Open after you've had a particularly emotional day related to service
I must preface this by saying that I'll probably be writing more about various moments than just about today. I feel like I have productive and value-of-service-questioning moments pretty much every day, so it makes it difficult to find a day where it is particularly so. Similarly with this envelope. But that being said, here goes!
What prompted such a strong emotional response in you today? Will this change the nature of your relationship with a specific individual, the community, or your host agency and, if so, how?
At Ciudadela, the orphange for kids without special needs, I do happen to have a couple of favorites whose faces I love to smoosh and say "Ayyy, eres TAN lindo(a)! [Ayyy, you are SO cute!]" (face smooshing is just something I do to people... lol).
One of those kids is called Randy. He's about 7 years old, one sibling out of 8, and 5 of their siblings live at Ciudadela (the other three are a little too young, but the administration is trying to get them to join their siblings too). Not too much is known about their family besides that I think they were living with their uncles/aunts, but they were being mistreated, so they left. I heard they lived on the streets for like 6 weeks, with the oldest, Guadalupe, taking care of them (she's 14 and a fiesty, polite, and very can-do girl... taking care of 7 siblings is bound to instill some of those hardworking qualities in ya). They recently joined Ciudadela a couple of months ago... I think maybe in April, or even May before I got there. Their whole family is pretty awesome.
Anyway, Randy wanted me to lift him up in the air like many of the younger kids like me to do to them (ogh... my back's had problems since high school... so I try to say just one time per person, but I usually give in and give more anyway). The usual fanfare as two or three other kids crowded around me after they saw me lifting/throwing him up in the air.
By the time I gave Randy a third lift up, he was the last one to stick around, as the other kids had ran off to some place else. Before leaving, he smiled and told me, "Mi papi eres, no ve? [My dad you are, yeah? ('no ve' is a very Bolivian tag question)]"
It's easy to forget that these kids don't have parents. That the closest thing they have are the women, the Tías, who live in their houses. (But of course, even those Tías aren't really the best substitute. And obviously, one can imagine there's a relative dearth of males around the orphanage.) It's almost like college, really, seeing these kids living together in their casitas. Actually, now that I think about it, it's a lot like Rice with our residential college system, although they aren't all that gung-ho about their casitas like we can be, but they do live together and cook together and are like a mini-family in that way, with a Tía for each casita.
But of course it hits me sometimes, like when the older girls say they're sad because they're thinking about how their parents abandoned them, or how under (what I presume to be) a school assignment, they have the headline of "Failures" in their notebook and they list how when they were 2, their mom died, and that when they were 14, they were told their dad passed away.
This reminds me of an astute observation that Alice, another volunteer who worked with me at Maria Cristina, who was asked to buy a bunch of like headbands, hair clips, and a bunch of other accessories for some of the girls there. She didn't mind, and we've both spent our fair share of money helping out Maria Cristina, so it was fine. Even nicer, one of the girls wrote up this formal request asking her to buy the stuff, instead of just asking her, and we both thought that was really sweet.
As I was walking her back towards her house, she commented that growing up, at home, she would just ask her mom for all this stuff and for makeup, and her mom would just give it to her. But the people at Maria Cristina don't have parents they can just ask. So it makes sense that they would ask her.
I've kept that in mind as I've bought one of the kids a scientific calculator with a bunch of batteries to go along with it when she asked me to get one for her, since she needed it to do her math homework (or rather, she asked me to ask Freddy, my supervisor at Projects Abroad, to get her one, but I decided to just buy it anyway and save Freddy the trouble. I'm also not sure if they have the money to do that? Dunno). These sorts of things with buying gifts and money-related things are difficult though, because no one wants to feel used and valued just because they happen to be blessed with money. I think at times Alice and I have both felt that way at Maria Cristina. But in many ways, it's better that I spend the money here and now and get them the stuff so I can be sure that the money I'm using is actually being used properly.
So would being more cognizant that the people at Maria Cristina/Ciudadela don't have parents be an appropriate change to my relationship towards this community? I think so. Of course not in the pitying way of "Oh, these poor orphans," but in the sense that what I give, whether it be my time or money, I must realize that that is a large chunk of all the support they get during this time in their life. I can't be resentful, as easy as it can be sometimes when I don't always feel appreciated, or when the kids make fun of my Spanish, or when they'd just rather do something else than hang out with me.
On a more personal note, whether I end up getting married or not, I think this experience is certainly solidifying my desire to be a father. So perhaps I'll be a father figure to those without one in the future if I don't end up with a family, or maybe I'll try to adopt anyway (adoption policies may not allow that though... single male? Automatically sketch. Then again, they didn't even allow my awesome site director of my city's summer camp to adopt her foster child with behavioral disabilities, largely because she was single. Anyway, we'll see). If I do get married, I think I do definitely want to adopt. I can see myself loving these kids just as if they were my own, which is what I expected would happen, but it's nice to see in reality. We'll see what actually happens down the line, though.
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