Nighttime stories

Yesterday we dedicated the majority of the afternoon to the orphanage, arriving at 2:30pm and not leaving until 9:30pm. Although it was an exhausting afternoon, it was also so rewarding and good for us to see the orphanage for such a long period of time. It also simulated just a fraction of what the regular workers experience on a daily basis. Being with kids for so long is not easy work; kids have a lot of energy and can by quite exhaustive. It helped me admire even more how dedicated and hardworking the staff is at Fundación. At the beginning of the afternoon, we spent our time playing with the kinders, Laura’s and my favorite group. They had an 8^th grade school group visit to play some games with them and give them a snack. The visiting students took tons of pictures of the kids, and with us also (we felt like odd celebrities), and gave them each a big bag of dulces and party favor toys at the end of the visit. The kids LOVED the sweets and toys. They were running all over the room, shooting propellers at each other, blowing loudly on whistles, and eating tons of dulces. It was really sweet to give all the children toys, but it reminded me again that really nothing at this orphanage is for them to call their own. They have no space of their own, really. The older kids have more claim and respect for their beds and the things on and around their beds, but for the younger kids, toy snatching happens on a regular basis. It’s just like what we see in day cares in the States, except these children have no home to store toys of their own. In some way, it helps the kids understand the necessity of sharing and to not value possessions as much, but on the other hand it’s just sad to see they can’t claim anything as their own.

            We stayed that evening at the orphanage for dinner, which was actually pretty good for mass-produced food. And after dinner the older kids had a Bible lesson of listening to a pastor speak and filling in answers in a workbook. They all looked so exhausted; these kids are on the go all day long, without naps unless they happen to fall asleep in a chair and get carried to their beds. And I was talking to one of the older girls in charge of the 6-12 year old girls, and she told me her only day of rest is Saturday, which happens to be the only she goes to school as well, because she has to be with the other girls during the week. We are always so tired from our time at the orphanage, but kids as young as 15 are there all the time, with motherly duties. Brooks made a good point: In some ways these kids grow up fast, because they have responsibility and independence at a young age, but in other ways they all stay very young at heart, because they’ve missed out on critical nurturing moments when they’re young, and still crave them into older ages. A perfect example of this is what we did that evening. We went around and read bedtime stories to all of the kids, which is something they have rarely experienced before. Laura and I went to the 6-12 year old girls room for a while, and we ended up reading some of the books to them we had brought over from the 4 year olds room. They loved even the more simple books, and ended up reading them with us multiple times, flipping through the pages and counting butterflies, something you would expect from someone much younger than themselves. And one of the 8-year-old girls began reading the book herself, and it was disheartening to see how difficult it was for her to read. Some of these children only go to school one day a week, and they have absolutely no books in their room except for schoolbooks. The library at the orphanage is a fairly new addition, something that the Spanish volunteers helped instigate. These children are all so intelligent and eager to learn, and I by no means want to judge an entire school system or an entire orphanage based on the reading level of one child, but it was concerning and eye-opening nonetheless.