The Children of Santa Teresa de Calcutta

Greetings, and Happy Monday to everyone!

I've just returned from a day at Santa Teresa de Calcutta, and I have a little window of time before the group and I reunite for dinner. Thought I'd share some events of the day.

Today, Eliza put Laura and me in charge of the St. Scholastica students. Also, Eliza received a call last night from the director of Manos Unidas School. Apparently, a very generous dental specialist has offered to come to Cusco and provide free dental services for the children of Manos Unidas, so their Monday school day was canceled. As a result, all 16 of us piled into the van this morning, and together went to help out at Santa Teresa.

The children at Santa Teresa all suffer from various physical and mental ailments, but, much like the students at Manos Unidas, they are all so quick to express joy. Their wide smiles will never stop being beautiful, humbling things to see. When we first arrived, things were a bit chaotic, but fairly quickly students gravitated to certain children, and after some time in the physical therapy room, it was time for morning feeding. Feeding is quite a process, as many of the children can't feed themselves independently. Luckily, there's no better group to help with this than a bunch of awesome OT students! I am impressed each day by the patience and the compassion that I see in each of these young women, and of course among the professors and their spouses. I don't know that I would have the stamina to do what they do.

Also present during the morning hours was a volunteer from an organization called Global Volunteers Network. His name is John, and he's 25 and in the process of applying for medical school. I am currently in the process of deciding whether I want to put my energies toward garnering a marriage proposal from John or from Helmud. The verdict remains up in the air! In any case, John is really great, and has been at the center for about a week, with three more to go. He's from Georgia, and he's really wonderful with the kids. I hope that a spectacular medical school accepts him.

The two "faculty spouses" on the trip have proven themselves just as invaluable as the students and professors. Marie, the wife of John, happens to be an early education teacher who has quite a bit of experience with autistic children, so her presence at the center was wonderful. She brought a bunch of educational supplies along with her, and she interacts so easily and skillfully with the kids. It seems that she knows just what to say and do to help them reach a higher level of potential. Steven (whom we affectionately call "Esteban"), husband of Debbie, has become Mr. Fix-It, and is particularly engaged in fixing about 47 wheelchairs. He and I stopped by a big ferreteria today, where he bought some tools, and for the rest of the afternoon he was in his element. The sisters are very happy to have him.

Professors Debbie and Diane had a wonderful breakthrough with a little boy who just arrived at the center today. He's only two months old, and has hydrocephalus, which basically means that his head is abnormally large because his brain is swelling. To add to that, he's blind, and possibly deaf as well. Apparently, he's been spoon-fed milk for these last two months, but today, Debbie actually fed him milk from a bottle. It was a bit of a struggle for him, and he only drank about an ounce of milk, but it was a wonderful thing to see him be a bit more self-reliant in this way, and to be able to suck and grip the bottle. We were all very excited at a small victory for this sweet, precious little boy.

Among the other children is beautiful Ruth, who, while not able to say much, is so very smart and has the most beautiful smile you can imagine. She was pretty popular today, and Marie did some great work with her, encouraging her to identify colors and letters. Jenna worked with a little boy named Angel Gabriel (called Gabriel), who has deep, dark eyes and an infectious little laugh. When I tickled his feet, he burst into a giant smile, and it was all I could do not to take him back to my apartment with me! There was another little boy whose name I don't know, but who I will affectionately call "the screamer." This little guy was just adorable, but whenever he got excited about anything (like my scarf, for example, or bubbles being blown in his direction), he would scream SO loudly! We probably encouraged him to keep on screaming because we couldn't help but laugh when he would scream as the bubbles came close to him!

After we fed the children lunch, it was time for us to go to our own lunch, which was quite lovely. Sopa de quinoa was on the menu, and I much enjoyed chatting with my tablemates, which consisted of Diane, Debbie, Sarah, and Ashley. (Grammy P., if you're reading this, you should know that I shared a few "Gram stories" with my lunch companions today, and they find you quite comical and adorable, which you are!)

Soon enough we were back to Santa Teresa for the afternoon. In the afternoon hours, the children seem to multiply because the ones who were at school are now back and full of energy! Most of the children are fed again at 2:30, and then the bedtime process begins for most of them, though not some of the more energetic school children, who stay up until 8 PM or so. Lindsay, one of the OT students, was incredibly patient while feeding her little buddy, a boy who is 10 years old but looks like he's about five. Diane told me that he probably won't be alive next year. It's a sad reality for some of these children, and one that I can't let myself think about for too long.

The children who went to school in the morning returned to the center with homework assignments to complete. Jenna and I spent some time helping one adorable little girl with subtraction problems. As we were finishing up, one of the staff members came over to me with notebooks belonging to three other children, and asked me if I would complete their homework for them. At first I thought I misheard, but then she repeated that the staff members do the childrens' homework each night because, she said, many of the children weren't able to do it themselves. I agreed to do the homework, but couldn't actually bring myself to do it, and instead found the three students to whom the notebooks belonged and paired them each up with an OT student to complete the work. All three students did what they needed to do, and I have become fairly certain that the reason for the staff members doing the homework is more a matter of efficiency than of ability on the part of the kids. It's hard to judge the staff for this because I'm sure things get super hectic when there aren't lots of volunteers around to help, but it makes me sad that there isn't a way to get more individualized attention for these kids. So many of them are so full of promise.

My final adventure of the day involved a young man who lives at the center. He somehow canoodled his way into the childrens' building, and proceeded to grab the hands of various volunteers and have them dance together for him. For some reason, he was particularly excited when Ashley (an OT student) and I would dance together. Unfortunately, he chose the childrens' bedtime as the time to come and start dancing in their room, so one of the sisters asked Ashley and me to try and "lure" him back into his part of the center. This turned out to be a rather difficult and hysterical task, and I wish I had video footage for y'all. Basically, every few steps that we took, he would do some sort of a CRAZY dance move along with a noise of some sort, like a high-pitched scream or a groan of some kind. He then stood and patiently waited for me to mimic him. As a result, I ended up making a crazy squealing noise while tapping my feet on a tree stump, and then doing some kind of a ballerina-style leap with my arms out, and various other strange movements and sound effects. Ashley got a real kick out of watching the whole show, and once we finally found the mens' building, we had to run away during the few seconds that our friend turned his gaze from us so that we could return to our group. Quite a laugh.

The children I met today are all so beautiful, and so full of life. It makes me question why they must suffer as they do, but then I wonder if perhaps they don't realize that they are suffering because they know nothing else. And if, perhaps, they are here in part to show us joy that conquers even the direst of situations. I am blessed to be here and to know them, even if only for a little while.

Figure skater and cancer survivor Scott Hamilton said, "The only disability in life is a bad attitude," and if he is indeed right, then I've spent today not among disabled kids, but among super-children!