Little fingers clinched the plastic baseball bat while a look of determination spread across the young boy’s face. To him, it might as well have been the bottom of the ninth, bases loaded.
To me, it was the middle of a Tuesday afternoon at the Limes neighborhood field and an after-school program.
As the school bell rings, about 20 kids flood the field looking for something fun to keep them out of troubled neighborhoods for a few hours. Their ages range from pre-school to middle school with most falling smack dab in between.
When Kelsey arrives at 3 p.m. with bats and balls and frisbees and books, the empty stretch of grass becomes a playing field. Soccer balls zoom into the one and only large net while plastic whiffle balls crack against plastic bats.
I have been told, the neighborhood next door is where all the drugs can be found. Looking up the street at the shacks, bars and the shifty people who sit outside them, the frisbee tossing gains a new meaning.
Between blowing bubbles and handing out snacks, Kelsey explains that the program was started by two elderly women who noticed a flock of stray kids on the field every afternoon after school. These women gathered the motley crew and played games with them until mom and dad could come and take them home.
However, eventually old age and other ambitions got the better of the pair. So they sought a Peace Corps volunteer to take up their after-school activities. After several month’s of wrangling 20 kids, it had come time for the ragged Peace Corps volunteer to go home. Additionally, the Peace Corps didn’t feel like funding a person to play with kids all afternoon.
That’s when St. George’s University got involved. Ms. Peace Corps knew a SGU Significant Other who thought the Limes After School Program would make a great community volunteer project. Husbands and wives of SGU students took up the slack. The program has been running under their control for about one year (since 2009).
That brings us back to today, with a bunch of kids on a grassy field playing with Dollar Store U.S. toys and nowhere to go in case of Caribbean rain. Buildings surrounding the field have recently closed their doors to the program and any indoor activities the organizers might want to do.
On a sunny day like Tuesday though, kids like Davis didn’t care. They were just happy to have someone pitch a ball to them. I had so much fun doing just that, I went back the next day!
The first time we went, the girls wanted to braid our hair! The girl who commandeered my head found some fluffy, frizzy stuff. “Your hair is rough like the sea,” she exclaimed!
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