Are you ready for this?
Earlier this week I had the most emotional day of service thus far.
I had my first day of teaching at the orphanage for children with special needs. Just to give a little background: According to my supervisor this orphanage is home to about 60 people of ages ranging from 9 to 50 years old (from what I can tell from going there a few days, most are in their teens). All of them have some sort of mental disability, but some are also blind or deaf (or both) as well. Ninety percent of them have limited or no speech capabilities. When I asked my supervisor about how they come to be at this orphanage and what kind of future they have, he said that basically their only choices (although they haven’t been given the choice) are to live in government run orphanages like this one or to live in the insane asylum. In fact, some of them come from the insane asylum if it has run out of room or if they are deemed to be better suited for the orphanage. I can only imagine what the conditions must be like in the asylum because the conditions in the orphanage are quite dismal. There ‘s one building that holds their bedrooms, the dining area, and the offices for the people who work there. It almost looks like a little jail with bars on all of the windows. In the back there’s a large open area for them to run around in. It has a jungle gym (that I’ve never seen used), a laundry area, bathrooms, and a couple “classrooms” (which are basically just rooms with some chairs and mattresses that are falling apart). In these “classrooms,” the caretakers just try to keep them all settled down and stop them from hurting eachother. My supervisor informed me that there’s no such thing as Special Education training here in Bolivia. Instead, the caretakers just learn from experience. Apparently, the common practice is for a caretaker to do this kind of work for about 3 years and then move on to something else. So, you can imagine exactly how “experienced” most of these caretakers are. The “children” (I feel weird calling them that because most of them are closer to being adults, but that’s what they call them) all have a wide range of mental disabilities, but they don’t seem to diagnose them specifically. Instead, they are grouped into classes, I guess based on how high-functioning they appear to be. The groups I’ve worked with have been the “moderados,” “semi-profundos,” and “profundos.” Even within these groups, you have what appears to me to be a wide range of mental disabilities. I highly doubt that any of them are receiving any sort of specific treatment, if any treatment at all (and I don’t mean just medication, even psychological counseling). However, I did just start working there, so it’s possible that I just haven’t seen it yet. They don’t have enough money to pay for a music teacher. That’s where I come in.
Perhaps you can already see why this was such an emotional experience for me.
Even with just that very clinical description of the orphanage, you can start to understand the challenges of working in that environment. I hope after reading that you don’t think I’m a very cold person. I just needed to distance myself a bit before diving into the emotions. Buckle up. It’s quite the rollar coaster.
What actually struck me instantly about the place was…one of the children. Literally. He came running around the corner screaming, “Tía! Tía!” and ran right into me. I was taken aback. Not only because he was immediately smiling at me and greeting me like an old friend, but also because of how much taller than me he was, at least four or five inches. I had been so used to working with little children that seeing a big teenage boy come running at me like one of the five year olds was shocking and honestly, a little scary. I’ve gotten much better at understanding Spanish since I’ve gotten here, but his speech was so slurred and fast that I had absolutely no clue what he was saying. My supervisor told me that he wanted me to touch his arm where they had tested him for chagas (a disease common in rural areas around here. They were just routinely testing all of the children that day). So, I did, and then he let out the loudest scream of pain. I had barely touched him, so there was no reason for him to scream so loudly, but he found it to actually be a fun game. He asked me to do it again, and again, each time followed by the same scream. Eventually, my supervisor told him to go off with his friends, and so he did. As we walked away to the back space, I saw him and his friends poking eachother, screaming, and laughing.
Ok, so technically that story wasn’t from my first day of teaching. It was from my first day of ever visiting the orphanage. But it is important nonetheless because it sets up my first emotion in this experience: overwhelmed. My previous experience with people with special needs is extremely limited, so even just that little interaction was a bit overwhelming for me. I was very confused and unsure about whether I should be laughing or worried, and I immediately became acquainted with the fact that if any of these “children” misbehaved, I would not be able to pick them up and put them in time out.
