a week´s work

Hello. It´s Friday, early evening, and it´s been quite a week. I´m working with two sets of "orphans." I´m using the quotation marks because they´re not orphans in the sense that I´m used to. Most, if not all of them, have parents--they´re just indisposed to taking care of their children for one reason or another. There is the whole gamut--abandonment, drugs, illness, extreme poverty, abuse (one of the girls has a baby by her father--it breaks my heart). There are children whose faces have been destroyed by fire or accident, but I have seen no children whose spirits have been completely destroyed (yet). There are some whose spirits are very much intact, but have developed a world-weariness that is difficult to encounter in anyone so young. There are two I´d like to describe here.

One is Fatima. She is four years old and smart as a whip. After 3 hours working with a really big group, two days later she was reminding the older children of my name with a confidence that was amusing. When we were doing our activity yesterday, cutting out, coloring and pasting the pieces of a bear, she knew what she needed, she knew what she was willing to do, and what she wanted me to do. When she wanted to interrupt a counseling session with another child so she could see the counselor, no one (I mean no one) was going to deter her. She is so competent, it is a little scary.

The other is Roxana. She is sixteen, and as mature as anyone I have ever met. She is not what you would call cheerful, and she does not suffer fools gladly. I don´t know how strong she is physically, but I´m sure she could kick some serious ass. She´s insightful and wise and has a sense of humor more dry than any martini. If she were in one of my classes at Beloit College, I´m sure she´d outshine the rest. If she doesn´t get a chance in the world, it will be an awful waste.

I have been doing crafts with the children, which they seem to enjoy, but I am hoping to be a little more deliberate with the girls at the smaller orphanage in the 7 weeks I have left in Huancayo. My goal is to teach English for an hour or so, do a craft or some other diversion for an hour, and then do personal writing for a final hour or two. The girls really want to learn English, and I´m happy to oblige. I´m hoping they want to do personal writing, as well. They can write to me, or they can write with my promise that I will publish their stories. This afternoon, with a donation by my friend Diane, I bought 2 notebooks for each of the girls, and with the pens I brought that were donated by the Beloit College bookstore, Stanton Shoes, and another friend, Marion, we should be set.

Well, my internet hour is just about completed, and my family has given me a curfew after I came home about 7 hours late on Wednesday. The most interesting part of that story is that I was locked in a bathroom for about a half hour. Maybe when there´s a lull, I´ll write a bit more about that.

I won´t say where the bathroom was, but I do want to put in a "plug" for some great folks I have met here and have gotten a chance to work with. They are Alison and Terry, and they´re spending a year here working with a volunteer organization, Tinkuy Peru. If you get a chance, check out their website: www.terryandalison.com

Until next time.