The Beginning

Hi guys!

9:30 AM: I'm finally here!  I got to the compound where we stay about an hour ago, got a brief tour, and was told just to rest until 11:30, when I have my orientation.  I start working with the kids this afternoon! This all doesn't seem quite real yet--I can't believe that I'm on a continent that I've never been to, that I got here all alone, that I'll be volunteering with orphans in a few scant hours.  I've wanted to do something like this my entire life (literally--in elementary school I would occasionally send my imaginary friend on trips to Uganda to treat kids with HIV.)

The flight over here from Quito was interesting.  It was gorgeous--you could see these lush green mountains peeking out from between cotton-candy clouds.  However, it's fortunate that I don't get motion sick at all--the ride was not smooth, as it was a fairly small plane in thin mountain air.  We weren't allowed to even have our tray tables down for much of the flight because they would rattle.  But look at these views! My cell phone photos don't do it justice.

When I arrived and found the volunteer director waiting for me, we took a taxi to the volunteer house.  The driving here is crazy--most road laws seem to be either optional or nonexistent, and people make up lanes at will.  And much of the city is poor, in ways that I've never seen before.  I didn't get to see much, but it's strange--there's the intersection of what you picture in your head as "third world poverty" with modern life--cars and airports and iPhones.  And there's tons of stray dogs.  I probably saw 30 dogs on the 20 minute taxi ride.  They said that they don't spay and neuter here, so the population just grows.

The volunteer house is really cool.  It's not big--a downstairs with a kitchen and a sort of living area, and an upper floor with a few bedrooms and bathrooms.  Here's my room:

I have 2 roommates who I have yet to meet--everyone was already working when I got here, so I have a few hours to myself before orientation.  I'll write more and actually publish this online once I've started working this afternoon.  

9:00 PM

We had orientation, where we met a bunch of the people living in the orphanage whose grounds we’re staying on.  Some (or most) of these aren’t actually orphans—everyone staying at this location, in the same compound as the volunteers, has special needs (mostly pretty severe), and a lot of them were given up because their parents didn’t have the resources to care for them.  Their disabilities vary greatly and are both intellectual and physical.  We were just introduced to everyone, and then we went to work our first shift!

We went to a different orphanage, next door to the compound where we are staying.  This program is run by Catholic nuns and houses children from birth to about age 7.  I was assigned to the second-youngest group—basically kids from crawling to about age 3.  There were only 4 of them, and 2 volunteers assigned to it, so we each got to supervise two children.  The most fascinating thing to me was the way each child had its own unique personality, even at such a young age.  They couldn’t even speak yet, but there was still Couma, who wanted to be the boss, Kimberly, who is almost always smiling, Manuel, who wanted to connect to everyone, and Erika, who just wanted to be held.  (Which I’m fine with.  I could hold babies for hours and not get bored.)

But something struck me as I was working with them.  I noticed that Erika had earrings in—the little baby ones that you can get at Claire’s in the US.  And the nuns wouldn’t have given her the piercings—I’m sure that earrings are far out of their budget.  So it means that this child’s parents took pride in their daughter, did something to make her a little more beautiful, and then had to give her up.  This child has suffered more than I likely ever will, all before she learned to speak.  She was loved, and she had to lose that.  She is still loved, but now it’s by shifts of teenagers in Ecuador for a few weeks and overworked nuns.  There’s so much sorrow in the world, and I don’t know if anything anyone can do will ever be able to ameliorate it. 

To end on a happier note—this evening, we went to yet another orphanage that OSSO works with—this one for mostly girls, with a few of their brothers.  Beforehand, we looked up translations of Disney songs in Spanish, and one of my roommates has a ukulele, so the kids and we sang half of the songs from Frozen.  The little girls were so excited, and it was lovely to see their faces light up.  This trip was just plain fun—it also involved double-dutch jump rope and a game that was sort of like tennis (if there was no net, the ball was a balloon, and the rackets were made of paper plates and sticks.  And all rules were disregarded).

Anyway, I’m very happy to be here, and the first day was wonderful.  (And I’m very sorry about depriving you of photos of cute little kids, but we legally can’t take pictures of the orphans.  Just imagine.)