Blog Entry
Fire Ants & Runaways . . . a day in the life.
May 28, 2010 by admin, under News.
Michelle A. recently returned to the U.S. after volunteering with us for about 4 months. While we were together in Porvenir I asked her if she would write a “real life” description of life as a Kinder volunteer. Michelle warned me in her email that, ” . . . it was a particularly grueling, hot day. But, it does give an idea of how hard it can be working there.” . . . and I wrote back that what I think shines thru in her writing is that although it IS really hard sometimes and there ARE fire ants and runaway kids sometimes, there is also a genuine love and affection for the children and for fellow volunteers. With that said, we send much appreciation to Michelle A. for sharing a day in her life!
because we simply do not have normal days. Ours is a job with enough
ups, downs, changes and excitement to balance out a whole lifetime of
doing nothing, though I don’t know that any of us volunteers are the
sort to want that type of balance. I let Andrea Ugne and Shauna out at seven-thirty, waiting behind to hang up my clothes and Shauna’s, which were still tumbling around in the washing machine. Once the wash was finally done and I had managed to hang everything over the enclosed railing, Ofer let me out and I
walked as quickly as I could to catch up.
I was secretly glad to be coming late because on our way to Kinder we stop by and pick up Luis. His new game is pretending not want to go to
Kinder in order to have us try to convince him, sometimes sitting in
the road, sometime
s running away, and sometimes just pouting and sticking out his tongue at us. We all get pretty frustrated, especially because all of us love him and know what his hard life islike. We all, very much so, want him to come to Kinder with us to give him love, support and education. So, we play all of his games,
kneeling down and talking sweetly, more harshly commanding him, holding his hand and trying to get him to walk, etc. This time, however, Andrea had promised him that if he behaved well, she would take him to the beach after Kinder. So, when I met up with the others at Grandma’s house, he held my hand and walked on his own with me all the way, prattling on about the beach and sometimes attacking my hand with aggressive little kisses, or holding it up to his cheek.
Once we got to Kinder, Rosa (the teacher) was busily tracing a worksheet over and over again for the kids to do, something with two
lines drawn in bold, then dotted lines to trace the same shape, then
empty space to try on your own (a very typical Kinder worksheet). So,
for the first bit of class us four volunteers took turns playing with
the kids and hurriedly tracing copies of the two worksheets over and
over for the fourteen children who had shown up that day (usually at
least three or four of our students stay home sick, and this time it
was six, not including the children who hardly come at all anymore).
After singing some songs and relearning the merienda (snacktime)
prayer, Rosa had each of the children come to the blackboard and
practice writing their vowels. Our four and five-year olds couldn’t
just sit in their seats and pay attention to something so repetitive
and passive, so they started to tease each other and take out toy cars
and write on the tables with crayon. I tried to get the kids to behave
and pay attention, but I couldn’t help concentrating a little more
than I should have at Rosa’s son Alex (who is three and a little young
to participate) trying desperately to fit his whole body inside a
cardboard box, squirming and crawling and squealing right under where
the kids were practicing their vowels.
Afterward, we handed out an activity for the kids to do. On the one side was a worksheet for writing the letter “Ch” and on the o
ther wasa photocopied parrot that I had drawn for the kids to color, as
dessert for finishing their writing-practice-vegetables. A few of the
kids, namely Jared and Rossel, are really hard on themselves and never
want to try a new skill, for fear of failing. They just stare at the
paper, maybe trace the ones with points, and say “no puedo” over and
over, crinkling their foreheads up and raising their eyebrows towards
the middle. We grab their little hand in ours and help them hold on,
leading their pencil into the shape of a letter and holding it less and less.
With some of the slightly older children, you can see them improve little by little, sometimes even in one day, and gain the confidence they need to write “Ch” or “A” or whatever we are working on. Their worried eyebrows fade into proud, happy eyebrows and they cannot seem to believe that in the end, “si, se puede.” With some of the younger children, or the ones with really bad motor skills, you can feel their muscles buckling under yours, trying desperately to control the pencil. Activities like this require a lot of jumping around from kid to kid, trying to devote as much of yourself to as many of the kids in need of extra help as you can, without short-changing the more advanced kids (impossible).
Today, we were short one volunteer for the writing exercise because little Bryan pooped his pants. Since his mother is neglectful and he dresses himself, he does not wear underwear. So, Shauna was off by the pila washing him and, I am sure, washing and rewashing her hands.
After each child finished writing their Ch’s, they colored the parrots in all sorts of different colors and patterns. Luis had been doing relatively well, but he is bright enough to know how to be a slacker. So, he quickly scribbled yellow all over the parrot, knowing that when he finished it would be playtime. He bore his teeth, half-grinning, half-terrifying, and ran outside, probably to kick down someone’s carefully built tower, or climb into one of the forbidden trees. Ugne and I both like coloring a little too much for adults, so after we helped the kids by coloring the talons or beaks while they did the feathers, we made our own, multicolored parrots. After work comes playtime, surprisingly one of the least hectic times of day.
At playtime, the often-messy, always-over-excited children do not need to be coloring in specific colors, or tracing dotted lines or counting triangles. At playtime, they can chase each other around the schoolhouse, put play dough in their hair, and push each other backand forth until someone falls. Usually at least one child escapes the property of the Kinder, either pushing open the iron gate and running down the dirt road, or ducking under the barbed wire to gleefully taunt us from the construction site next door.
Running away like this usually gets them the exact attention that they did it for, with one of the sweaty volunteers walking then running, coaxing them out ofholes and grabbing them by their arms to hoist them down from trees and steep hills.
Since the equinox, too much activity results in bucketfuls of sweat and thick red heat rashes everywhere your skin touches itself. So, at least half of the volunteers use playtime to sit, catatonically hot, inside the Kinder, which is in the shade and relatively safe from the fire ants that always always attack me when I step outside. We let the kids climb unto our laps, where they usually get bored and climb down. I did go outside today. Even though I got bit by fire ants, it was worth it to cuddle under a tree with Annie (Alex’s twin sister) and read her a Richard Scary story. I love re
ading the kids stories. After pushing and climbing on each other a little to get the best spot somewhere on my lap or back, even the wildest children become very still to listen.
After playtime is merienda. All of the kids sit at their tables and put their heads down while Rosa sings a song and we pour out bowls of cereal and milk. When they’ve gotten seconds and eaten each other’s leftovers, the kids wash their own bowls in the pila. By now, they
barely need supervision and share the sponge and water on their own. One or two kids need an intervention, or else they would wash and rinse and rewash their bowl all day. I joined in at the end to help with a couple of bowls that were left on the tables dirty, which some of the dishwashing addicts helped me with. The kids are only five or so, so it is to be expected.
Once having washed the dishes, the kids crowded around Shauna, who was handing out toothbrushes. Some of the kids like brushing their teeth and others have a hard time with the coordination, of course. But everyone likes to spit, and often if I am outside during the toothbrushing, I walk home with spots of bluish sticky saliva-water on my shirt.
After Kinder, we walk home Luis (who was going to the beach), as well as Rossel, Bryan and Yeison, who live at Grandma’s House. Today Rossel and Yeison did not come to Kinder, since their mother has started working in the pineapple fields and their older sister was told to watch them at home, herself skipping school and the older kids program she participates in. So, the five of us who worked at Kinder walked little Bryan and Luis home, which took a long time because little Bryan’s legs are very small and he was walking slowly anyways, a
little lonely without Rossel and Yeison and a little deprived of the physical attention he gets when he is not covered in poop.
La Ceiba, HONDURAS