First and foremost - so many thanks to so many of you for sending me notes to my email. It brightens my (already bright) day to hear from you. And thank you even more for appreciating my blog. Not being an official "writer", it's nice to know that my way of putting words together makes sense and is satisfying to you to read.
Second - to those of you who have wondered if I am getting lonely or wistful - the answer is absolutely not. I have more acquaintances (on the way to becoming friends) than I even have time for, and my days are congenially filled.
Third - I am as completely happy as I have ever been (and fortunately for me I have been this happy several times before). I am stimulated and apparently stimulating. I am challenged. I can make a short-term difference at any given moment and my biggest challenge is can I make any long-term difference. But I'll get to that.
In a separate blog, of mostly photos, I'll forward photos of the big open air market and a few of the Fiesta de Quinze Anos (aka 15th birthday celebration) for the orphanage girls, which included all the town's important people. Very fine!
I have stopped taking Spanish. I can get by, in a very simple way, in the taxi, bus, stores, restaurants, socially in my house and at the orphanage where I now work. It felt so self-indulgent to go to Spanish class all day and in the end I decided that since I'm going to be starting to learn Mandarin in a few short weeks!!! that it didn't make sense to be in a classroom and out of the flow. So I am now working in an orphanage and trying in my own way to make beauty and order in the space where I spend the most time - the homework room. Apparently the effort has already lent some soothing quiet to the group - so I'm told. The lead teacher/housemother is my host mother, so we can talk about the situation at night and she can answer many questions for me.
The room (for 5-10 year olds) has one bookcase for their workbooks and one 3 shelf bookcase for everything else. One shelf is curriculum related. I'm not yet sure how that works, because they have never been seen using it. One shelf (2/3 full) has Spanish books, up to and including fine print novels which I am sure they will never read. The third shelf (1/3 full) has English children's books - which I am told - they look at the pictures in, but never attempt to read. So that is pretty useless. There are 2 Big Books in the corner - in Spanish - which they love to pour over. I will try to buy at least one more. (An aside. Since I wrote the above I have cleared out all books that they can't or won't read and replaced them with good Spanish and some bilingual books. We started a reading aloud effort, with two girls reading to everyone else at the beginning of homework. I'll know better next week if this lasted.)
The kids come in after changing out of their school uniforms and into 'ordinary clothes' and after having lunch. (Their clothes are the same day in and day out, and are washed once a week.) Some sit down and start their "homework" which consists of writing in impeccable cursive (even at age 5) without mistakes. The task is to copy the story that is in their book word for word and to copy/draw the illustration onto their page. I am told that as early as last week one of the volunteers watched Ivon, my friend and housemother, stand up in front of them all, get their attention and proceed to tear up their work as being completely inadequate and to shame the offenders to tears. Another volunteer has told me that she worked in Costa Rica where the same teaching strategy was used. A third volunteer suggested that it might be the influence of the Catholic Church teaching approach, which, if that's true, I am fortunate not to have experienced. At any rate if there is any long-term difference I can influence, it may well be that talking to the my friend/housemother about other strategies and approaches could be used.
(Another aside - it is apparently the custom to read report cards out loud. Those girls who didn't do well stood with heads bowed and shoulders stooped, and as soon as they sat down, burst into tears. We had a great conversation over dinner with another teacher who is here, talking about supportive strategies. I know Ivon heard it in the moment, but whether she remembers after we're gone is another story.)
In the room there is no place for sitting and reading alone or with a small group. There is a lot of constant movement and heckling and occasional grabbing and bullying. the frustration of being locked behind walls adjacent to the take-off end of the Cusco airport, and being abandoned by drunken, sick, abusive or dead parents - being separated from brother siblings - having no privacy - being constantly cold (no place has heat in Cusco at any time of year, and this is winter!) - having no consistently fond attention rained down on them - of having the same food over and over...... It is a bleak life and they do make the best of it with their cliques and exuberant efforts to forget their sadnesses.
But the sadness was clear at the 5 yo birthday party the other day, when she burst into tears wanting her mother. (She had been abandoned in a car on the outskirts of Cusco with her even younger brother, by parent or parents who just didn't want the responsibility anymore.) The sadness/yearning was clear at the Fiesta de Quinze Anos when a lovely 15 year old celebrant was in tears because the NGO I am working with provided a Mariachi band, and she'd never been given such a magnificant gift. In tears also apparently, because no real father or town father stepped up to dance with her and a teacher had to step in.
But what really burned my socks was that all the orphans (already abused by circumstances they couldn't control) had to wait for 2 hours past their dinnertime for the town officials to finally show up - as if they were the celebrants - so that the Fiesta could begin. By then the little kids from both the boys' and girls' orphanages were practically asleep at the table where they had to sit and wait. Then they all had to stand behind the adults who took photos, and the kids couldn't see - after dressing up and being told it was a fiesta for them all. Oh well, some problems are too systemic. This one is called being on Peruvian time.
So my effort for the next 3 weeks will be to keep up with beauty and order on a daily basis and perhaps make an effort in the older girls' homework room too. To work with 3 or 4 girls who I have already singled out as being especially relationship needy and just spend time with them. To read aloud in Spanish and make the inevitable mistakes and have them be my "professoras" and try to explain my mistakes. (We have had fun with that already. My Spanish is easy to laugh at!) To talk with Ivon each night and give her a sense of being appreciated (which she is - she does this job for 20 soles (~$10) a day so any appreciation anyone can give her is totally appropriate. It is a thankless job.) To insert, when possible, talk of some gentler strategies.
If I can do even a fraction of that in these few short weeks, I will be happy. This is a VERY difficult corner of life and the needs are overwhelming. I could spend a lot of time fundraising and working for this orphanage and even then the needs would be overwhelming. Perhaps later, when reflecting about this year, I will decide that my energies in the future should be spent this way, but right now I have to restrict myself to a few weeks.
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