OSSO Orphanage

Hi guys!

Today was my first day in the actual OSSO orphanage.  (It's completely funded by the group I'm volunteering with, and only houses kids with disabilities.)  It was wonderful.

We got there just around breakfast time, so we started off by feeding the kids.  I was with a boy named Edison, who has severe cerebral palsy (that's one of the most common conditions for the kids here.)  He was, in general, a good eater--he could support his own head, actually wanted to eat and opened his mouth when the spoon approached.  I was very lucky on this account--one of the girls here is constantly shaking her head, so trying to feed her is a challenge.

I then went to go spend time with one girl named Lucy.  At the volunteer house, there's a book with entries about each child, detailing their special needs, a bit of their history, and their general preferences for the volunteers.  It mentioned that she was blind and nonverbal but loved music, especially songs with her name in them.  I sang to her, but the only song that I know with the word Lucy in it is "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds."  So if you want to picture innocent me singing a song about hallucinogens to a wheelchair-bound Ecuadorean orphan, you can.  (However, I only know a few lines of the song, so I made up the rest.)

The tías (orphanage employees) then asked me to change the clothes of a girl named Maria--she is also blind and nonverbal, and has microcephaly (not from the recent Zika outbreak in Ecuador, though).  It was physically harder than I would expect, because she was a teenager, probably about 60 pounds (she's the size of a young child), and can't really move her limbs much, so it was like changing deadweight.  Also, she can't eat by mouth, and therefore has a feeding tube, so I had to be very careful around that as well.  She did well, though--throughout the whole process, she only whimpered twice.  And I discovered that if you rub the base of her thumb a certain way, she lets out the most adorable giggle that I've ever heard, and that makes it all worth it.

Everyone then went to the courtyard, and I pushed Maria around the yard in her wheelchair.  She loved it--she would giggle whenever we went over a bump or crack in the cement (so I made sure that we went over a lot of bumps and cracks in the cement.)  And the other volunteers who could see her face said that she was grinning the whole time.  But the courtyard has a pretty steep incline, and I probably went up it 20 times, so I'll probably find out tomorrow morning exactly which muscles are used in wheelchair-pushing on hills.  While we were walking around, we were somewhat alone (although there were a few other volunteers and kids doing the same thing), so I sang to her, too.  I started with "How Do You Solve A Problem Like Maria?", then went on to
"Eidelweiss," to keep the theme.  And then a bunch more, because we were walking for a while.  It was probably good for me, though.  It was essentially long-distance pacing, but more productive.

Then Maria had to go in to work with the physical therapist employed by the orphanage, so I went over to a girl named Laura.  Laura always carries around this doll which she calls Wawa--Quecha for baby.  (Quecha is the language of the native Ecuadoreans).  There is a swingset in the courtyard that Laura had just come off of, and she motioned towards it.  She didn't want to go back, and I finally realized that she wanted to push her baby doll on the swing.  It was the most adorable thing--her in her wheelchair, concentrating on pushing her beloved doll.

While she was doing that, I was pushing another boy, who proceeded to fall asleep.  The swing had a back on it, so it didn't matter--it was just very sweet.

We then broke for lunch--the food here is awesome, but this post is getting kind of long, so I'll tell you about that another time.

After lunch, all the volunteers and OSSO orphans went to an all-abilities park (parque inclusivo).  It was actually created by the same organization that made Brandon's Village and Aidan's Place in LA (fun fact--my parents helped fundraise for Aidan's Place on the Westside, so they were allowed to name a piece of equipment.  One of the swing sets is called Swinging With Taylor.  I'm officially a permanent part of LA.)  The park was really fun.  They had this sort of wheelchair teeter-totter--it's sort of hard to describe, but basically a lever that can fit 2 wheelchairs on each side and sways a bit instead of going all the way up and down.  I was with a girl named Vanesa, who was wheelchair bound, and she loved it.  They also had bikes there that had wheelchairs on the front, so we rode on one of those, which was fun for both me and her, but also very difficult (for me) because the path was on a hill, and I was pedaling with a bunch of extra weight on the front of the bike.  Eventually, we all had to leave to go back.  It was about an hour bus ride back to the compound, and Vanesa ended up sitting pretty much on my lap the entire way.  She doesn't have the muscle tone to support herself sitting, and will just slide down the seat, so she ended up leaning on me while I held onto her shoulders.

