“Fosco” in Portuguese means something dark, or opaque…perhaps louche. I don’t pretend to know its exact meaning in Catalan but I believe it invokes something similar however You – my Catalans –  might want to correct me on that point. La Fosca is a parish of the town of Palamós, in the province of Gerona on the Costa Brava. Off season, Palamós is a sleepy place…as I’ve seen it these last few days.The government of Catalonia run and fund a youth hostel in La Fosca, mostly used for spring and summer camp events hosting children and adolescents of all backgrounds. At first glance, seen from the main road, it is an odd marriage of two constructions; the uninspired mediterranean post-brutalist extension three floors high hugging tight and well over what was allowed to remain of an original XIXth century single story building. Visually; an uncomfortable embrace.

Us monitors were dropped off there at around nine on the Tuesday night. We checked in with the administration – dumping our gear in the staff room – before being shown around a little, shown our room and fed. By a quarter to ten nothing else was required of us and we had nothing but time to kill before our kids arrived the following morning. Our room – 108 – was at the very end of the corridor on the first floor; spartan accommodation with its three iron bunk-beds and its single neon tube on the ceiling providing the only light. It reminded me uncomfortably of my first few years at boarding school. Whereas at school the walls were painted a pastel green – a colour I’ve seen they also use in prisons and hospitals; to keep the inmates calm and to keep them from the impulse to masturbate, I’ve been told  – here the bare concrete walls were painted a light blue up until our waste and then off-white for the remainder of the walls and ceilings. I threw my stuff on the first bunk I found and suggested we might go out, seeing how early it was, to check out our surroundings and maybe find a place to drink a beer. The other four whimpered their lack of interest in my plan so I left them to their phones and went out to get a bit of air. At first glance we were stuck in the middle of some sort of an industrial estate. The lack of any glamour to this part of town was further confirmed as I walked past a yellow-stained mattress, a discarded fridge leaning against a wall and a smashed-up TV just across the road from the entrance to the hostel. In front of us there was a twenty-four hour car-wash in the parking lot of a cash and carry and around us nothing but closed hardware shops. No such thing as a café in sight! I hiked up the main road to the petrol station, bought myself a couple of cans of beer and walked back to the entrance of the hostel, to lean against a wall (under a tree for shelter against the drizzle), drink my beer and smoke a bit of grass. It was also rather cold so I didn’t hang around all that long and soon went inside and upstairs to read myself to sleep.

I slept pretty well that night despite having woken up a few times – a little disoriented – with some rather visual dreams, but I woke up refreshed and – after a good breakfast – felt ready for the task at hand. Our batch of 55 eight-year olds arrived a little late, at about ten thirty, and we welcomed them in English as they piled off the bus, out onto the street; little things dragging bags almost as big as they were. They were all smiles and waving hands and broken, patchy English as they replied to our greetings. We moved them into the grounds of the hostel and began our process of introducing ourselves and getting to know them. They were all lovely but I rapidly identified three boys that I thought might need a firmer hand to keep them in line. As the following three days progressed it turned out I was right on two accounts; but how wrong I was about little Jaume Jo.

By chance he was allotted to my group of thirteen kids; I think I sighed when all the names were read out and he was told to come with me. I can see him now, in his little beige puffer jacket. He had huge almond-shaped eyes that seemed to penetrate you… before being rapidly distracted by something else. As monitors, we have a standard protocol that we must follow initially, designed to break the ice between us and our students; the so-called “ice-breaker” games. There are many different options at hand but they all invariably involve some sort of co-operative game where, for example, a ball is thrown to student and he or she is encouraged to take the stand and say something about themselves (in English) before passing the ball to someone else. All the kids in my group followed suit  except for Juame, to my initial irritation. He would take the ball, say nothing and leave the circle… not wanting to share or take part in the activity. He seemed more interested in running off with the ball, stamping in puddles and was evidently very distracted by the various birds and cats to be seen in the playground. It rapidly became evident to me that Jaume wasn’t a difficult child. Instead what I had on my hands was a special-needs situation. I’m not a trained psychologist and, as far as I know, no-one else was on my team. I went up to my co-ordinator to ask him if we had been advised about this from the school. He told me he had no such information. I’d have to wing it.

