July 23 - Second Week in the Orphanage

One week more of placement at the orphanage. It’s been fun, and I feel as if I've accomplished some things: beauty and order of all areas of classroom, bags to put their things into so that they are not spilling out all over the room, music from my iPad to create a sense of serenity, new, more appropriate books (i.e. Spanish) and cleaned out English new that weren't being used. Reading aloud by the kids to the whole group of exciting books. (The Little Prince, The Lion and the Puppy, How the Elephant Got His Trunk ... all in Spanish with great illustrations.) 

Fun projects - making scrapings of crayon and melting them between two clear pages for window art...  papier-mache facemasks for a play... Educational projects: listening to heartbeats, hearing tones of tuning fork through air and bone, learning and practicing tooth brushing and flossing. (Dental hygiene is a huge problem. Some girls have already had adult molars removed - very bad! One, age 5 has a broken molar and there is no money to get it fixed. She is in pain, especially when she eats the sticky candy that volunteers often bring. 

For the other volunteers - present and future, I've made up a daily schedule that the orphanage runs on and a daily schedule for the part of the day the kids are with the volunteers. Just an effort to make the volunteers have a more complete impression of what goes on with the kids and how they might best fit in.

My personal reaction to the kids is detached. I feel compassion, willingness to help, but only if they approach me. By and large I am available to the group, but not especially to individuals. I'm quite comfortable in this somewhat distant capacity and can observe them well. Unfortunately, because of the language barrier, I can't have in depth discussions with Yvonne (their teacher and my housemother). One week there was another teacher here and we did do a lot of analysis and guidance. Of course Yvonne had a big job educating us to the complexities of orphanage life, in one of the least well funded of all the orphanages in town.

So in the next week I want to more firmly establish the reading aloud initiative, well aware that in the not too distant future it will likely dissolve. (But I hope I can excite Yvonne about reading the books herself, and then she might want to read them to the children.) I want to finish decorating the face masks and start them on construction paper chains to decorate the room, perhaps with Diana Taylor's idea of writing hopes and appreciations inside. On the last day I want to have a guacamole party for the kids.  I'm told they have never had guacamole and chips.  I think it would be fun and the country is on holiday next week anyway.

Because the orphanage is adjacent to the airport, Yvonne says that as my plane is about to take off in 2 weeks, she and the kids will raise a flag from inside the orphanage that will say "Guacamole!" that would be fun to see that from inside the plane!

FOLLOW UP:

I did do what I wrote about above with these results:  the intro sheet for the new volunteers was very well received, by the admin and by new volunteers.

Yvonne read the short story by Tolstoy, but couldn't calm her mind enough to read the other Sp books like "How the Elephant Got His Trunk" and "The Little Prince".

We did origami, paper chains, individual pencil cup decorations and mask decorations.

I also bought quite a lot of yarn, knitting/crochet needles and special knotting thread, which was snapped up by eager girls who proceeded to make knitted hats, scarves and numerous knotted friendship bracelets which were whipped up in a few short minutes, even the 5 year olds were producing wearable art of quite good quality.  Some of the older girls did some really amazing macramé and other knotted bracelets.

The last day I was there Maximo Nivel (Josue) did provide a guacamole party.  It was a lick-your-plate event. The kids sang and danced (and gave me hugs) and then settled into eating guacamole and chips - a very unusual treat.

As it happens I left Cusco on an earlier flight than planned and was distracted at the moment of passing the orphanage, so I don't know whether the "guacamole" flag was ever raised. What I do know is that Josue has promised to plan guacamole and wonton chip making lessons for the girls so they can have parties now and then!  Nice!

A glimpse of the orphanage from the runway of Cusco Airport.