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Previous Entry: DAYS 8-17 Part 1 - Mission Begins
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Please note that the parts officially relevant are titled:
Any blog entries before or after those 4 entries will not be relevant to your interests, as I will be blogging about other places and events.
DAYS 8-17 Part 2 - Getting Into The Groove
(Above: Haha, get it? Groove...cos the man is in a groove...lol. Ok don't laugh whatever, I don't care.)
After the first couple of days, I had trouble sleeping.
Something was affecting my spirit deeply but I had yet to figure out exactly
what. I began to think of ways to reach out to the boys, to give them an older
brother friend who they know cares for them.
But of course, most of that never manifested. When you enter
the room, you are swept up by them more often than not, and all your plans are
pushed aside.
They have this exercise in the morning where they just walk
around in circles, holding hands and singing songs. So when we arrive, we break
their chains and join in. I wrote this because I still can’t believe how long
the walking goes on for. We estimated we must have walked several kilometers.
LOL
(Above: This was the outstanding food our team had for lunch on an almost daily basis. We needed it after walking circles around the room for kilometers.)
(Above: If you really can't handle the Chinese food, then you can always go Easternized Western food. I don't remember the name of the store above but it was near our hotel.
Below 2 pics: Fried Chicken burger from above store and Fried Chicken from Dico's. There's a KFC too if Dico's isn't good enough for you.)
Some interesting stories and observations of the first few
days.
-
The man teacher of the older boys is really something.
He’s a talented artist, frequently drawing these ultra realistic things on the
board, and he can dance, breaking out Michael Jackson moves when MJ music is
being played. And his patience with the boys is incredible.
-
The boys are quite clingy and aggressive. They tend to
run up to you, grab you rather strongly and then drag you off somewhere or to
sit with them.
-
Grubs, as you may recall from my earlier entry, was so
happy to see me the next day. He can’t really talk, but he came up to me,
pushing a little chair and saying ‘BABA’ with this huge smile. Then the teacher
tells me that it means that he wants me to sit on the chair. After I sat down,
he grabs another chair, and pushes it towards another teammate and says ‘MAMA’.
Although it’s funny because he was saying that to a guy, it actually broke my
heart somewhat and made me quite sad. The back story on this fella was that he
was abandoned around when he was 7 or 8. Because it was so late before he had
help, his mental disabilities are harder to treat. It also seems like he is
still looking for his parents.
-
Buddy, an 11 yr old boy, tried to run away because his
best friend got adopted recently. He got caught and was now under close
supervision. When we were down in the playground one day, I saw him playing by
himself in the sandpit. So I sat down next to him, and struck up a
conversation. He began to ask me from where did I come from, and was it far?
And whether it was by train or by plane. Then he began to ask me if the tickets
were expensive…at which point I said yes, but I’m not going to tell you how
much. Fishing me for information? LOL…these boys can be crafty.
-
Shadow, a 12 yr old boy, so named because he was
holding on to me very tightly the majority of the time, asked me if I ever went
to the cinema. It made me feel very sad because these boys are so
underprivileged, and they all sound so wistful when talking about things we all
take for granted…like riding a train or a plane, and even seeing a movie in the
theatres was something special to them.
-
Happy, a 14 yr old boy with downs who doesn’t say
anything…one day he just grabs me really tightly just as they are about to
switch classes and pretty much drags me to that class with them. Then he held
my hand throughout the class. I know it sounds like it could be troublesome to
be held like that, and while it’s true that I could have broken off anytime, I
also realized that they crave contact so much, and I won’t be there too long.
-
Finally that brings me to Monkey. Monkey was the boy in
the sandpit who ignored me when I tried to play with him that first full day.
He can’t talk but really just makes squeaking sounds when he wants to
communicate. A couple of days later, he surprised me by coming up to me and
without a sound just sits himself comfortably on my lap. Then later that
afternoon, while the others were doing some activity in the room, he comes up
to me again. First, he sits next to me, then he holds my left arm and lays his
head on my lap near my knee. Then he rolls his head around as I pat him on the
head and rub his neck. Poor boy, wants so much love too.
Each of these encounters really affected me deeply.
You know, none of us chose the conditions of our birth. We
did not choose where to be born, which era to be born in, what to be born as…
These kids could have been me. Could have been you.
The clarity of this realization made me realize why God had
forced me to come.
But I’ll explain more in the next blog entry.
***
Here are some pictures of the city.
Initially many of the team imagined the city would have the feel of some rural town/village. While it wasn't a huge city, it was more modern than we thought!
You can seriously get a workout climbing these stairs. No joke!
View from the top. Some of us came up here on the half day off. It was good cos it was near the hotel, and only took a couple of hours so we could just go back and sleep after!
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