This was all on the Wednesday morning. The temperature was dropping and the cold drizzle of the night before had not stopped. In fact it had started to come down harder and colder. We were experiencing a freak cold-snap in April. Most of the activities we had planned for our group were out-doors but the weather wasn’t helping and the in-door space available to us was limited given that there were another two schools staying on the same premises. We had to rethink our whole strategy for the following three days. It stopped raining over lunch and we decided to take the kids down to the beach-front and harbour; an activity that had been planned for the following day. We organized them into a long centipede – all holding hands in pairs – and I was at the head of the column, with my group,  tasked with walking us all down towards the harbour, about two kilometers down a busy road. All the children had understood our instructions but as I was concerned about Jaume running off across the road I had him up with me, at the head of the column, and pretty much held him by the scruff. We had only just started walking when one of his little mates – Eric – walked up to us and said that he would hold Jaume by the hand. “It’s ok” he explained (this little eight-year old!), “Jaume suffers from a condition that means we all have to take care of him”. He took his hand and helped me manage him as we walked down the street. As Eric got tired, about twenty minutes later, another little boy called Marc came up and took over from him with exactly the same quiet compassion. I was stunned at how these little children accepted, understood and appreciated Juame. This sort of thing happened constantly over the following two days. Down at the harbour, we walked around the fishing boats and the fishermen mending their nets, pointing out the seagulls and the fish and so on and so forth… reinforcing the vocabulary in English and helping with translations into Catalan and Spanish where needed. After a while of all that we gave them an hour or so off to play on the beach. I spent most of it shadowing Jaume as he chased after seagulls and people walking their dogs and the little fish he saw in the water. Despite my best efforts he ended up wading into the cold water well up to his knees and that night, at their little disco party back at the hostel, he was we wearing crocs and a pair of trousers lent to him by a friend as his clothes dried. It was only that night that the accompanying teachers of our group actually told us that Jaume had Aspergers Syndrome and also suffered from ADHD.

The next morning – Thursday – the drizzle had returned, now turning into rain, and it was colder still than the day before. What to do with our kids? We packed them into our staff-room; all fifty-five of them into a space not much more than 8 metres by 5. None of the activities we had planned had foreseen such an eventuality and our coordinator was flapping a bit and at a loss of what to do with them. I rolled up my sleeves and put my artist’s hat on; let’s give them paper and crayons and get them to draw what we saw yesterday at the harbour. All the kids came up with lots of drawings – some better, some worse – but Jaume’s one’s were tremendous! All of them utterly cram-packed with symbols and code and images that he took pains to explain to me in detail. As I asked the kids to explain their boats and seagulls and nets to me in English, most of them had trouble remembering the vocab we had discussed the day before. Jaume remembered the lot! And he seemed to know how to use it in context.

That afternoon we managed to get the kids outdoors a bit with various activities, despite the cold and the rain. I observed the kids as they interacted with Jaume; always with kindness and acceptance despite his compulsion to do things his own way. He came to me a lot at moments – demanding my attention to tell me this or explain that, often wanting a hug or wanting me to see something he thought was interesting. I payed him all the attention that I could as best I could, following the example of his friends. That evening, after dinner, we had all of them play a night game in the grounds of the hostel with torches, despite the cold. I was utterly rung-out by about ten but our kids were in hyper-active mode and weren’t due to go to bed for another half hour. I sat on a log to supervise the remainder of the activity. Several times, Juame came up to me to say he was tired and cold and that wanted to go to bed and I had to tell him to be patient – that he could go soon – as we weren’t allowed to send them up to their rooms on their own without supervision. He lay down on the log next to me and put his head on my knee to doze off. Once they had gone off to bed and we were clearing up I found a wind-up torch on the ground. It was labelled Jaume Jo. I used it to read myself to sleep whilst my colleagues slept in the bunks around me.

That night I slept deeply but woke up with a start just after six with the realization that I had had the same recurring dream these last three nights in a row. In this dream I see the same spartan room with its bare concrete walls timidly painted blue up to the waist and broken white up the remainder of the walls and ceiling. That bloody neon tube provides the only light. There is a single cot with a horse-hair blanket on it and a set of bare wooden shelves with a few clothes on it. Claudia is taking clothes off the shelves and folding them quietly on the bed before putting them into a little battered suitcase on the bed. Jaume is standing there, in his little beige puffer-jacket, looking up at her as she does what she is doing. She is utterly impassive and never looks at him. “Where are we going Claudia? Why are you packing my things? Are you coming with me?” She finishes what she is doing and closes the suitcase with a click. She picks up the case by the handle and takes Jaume by the hand, walking him across the room and to the open door. She never looks at him. She leans across the threshold and places the suitcase out on the landing, leading him out with the other hand. Jaume turns to look at her as she gently close the door. She is looking at the ground. “Claudia!!” he exclaims, as that last shaft of light turns to blackness….and then that click of the latch as it closes. And I’m left there blinking in the dark. I spent the day with that line by Kubrick: “The most terrifying fact about the universe is not that it is hostile but that it is indifferent….”

We took the kids back down to the harbour that Friday morning to visit the Museum of Fishing. On our way down I lead the column of kids once again and this time Jaume held my hand the whole way, there and back, and listened – mostly – to my instructions. At the beach he picked up a quartz pebble that he seemed to love and asked me to keep it for him whilst we got back to the hostel. Once back, and after lunch, it was time for them all to leave and we said our goodbyes. I came up to Jaume and gave him his torch, which I put in his bag. What about his pebble, I asked him. He gave me a hug and said “you keep it.” I have it on my bookshelf. If I ever have a son, I pray to have one like this little lad.