More on my last week / día del niño

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Thursday was Bolivia´s Día del Niño, or day of the child. They have a día de nearly everything here, not just fathers´and mothers´days! We had some special plans for the children, that we´d dress up a bit and hire them a clown for the afternoon. I dressed up as a school girl, with blouse, mini skirt, a school tie borrowed from Estrella and my hair in bunches. Felt daft. But the hospital had planned other stuff on a bigger scale, and the kids were inundated with all sorts of strangers bringing them goodie bags with sweets and little toys, playing guitar to them or dancing around in fancy dress costumes.

The funny thing was, the children (remember my comments about Gladys´birthday, those who follow my blogs faithfully) are simply not used to so much stuff all at once, especially the majority who are poorer and from the countryside. Many of them kept clinging to me or to the other familiar staff and volunteers and looked a bit scared of all the strangers and hubbub. It made my heart go out to them. I never liked a lot of noise and people all at once when I was little either! Also, I felt a bit resentful of all these strangers, coming in and calling all the children ´bébé´when their names are clearly above each bed and waving toys in their rather scared little faces.

Some of the choices of presents were hopelessly inapproriate too. Nelly got a mathematics set with protractor and compass etc (she can´t read or write and has only got so far with the addition I´ve been teaching her) and looked on at Cristal´s dolly really sadly (I got her a dolly too!) and another group gave her all stuff for making your hair pretty, but it was hardly appropriate for her 1/2 inch of hair, and this made me sad too, as she was a little envious of Gladys´lovely long hair but hasn´t had long hair in a long time because of all the ops. Poor little dot.

Still, I don´t want to seem too negative, these people all meant well and mostly the kids enjoyed the day, if a little overwhelmed by much of it. I think they could have done fewer presents and sweets on that one day to spread it more across the long months that these children are in hospital and it would make it nicer for them. I treated the children (through the fund) to a clown in the afternoon. Though we paid for one, two came and it was brilliant. I thought I´d hate it as I would´ve done as a child, but they were great, very sensitive to what the children could and could not do compared to normal, healthy kids, and also really funny. The children were in stitches, which had us adults grinning from ear to ear, it was just lovely.

After all the festivities, we managed to calm the children down to go for their dinner and we settled down to the 5.30 English lesson about 6.15pm. I enjoyed the lesson with them and was pleased again to see how all of them, but especially Magda have improved and are becoming braver and more spontaneous with uttering whole sentences.

I spent the evening making a start on my packing, given that I´d plans for Friday night which would not give me much time for getting organised. It felt funny packing at last, and in one way I felt I´d been there quite a while, it felt like home, and on the other I could hardly believe that my 5 weeks were up, it just seems to have flown!

I went to the hospital on Friday wondering how it would be and how I would tell the children I was going. In fact, it was extremely quiet there and I was wondering almost what to do with myself while the children had their physio. Marie Anne and Ash came in for just an hour today, they´re off with TAPA to do some project in the jungle this weekend and were leaving for this at lunch time. Marie Anne really touched me by giving me a goodbye present, a little photo album with various snaps she had of the children or of me with the children. It was such a nice thought and she´d written some kind words in it too, very sweet.

I had quite a lot of one on one time with the children, but did not bring up my departure. They were in good form after the events of yesterday´s día del niño. As I sat at a table playing with most of the key characters still left on the ward late lunchtime, Doris the physio brought up the subject, asking me when I was flying and when my husband would arrive. The children don´t miss a trick and were all asking me "are you going" or telling me "please don´t go!". It was kinda horrible but at least it was out in the open, I hadn´t wanted not to say anything but didn´t know how.

After lunch I had my final lesson with the 3.30pm group (well just Doris and Jhamil, plus our usual children that like to attend, Jarol and Julio, plus Nelly). It was a good lesson and we finally finished unit 3 of the first book. At least it felt like a reasonable place to be stopping as it had to be the last one. They´ve really made good progress.

Jhamil and I had some time after the lesson to chat through my time here, our hopes for the future and some travel advice from him on my upcoming trip. We both had tears in our eyes saying goodbye, but in a way it was silly as we should see each other when Iain and I pass through Cocha during our travels.

That´s all for now. More soon!
xx

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