Orphanage Routine

At last, I reveal the long awaited description of our happenings at the orphanage.  Unfortunately, it's nothing as interesting as the first sentence might suggest.  We are, wait for it, glorified babysitters.  (The insertion of glorified there is completely my emphasis.) 

There are twenty-three individuals, ages approximately six to twenty-eight that cover every slot on the gradation from severely handicapped to as normal as Andy and I are (which is both fluctuating and up for discussion).  We have had some bad days where we've found ourselves separated from each other and locked into different cabins with unruly kids without knowing when the tias (the rotating two women who run a cabin each during the day) would return.  We've been the target of, as my brother, Christian, termed, "human flame throwers" (an aerosol cockroach spray lit with matches anyone?).  I have been slapped on the arm and slammed on the back by an eight year old boy multiple times.  We often break up fights or find ourselves in the middle of them.  Although we can say things like, "You know better, it's not worth it, you're bigger, that's not okay, stop, leave him/her alone," our words are often fruitless.  Rather, we usually find ourselves clutching a child (is there something about boys ages six to eight?) and holding tight as they struggle to get out of our arms.  Sometimes, their balled fists ease up.  Sometimes, we need to take one to see a tia.  Usually they cry, always they try to get loose, and split evenly the fights are instigated or accidental--just yesterday a boy stepped backwards and crushed a paper plane another had left on the ground and today one boy put another in a head lock for fun.  Each and every individual, the girls included, down the most severely handicapped, will defend themselves with punches and kicks without a second thought (or even a first one.) 

Yet, although they are tough (character wise and for us), they also look out for one another.  They share food, they help each other get dressed, they play together, and they back each other up in fights or even separate them.  Which leaves us to do whatever the tias ask us to do while we are there.  I would estimate that half the time we play with them and the other half we help with homework.  Last week, a young boy had homework to add three, three-digit numbers, but he had not (and still hasn't) grasped that each hand has five fingers and always will or that the amount of fingers on both hands is always ten.  The same child, along with many others, have homework that involves writing a single number, today one child worked on the number 9, and they fill a sheet with the number, over and over again.  The same goes for learning their letters. 

When we walk the miserable stretch between the bus stop and the orphanage, we never know what kind of situation we will encounter that day.  It hasn't been fun or exciting, rather, it's been difficult to want to return each day--the commute a large deterrent.  Yet, we go and we'll keep going, because they smile when we arrive and just need all the attention we can give.