It was near the end of my first month in the centre. I was quite new, yet I was already accustomed to going out for a walk with one particular group of clients. A couple of days earlier, a new volunteer from Italy called Nico had arrived to work in our organization. The centre basically takes in two Erasmus volunteers every year. Someone from the staff suggested that he’d join me when I take this one group for a walk.

The support centre is located in a suburban area in Tallinn, lots of gray and old Soviet block buildings. We took the clients to one playground located in the middle of these buildings, because it has a swing. A couple of the clients started swinging, a couple of them went to a bench to have a seat, some wandered about around the playground looking at whatever they found interesting. Me and Nico were having a friendly chat until one of the clients, an older man who doesn’t speak, walks up to us. He has this specific tick (i.e. an uncontrollable action like swearing for some of the people with Tourette’s syndrome) where he rubs the back of his left hand with his right index finger, and he was doing it really fast. He looked a bit nervous. We asked him if we can help somehow, but he didn’t point to anything, didn’t walk towards any specific direction, just kept looking at us while doing his tick.

Suddenly he pulls down his pants, gets down to a squat and takes a massive shit. Nico yelled: “No, no, no!” with his Italian accent and I just looked at the situation dumbfounded. I saw an elderly woman walking towards the playground a bit further away and I was afraid she’d notice, but the whole thing was actually over in like 5 seconds. The man pulled up his pants and stood a bit further away like nothing happened. We buried the thing under a lot of sand and some leaves and just took off.

shit just got real

Despite a couple of extreme situations, my civil service in Juks was really something special. I got in touch with a world I had little knowledge about, or that hadn’t reached my awareness much. The people there - both the staff and the clients - comprise a unique world of its own. A world where people smile more, are more relaxed and where they enjoy the simple things in life. A world that I sometimes feel I’d much rather be a part of then the world outside of it. Yet Juks is also part of the world outside of it, and also inherently dependent on it.

What did my life in Estonia look like outside of Juks? Why would I sometimes rather be part of the world inside of Juks rather than the world outside of it? Why anything?

To be continued next time...