Yes, this experience was certain to be very different.
I know that this next emotion I felt is one that can be very dangerous, but I couldn’t help it. I couldn’t help but feel sympathy for them. I couldn’t help but pity them. As I walked around the grounds, as I watched them struggle to communicate with their caretakers, I couldn’t help but think about how with a few changes in their circumstances, their lives could be so different. If their parents hadn’t abandoned them, if they lived in a wealthier country, if they hadn’t been born with mental disabilities to begin with, oh how things would change. And soon after sympathy followed helplessness with the knowledge that ultimately, I could do very little, practically nothing, to change their situation. I had no medical experience to heal their wounds, no piles of money to give them a more comfortable home, no psychiatric experience to try to ease any psychological pain. All I had was my guitar and book of songs to sing and the hope that even just that might make their day a little better.
My first day I worked with the “profundos,” those with the most severe mental disabilities. As soon as I walked in, I was nearly tackled to the ground (in a loving way). Though they had never met me in their lives, they smiled when they saw me and my guitar and were quick to bombard me with hugs and kisses. I was overwhelmed once again, but this time with a happier emotion. Simply I could call it love, but really it’s more complicated than that might suggest. I was inspired by their enormous capacity to love so unconditionally. I had literally done nothing that could possibly warrant this response from them. I simply existed and was standing in front of them. It’s exactly the same kind of love that I have experienced with the kindergarteners at the other orphanage (which I will blog about later. I’ve been meaning to blog about it for so long, but keep putting it off). All of them were trying to pull me in different directions. Each one of them wanted me for themselves. I felt so loved, so needed, although I didn’t completely understand why. One of them, the oldest who is about 50 (they sometimes call her abuelita “grandma.”), succeeded in pulling me off to the side. Then, with tears in her eyes, she gave me a great big hug and said, “Mama!”
I almost cried.
Eventually, though, I had to actually start doing my job. I managed to hold them off just long enough to get out my guitar and start playing the songs that my supervisor told me were their favorites. The orphanage itself has some tamborines and drums for them to play. The idea was that I would play the song on guitar and sing while they beat along with their percussion instruments. Woah were my expectations waaay too organized. I should have learned by now that nothing is organized here. At some moments it was honestly like I wasn’t even there. They just banged on their instruments so loudly that you couldn’t even really hear me. Compounding that, there was one girl who just wanted to dance with me and kept taking one of my hands in hers. I tried to explain that I needed two hands to play guitar, but she just didn’t understand. So, I tried to have her “help” me strum, but that eventually turned into her wanting to do her own thing and almost breaking the strings. Finally, I decided that maybe it would be best for me to just go around and try to help them play their instruments correctly and get those who didn’t have an instrument to clap along. Even this proved to be nearly impossible and I could barely hear myself think. At this point, the love kind of faded for a moment and I mostly felt extremely frustrated. I felt that my one accomplishment in that period was that I successfully taught one of them how to properly play the tamborine.
But then I looked around at the chaos. Were things loud, crazy, and unorganized? Yes. But were the children happy? Oh, yes. I looked around and saw smiles. I even noticed that one of them in particular actually had great rhythm and had been keeping a steady beat to whatever song I played. Although I didn’t really feel like I “taught” very much, the children were happy and that lifted my spirits a bit because that’s really what this is all about.
Even though I’ve really only worked there 2 days, I have even more stories that I could tell. For now, I’ll end it here and update more later. Will all of these emotions change the nature of my relationship with any of the individuals, community, or host agency? Of course. How could it not? Do I know the nature of this quite yet? No, I’ll admit that I don’t know yet. However, I’ve already noticed one thing. Whenever I start to slip into pity for them, it converts more to compassion than helplessness. I recognize that I can’t change their situation, but I can try to do whatever I can to change their lives for the better through love and through music.
That’s all for now. Thank you all for your thoughts and prayers. Keep ’em coming 🙂
Chau!
Laurel Bingman