This entire city is quite pretty--the nice parts look like you took a bunch of Spanish Colonial architecture and popped it down in one of the parts of the South that's just completely forested.  It's astonishingly green here (especially coming from Socal, which sort of looks like 50 Shades of Brown during this part of the year.)

Also it's cold here.  It hit like 55 today at the warmest, and there's no heating indoors.  One of my roommates is from Idaho and she thinks it's cold, which I think is hilarious (but she said that subzero is ok if you're prepared.)  But it's fine if we keep moving, which we are, most of the time.

Love you guys! Thanks for reading!

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.)

En Route--Quito

Hi Everyone!

I'm writing to you from the other half of the world!  (Maybe.  The equator runs through the city I'm in, but I'm not quite sure if it's north or south of the airport.)  I'm officially in Ecuador now, in the airport in Quito, the capital.  My flight to Cuenca, where the orphanage is, leaves soon.

My passport stamp!

The ride was nice--I got a window seat, so I was able to cocoon against the window and sleep for a bit. Plus, they gave me my first taste of what I think is Ecuadorean food onboard--spicy chicken with sautéed bell peppers and this excellent rice-beans-corn combination.  (I'm sorry.  My culinary writing leaves much to be desired.)

All I've seen so far of Ecuador is the airport, but it's quite nice.  It was actually chilly getting off the plane, which was very exciting, coming from a Southern California summer.  I made it through customs--I got this very cool stamp on my passport indicating that I am, in fact, in Ecuador and entered in Quito.

I'e met some more interesting people--one man in line in front of me at customs lives in the same town as the University of Oregon and hosts international students when they first arrive to teach them about American life.  He was here to attend the wedding of one of the students he formerly hosted, and told me that he had volunteered in orphanages in the past as well--he helped do the bookkeeping for one in Honduras, so he didn't work much with the kids.  And there were more French people (it's a little odd how many I've met so far.  But it's possible that my ears are just more attuned to hear a language that I can sort of understand amongst all the Spanish.)  They were a few years older than me, here to backpack.  I also saw a trio of Ecuadorean girls, probably around 13 or so, giggling and taking duck-face selfies.  I couldn't understand what they were talking about, but judging by the tone of their voices and volume of their laughter, I was like 90% certain that they were discussing guys.  Some things apparently don't change based on culture (I've had...more than a few conversations like that with my friends.)

My bed tonight.  It was roughly as comfortable
as it looks.  It's an adventure!

Sleeping tonight has been interesting.  I couldn't print my boarding pass at home, so I had to go to the ticket counter after customs, where they informed me that they wouldn't be able to print it there until 4 AM (it was around 12:30 AM at the time.)  So I had to find a place to sleep for a few hours.  However, in general, the safest places in airports are well-lit and have plenty of people milling around.  That doesn't always make it easy to sleep.  Nonetheless, I found a bench that I could curl up on, with my feet on my suitcase, my arm through my backpack strap, and my purse tucked under my sweatshirt.  Everything survived, and at 4 AM, I went to the ticket counter.  There was a line, but no attendant.  Fortunately, one showed up around 4:30, and I am officially ticketed and through security.  (Security took approximately 2 minutes.  It was awesome.)  I'll be in seat 13, which seems auspicious--it's the date of my birthday.

Thank you so much for reading all my ramblings about airports!  In my next post, you'll hopefully get to hear about my experience channeling my inner Eliza Hamilton (bonus points if you get the reference.  Double bonus points if you immediately know the song that I'm referring to.)  Love you all!

