In the beginning...

Three weeks in. And I look back and can’t believe how much can happen in such a small amount of time, and how much I can change in three weeks. Who knows what will change in three more weeks, or three months, or even in three more minutes. Some days it really hits me that we’ve made such a massive commitment to these children. A responsibility that shouldn’t, and can’t, be taken lightly. They’re so used to people walking in and out of their lives, their parents, their community. And although we’re here for a long time, at some point we’re going to walk out on them too. So everyday counts. Every smile, every lesson, every single second. And even though it breaks my heart to think of the day we leave, I won’t show it. Because our work here as volunteers in Hogar de Amor isn’t about us. It’s about these children, and what we can do to help them rebuild their shattered lives. It’s about making this a home where the children have all of the love and safety that every child deserves. It’s about helping to create wonderful memories, for all of us, to sustain us through the hard times that are inevitable ahead. To show these children that out there, in the big wide world, there is more. And they deserve it as much as anybody else.

Patience. That is the word that follows me like my shadow. Sometimes patience is easy, especially when you look into the eyes of these beautiful little souls and feel a small inkling of the pain inside. But some days it’s almost impossible. The bad days. The days when the children can’t control the hurt and pain that courses through their tiny veins. When they can’t hold back the tears that hide behind their chestnut eyes. Or when they scream at you and call you so many horrible things, that the effect stays with you for days. It’s heartbreaking. Patience. It pays off. For as many days as I have been screamed at, there are ten more when I have been hugged with so much love I feel myself holding back tears. Or the days when the children understand something in school, and the smile on their face is from somewhere so true and so real, that I wonder if I ever could have smiled that way. Or when I carry a sleeping child to their room and tuck them in for the night. This is what counts. This is why I’m here.

Twenty-two. That’s how many children live in the Hogar. Twenty-two beautiful faces. Twenty-two haunting pasts. Twenty-two chances to make a difference. It takes time to get to know even one of these children, but after a couple of weeks their unique personalities begin to shine through. Like the Kinder kids. So mischievous and wild, running through the halls, climbing trees, pulling each other across the grass with a piece of rope and a soda bottle. But slowly, the tenderness glimmers above the surface. The eagerness for knowledge, the need for love and attention, the first time they listen to what you say. It’s so easy to look at these tiny little people, and forget that they are just that. People. They each have something inside of them that makes them special and irreplaceable. Like Joel. Tiny little man that he is. As wild and reckless as a kindergarten child can be. Sometimes truly impossible to understand, but sometimes the gentle little person can be found underneath the layers of frustration and fierce stubbornness. Last week, after having missed a day of kindy, Joel ran up to me in the yard. Pulling on my long skirt so that I would crouch beside him he hugged my neck, looked into my eyes and with so much innocence asked softly ‘Today we have class?’ My heart melted. I had to look into that face and tell him that there wasn’t any kindy today, or tomorrow. In fact, I don’t know when there will be kindy again. We simply don’t have enough volunteers to run the school, let alone the kindy. Angry and confused, Joel stalked away into the house. An hour later he was up a tree. But that moment when Joel showed me just how important the class was to him, that wonderful memory will forever stay with me. And the devastated look on his face as I explained that a class for him no longer existed, that memory is always on my mind.

Then there are the first graders. My class. It’s always been amazing to me that this tiny little people have such huge personalities. Like Carolina. With a skirt that almost reaches the ground and her wild hair resisting the attempts of her headband. Every morning she storms up to me as I arrive at school with her angry little face on, stops in front of me and just stares. So, I stare back, and after a while I see a little munchkin lingering just behind her big angry eyes. Then with a boisterous giggle she doubles over, and yells in her own secret language, ‘Choongy Peroongy!’ before running off to the schoolhouse. Or Santos. With his big smiley face, wide distracted eyes and the filthiest uniform I have ever seen. It took me a while to understand why. But I figured it out. This kid falls over more than anyone I have ever met. We counted once during an afternoon soccer match. He fell over twelve times. But he always picks himself up and keeps going, which is more than I would do after that many tumbles.

I could keep writing story after story about these little people, but I’ll save something for the next post! We really appreciate you taking an interest in the Hogar, and if you’re thinking about coming down to help out I can only think of two pieces of advice. Firstly, be prepared to always be unprepared. Nothing ever runs to plan, nothing is ever as organised as you had hoped it would be, and nothing is predictable in a house of twenty-two children! The second piece of advice that I would give you is to do it. When I first thought to do this, I was mostly in it for myself. But now, everything is so different. Everyday I wake up, work harder than I have worked before, and fall into bed content. Not because I’m here for me. But because I can see the bigger picture. Because everything we do here is for these kids. And the strange part is the more I work with the kids, the more I get out of it. The happier I feel at the end of a long day, and the happier I am that I’m here for the long haul. Without question or doubt this is the best thing I have ever done.

Three weeks in. And I can’t wait for three more.

Tracy