Party!

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Party!

 South America » Bolivia » Cochabamba By The Constant Gardener
April 10th 2007This blog entry is all about one morning - Monday morning! The morning of Gladys´12th birthday. It doesn´t need too much comment as the pictures speak for themselves, but it was the most wonderful morning I´ve had at the hospital, really special.

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Photos

The birthday girl, Gladys, and I
I´m really not that brown!! To set this party in context, children from the countryside don´t normally have cake, presents etc for their birthday. This little girl had the biggest smile on her face all morning, when she saw what we´d organised for her. She was so happy, she was pretty speechless! Gladys has been through an awful lot, and we had so much pleasure giving her a special birthday morning.

The invitees...
It wasn´t just Gladys that had a great morning, the other children absolutely loved it too. Why? Because things happened that never normally happen. There was birthday cake, biscuits and crisps to eat, Coca Cola to drink and every child got a balloon. They had a brilliant time and had nothing but smiles for us all morning. From bottom centre clockwise, Sonia, Nelly, Ash, Marie Anne, Gladys, Kirsten, Julio, Jarol and Cristal.

Cristal
A lot of you mailed me because you were very moved to hear about the trauma that this little girl is still reliving, as mentioned in an earlier blog. She is three years old and seems to be coming out the other side of the worst of what she´s been through. She´s healthy again, her burns have healed pretty well and she is becoming more chatty by the day. What a little poppet!

The ´lads´
Julio (L) and Jarol (R) are the lad contingent in our group. Both were very poorly and bedbound when I arrived, but both have been through the wheelchair stage and now ´drive´ zimmers! I can remember Jarol crying his eyes out when they first started making him walk. The pair of them are a bit of a handful, but loads of fun, always trying to ram their zimmers into each other and to get away with getting back into the wheelchairs. They faithfully attend my English lessons and parrot what they hear, it´s very amusing!

The cuties
No doubt about it, Cristal and Sonia are little heartbreakers. Here they are tucking into their cake and Cola, a little overawed by the treats, but having a great time. They´re both a bit camera shy, in fact shy in general.

Nelly at work
While all the other children focused on what they could have to eat, or which colour balloon they were after, Nelly was all set on making Gladys a birthday card (Kirsten is helping her write a message on it). Nelly and Gladys were particularly close while Gladys was in the ward, and she wanted to make her something really nice for her birthday. It was really very touching. She´s such a darling!

Present opening time
I was a bit concerned that Gladys wasn´t going to open her presents at all, she held on tightly to them but seemed reluctant to open them. Perhaps she wanted to relish the time of holding them and anticipating what might be inside. She was so smiley all morning, and it was so nice to see after all the tears on Thursday when she was so poorly.

What did she get?
One of my cousins very kindly sent me a little package of bits, which happily arrived last Thursday. As much as anything, it´s difficult to get things of nice quality here. Especially colouring books. I took a few things from the package, a lovely set of coloured pencils and a really nice colouring book that requires artistic colouring in and made them Gladys´ present (with the agreement of my cousin). Gladys loved them!

Special friends
The party had a great atmosphere, and the children all were in the mood to pose for the camera. So Kirsten, Ash, Marie Anne and I got spoilt for a while, with lots of really cute photos of the children. Nelly and Glady posed together, special friends.

Who wants which colour?
I bought the balloons to decorate, but without really thinking how much the children would love them. Luckily there were enough for one each, and those who were zimmer or wheelchair bound tied them to their vehicle, the rest bouncing around and playing with them. It was really nice!

You shouldn´t have favourites, but...
these two little girls will always have a special place in my heart. They were the first two I bonded with, the two that waited for me to come and pounced on me as I arrived, the two that would wait up at night for my English lesson to visit to say good night. They made my time here extremely special!

Latecomer
Erlinda (L), Gladys, Nelly and Sonia. Poor little Erlinda missed the party as she was having her physio as an outpatient. However she emerged from physio close to tears as they´d just fitted her pressure suit and it probably wasn´t nice having it put on, but she was soon all smiles as she joined the tail end of the party, was reunited with her friends and got a balloon to take home. Aw.

Comments

[Rosie]

Gladys's Birthday Party
I loved the photos, especially the two 'special friends' and your 'favourites'. Is this the last blog? Love Mum xx

[The Constant Gardener]

Last blog?
Nope. Will review the last week here and will also keep you posted of our travels, for those who are interested!