Loewenstern Fellowship Envelope #3

Open two days after the last question
Now that you've had time to process the community member's response, has there been any change in the way you approach your service work?  In any case, comment on your thoughts over the last two days related to his/her response.


I talked more with a couple of the staff members at Maria Cristina (MC), one of them named Rene, about the social issue, and they talked about how MC was trying to provide employable skills for the residents there.  He said that many, not all, of the kids could learn to shine shoes (a common job here, he said), but there just aren't the materials to do so.  This could be something I could bring up with Freddy, and probably will, in terms of an activity that we could do.

Many of the kids are not seen by the community, Rene said, and people just don't really acknowledge that they exist.  Therefore, much of our work is trying to make sure that they can function well in society, which can be difficult sometimes.  There's the balance between teaching them and disciplining them into the societally-appropriate behaviors, and also showing them love and care, because they've received so little of it in their lives.

On Friday, we had this creamy snack that was served outside from a gigantic wok-like thing.  There was one girl who stole a plate from this other girl who is young, really nearsighted, and eats slowly.  I ran after her and took away the plate, trying to explain to her that she shouldn't steal this food.  She then hit the plate up from my hand and spilled the food all over me and the ground outside. Then she kept eating from the ground with all the dirt as I picked up the food, and then she apologized to me (I forgave her and told her it was alright... what else can you do, i guess?).  As I was finishing putting all the food back on the plate, and she was hugging me and apologizing again, she hit the plate from the bottom again and so I picked it up again, and she began pushing me as I was picking up the food, at which I firmly told her to stop pushing me, and would put my arm out to stop her.  Then another resident attacked the girl after I was walking away, and finally some staff members came to discipline her.

I had that same tension of showing love to her, and yet also trying to show her that that was not an appropriate behavior (my stern looks and unflinching face as she laughed after hitting the food from my hands, and trying to explain to her why I was taking the food away from her since she stole it from someone else was the best I could come up with).  I wanted to leave the food on the ground for her to just eat, because I wanted to be like, "Fine, go ahead and just have at it then if you want it that much."  But I suppose that'd be like giving up on her in the same way that much of society has given up on her...  I understood from my Introduction to Special Education class that sometimes these behaviors are just impulsive and not because the person is inherently some person out to get you.  Sure, she was probably unhappy at me for taking away her food, especially since this was actually the second time I had done this.  (The first time, she took it from someone because she was tired of waiting for someone to hand her food, and I ran after her, told her that she needed to wait, and that she shouldn't take food from other people.  I then walked her back to the serving place, and handed her a plate of food.)  Still, since she may have a behavioral disability, her unhappiness at me causing her to lash out at me was probably just a minor part of why she acted that way.  Or maybe I'm just being naive... it's difficult to say.  I don't know the procedures for discipline in MC, so I can only hope that the staff members handled things appropriately, since I think I should've been in plain view of a number of them.

In any case, setting the residents up to be able to be as self-sufficient and integrate into society as much as they can still appears to be the goal for these residents.  There is also the question of whether we should be working harder to integrate the residents, or if we should be working to have the surrounding society be more accepting of their situations.  Both is necessary, of course, but we do seem to not be doing enough of the latter here at MC in my opinion.  Perhaps awareness of the need for overall societal acceptance of these residents is something that I can work on doing better.  But how exactly?  I can't just bring people into MC... hm.  This is where videos, photography, and other media play a useful role.