En Route--Houston

So I'm writing to you guys from...lovely Houston, TX.  You could feel the heat and humidity just walking in the enclosed space from plane to terminal.  I finished flight one to get to Cuenca (there's three in total.  I'm leaving in about an hour for Quito, the capital of Ecuador, then continue on tomorrow morning for the short flight to Cuenca, where the orphanages are.)

I've calmed down a bit (probably partially because I didn't sleep much last night), which is good, but fortunately I'm still really excited.  Like I would go skip around the terminal, but that is somewhat frowned upon in polite society, and international airports aren't really the best place to try out socially unacceptable behavior.

This morning had a few goofs--apparently some LAX doors only open in or out, but aren't labeled, so I started out by almost walking straight into the glass sliding door.  I then proceeded to flag some security thing with my toiletries, so they had to inspect my shampoo (it passed.)  And then I proceeded to drop my plastic bin thing (empty) on some random guy's foot.  Fortunately, he was very nice about it.  As always, I am the epitome of grace.

I've met some interesting people so far.  Everyone I've talked to has been a native French speaker--the man I sat next to on the plane to Houston was from the south of France, and I waited in the airport next to two friends from Quebec.  (All the vocabulary from AP French paid off--I was able to describe comment j'irai faire du voluntariat avec les enfants abandonnés.  I hope all that was grammatically correct.)

Anyway, we're taking off soon.  The next time you hear from me, I will officially be in a different hemisphere!

Here's to adventure!

The Night Before

Hi Guys!

So, I'm leaving for Ecuador in roughly 12 hours.  I should probably be sleeping, but I am much too excited to do that now.  Maybe writing this will calm me down a bit, as pacing around my bedroom while listening to the Hey Jude on repeat didn't really seem to do much.  This seems slightly more productive.  (Although now Spotify has gone to River by Joni Mitchell.  Christmasy sorrow is not quite the mood I was looking for.  If anyone has any good international volunteering music--or good music in general, or just random opinions that they want to say--feel free to comment below.)

I'm leaving tomorrow to volunteer with a program called Orphanage Support Service Organization, which sends people to Cuenca, Ecuador, and Chiang Mai, Thailand to volunteer in orphanages.  They work with a lot of special needs kids, as well as kids from a variety of different backgrounds--the ultimate goal is usually reunification with the families or adoption, so the orphanage is just a stopping place.  I've always loved children, but I've only really been in charge of four or so at a time, so it will definitely be different, being in charge of 20 or so, especially when we don't speak the same language.  (The online program I tried informed me that I was 1% fluent in Spanish, but it had me translate incredibly useful phrases such as "I am a horse," which I'm sure will be more helpful than "where is the bathroom?" or "what is your name?").  Hopefully, I'll be able to get by using English, French (hey, at least it's a Romance language), and charades.

My packing--all in carry-on luggage.  

Everything is officially packed (except for my list of stuff that I still need tonight that I'll put in my bag in the morning before I leave.)  I have 2 of these last-minute lists taped to my door, plus my boarding pass, and I've repacked twice in the past few days, so hopefully I'll be good.

A few pages of notes for the trip

I'm sort of really nervous, but also incredibly excited.  Google has informed me that there is no real word for joyful nervous excitement.  Anticipation?  Enthusiasm?  Neither of those are quite right.  The English language really needs to work on that, because to a milder extent, that's how I feel almost all the time.  Just now it's on overdrive.  But it's a good feeling, closer to that's-a-cute-guy-over-there than holy-crap-that's-a-raccoon (for those of you who don't know, raccoons are evil.)

Anyway, I'm very excited for tomorrow.  I've never blogged before, so I hope I'm doing this right--I'll have better stories when I'm actually in Ecuador.  I'm not sure how often I'll be able to post, because the internet is very slow at the orphanage, but I'll try to keep you guys updated.

Thanks so much for reading!  Wish me luck!

Taylor

Last-minute emergency to-do list