Observations and snapshots

The days here at the Hogar are very challenging and exhausting! I am still very much observing and absorbing the Bolivian culture and the subculture of an hogar. When I try and think about how I could summarize any generalizations, conclusions, or inclinations I have found, I am at a loss. Maybe the best way to paint a picture of my day-to-day life here would be to tell snapshots of moments, frozen in my memory - that is how information is being stored. And honestly, trying to jam all of the sensory and subconscious information that I am absorbing into tiny folders in my head is counter-productive to a healthy, open-hearted immersion.

Observations:

- Drinkable yogurt is huge here in Bolivia... and it is absolutely delicious.

- In the Hogar, it is mostly every girl for themselves, unless you have arranged a deal where "you watch my back, I'll watch your back", or if you are sisters.

- Lying is like breathing, you need it to survive.

- Zipping your fly does not have the same importance as in the States, I am not sure if this is cultural or just a coincidence that many zippers are broken?

- Bolivians love salt. And sugar.

-The girls love mangoes, and will eat them when they are green, later complaining to my site partner (now the nurse) that they have tummy aches.

-You can get a good dozen of bananas for 3.50 bolivianos (50 cents), try not to pay more. I am finding my favorite women at the fruit and vegetable market.

- We eat almost an entirely white diet - bread, rice, potatoes, milk with rice, bread.

- In terms of exercise, my site partner and I are limited to an elementary-sized basketball court. I have tried to make new routines of running in (small) circles, or what I have termed "mowing" the court, where I run up and back as if I was mowing a lawn. And yes, yes... I have even made myself run suicides again (my first time since high school basketball practice). There were some pretty awful emotions and memories on my first few... "Get on the line..."

- Yelling at the girls takes way more effort to get angry than to try and get them to calm down. It just isn't my personality.

- I hit a wall with my Spanish efforts for about two weeks. I was so tired of having to think so hard to express myself, especially when the girls just look at me as if I am speaking Japanese (vocabulary correct, pronunciation not so much). Now that I am trying to speak in all Spanish again I have lost some vocab.

Snapshots:

-One evening, a small girl of about 5 years followed me into my room when I returned to grab something. She saw the pictures I had hanging on my wall, and started to ask who is that?, where is that? But when she got to the picture of my family, she showed particular interest. Who was each one... I'll never forget her voice or the look on her face, because she stared at the picture like someone who was seeing a sky full of stars for the first time. "They are beautiful!" She didn't say it with excitement, but with a longing, a pain, and a maturity much older than herself, and yet it was so utterly genuine and selfless.

-Just this week, I walked into one of the dormitories where the 5-10 year olds sleep, and all of a sudden I saw a girl of about 7 slap a new girl across the face. In the moment, I didn't mentally realize it, but there was a second that hung as I was shocked and processing the scene. I acted in time to grab the other girl as her arm was in mid-air to fight back. I tried to explain that we don't hit (and yet it is part of the Hogar culture) and that the 7-year old needed to be nice to the new girl. I asked, Remember when you were the new girl? But she responded, "No." Euhh, how long has she been here? Wrong comment Melia... And the thing is that the girls will hit each other, or pull each other's hair and not blink an eye... But they will be so personally offended when I kick them off the computer when someone else needs it.

-One night I helped my site partner give medicine to the 1-5 year olds before putting them to bed. It seemed a never ending task, as there are 17 of them, and they were all running around, jumping on the beds, throwing shoes... But when I first walked into their bedroom, it was one of those moments that you treasure when other moments are awful: so many turned to the door from their beds and screamed my name (for some, just something like my name); their eyes lit up, and they had huge smiles. It made my heart stop. For an instant I understood how your child becomes the world to you, and I could imagine the boundless joy that a parent must feel when they come home from work and their child is so excited to see them.

-There is a resident here who is in her early 30s, she is probably legally blind, and she has mental disabilities. I believe she was a resident here as a child, but she has no where to go, so she sleeps with the girls still and helps do small jobs around the Hogar. I have a terrible time understanding her Spanish, and after repeating it once, I think she loses patience as she starts yelling at you. My heart goes out to her, partially because I wish I could understand her, but also, I can't imagine the isolation she must feel with impaired vision, and no one understanding her. One night after 10 pm I found her in the hallway bawling, and as I tried to sit with her and asked what happened, I could not understand anything through the tears. I think I finally got something about how a girl had thrown something at her in the shower, and she was going to tell a nun in the morning. It pained me to think that under normal circumstances of living a difficult life, this woman has the reality of living with immature and insecure teenagers who probably call her names and gang up on her regularly.

And with each one of these stories, I know I have only barely scraped the surface - of both the girls' beauty and their pain. There are girls who cling to me, hungry for attention. And there are girls who ignore me and wish I wasn't here, also hurting and hungry for love. So many of these girls act out in order to receive a desired, known end. Because all they know is being reprimanded, yelled at, hit, abandoned. And if they received some other action towards them, it is foreign, uncomfortable. The girls don't know how to be loved, don't believe they can be loved. I pray that God can touch these girls' hardened hearts. But until then, as I struggle daily to earn their respect and find my place at the Hogar, I have been turning to this quote:

"God did not call us to be successful, but to be faithful." -Mother Teresa