Today we were in Guatemala and I went on another service visit. This one was to a special education school in the morning and to an orphanage in the afternoon. When we arrived at the special education school, we were a bit early so the lady who was in charge of our visit wasn’t there yet. This made it a bit difficult because she is fluent in both Spanish and English, but no one else was, so before she arrived we really had no idea what the people were trying to say to us. They had 9 small rooms with only 9 teachers for over 110 kids. All of the children had special needs and they were in mixed classrooms. These classrooms were very tiny, and they were really hot. Most of them did have a fan, but it didn’t really make much of a difference.
I went into a classroom with 2 other students, and we helped them make paper frogs. They were very easy to make all you do is cut out 2 pieces of paper and glue styrofoam eyes and then you draw on the pupils. In this classroom, there was a child who was in a wheelchair, there was one child who was deaf, and he really had no way of communicating with anyone that I knew of, there was also a child who was blind, and couldn’t see. There were other children who had all different types of disabilities in the same classroom. These people who work with the special needs children only earn about $170 a month. That averages out to about 8 dollars a day.
After we were done making the frogs, it was snack/recess time. One of the children got a hold of my camera, and took a lot of pictures. It is kind of funny because I have a lot of pictures now with fingers in them because they didn’t quite figure out that you shouldn’t put your fingers in front of the lens, and I didn’t know how to tell them not to. After recess we went for a walk. It was a really hot day, so we didn’t end up walking too far. Supposedly when they normally go for walks on Fridays they walk another mile, but because we were all looking so tired we didn’t go that far.
One of my friends had made a friend with this one kid who was having difficulty walking. He had a cane to help him walk. We took turns carrying him on our backs, but it was hard because his legs didn’t bend the right way for him to comfortably be on our backs. At one point I just picked him up and carried him not on my back, but when we were getting really tired this one man who worked at the school picked him up and put him on his shoulders. We realized afterwards that we should have carried him like that. Around 11AM a lot of the children go home because school is only a ½ day. We didn’t really figure out if the ones who stayed were still in school, or if they just hadn’t left yet.
After we left the school, we went to this restaurant for lunch. We had tortillas with rice, beans, and chicken. When we were done eating we basically just sat at the restaurant for a while because we were on a schedule and they weren’t expecting us at the orphanage for a while, so we couldn’t head over there too early.
When we got to the orphanage we learned that there used to be about 23 children there when they set up this trip, but now there are only 8 children. They moved all of the other children for economic and political reasons. The funding for the orphanage ran out, but they left the children there that no one was going to adopt. There were about 4 children there who were mentally or physically disabled, there were 3 teenage boys, and there was one 11-year-old girl who was new to the facility and just hadn’t been moved yet.
This orphanage was basically in an abandoned building; it didn’t look like they had any fans and barely any lights either. It looked like it had once been a much nicer place to be, but now it is just so run down, that there is really nothing to it anymore. It was really disheartening to see people living like this. We helped create a garden at the orphanage, but I attempted to interact with the children for some of the time, because it was really hot outside in the sun. There are 2 women who are in charge of the orphanage, but they are volunteers, or if they get paid it is barely anything considering they have to provide around the clock care for a number of children, some of whom have disabilities.
After the trip to the orphanage we walked up to this church that was right around the corner from the orphanage. That was also really sad because this was a beautiful new church, but the children living just down the hill in the orphanage had absolutely nothing.
We then left the church and we headed back to the ship. We were all thrilled to get back in the bus because it was a little bit cooler than outside. As soon as I got back I took a quick cold shower, and no sooner had I gotten out of the shower and someone asked me to go to dinner. I ended up going out to this restaurant in Puerto Barrios. It was right on the water, and we arrived at sunset, which meant it was beautiful. For dinner I had a tortilla with rice, beans and beef (are you noticing a theme yet?). I am pretty sure that all people eat in Honduras and Guatemala is tortillas, rice, and beans. After dinner we just came back from the ship. I think from the heat and the sun and maybe even the emotions, I am ALWAYS exhausted after a long day of FDPs. Tonight they played a double feature of Harry Potter and the deathly hallows part 1 and then Salt. I was going to watch Harry Potter, but by the time we got back it had already started and I figured since I have never seen it before I shouldn’t watch it starting in the middle.
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