What I'm For

This morning I woke up eager for my first day of volunteer placement! Today is what I am here for. Luckily, my roommate Amy and I have the same departure time for our placements (8:30 am) so we got up at the same time and ate breakfast together. I really like her.

We headed out with Pancho, our driver and tour guide, and I was the first stop. Andersen Kindergarten.(I read the sign and found out that is was Andersen as in Hans Christian Andersen) For the first time, I was getting a little nervous. We pulled up to the brightly colored doors and saw a woman with her son waiting at the doors. Pancho and I got out of the car and knocked on the metal doors. No answer. Only a dog barking from the inside (don't ask me how or why it was in there). Knocked again. No answer. Pancho asks a woman who is walking up what is going on. Andersen is on vacation this week. What! Vacation! I came all this way and no one knew it was their vacation! Oh well, I'll go with Amy to her placement.

We pull off of the paved road and around the corner onto a dusty dirt road. Pancho parked his car in front of the Wawa Wasi day care (Wawa Wasi means baby house in Quechua, the Incan language spoken in much of the Andes). The one thing I was really worried about was diapers. Pancho speaks fairly good English, so not knowing the word for diaper in Spanish, I asked him in English. He did not know this word. Yikes, I quickly pulled out my tiny Spanish-English dictionary so I could ask him about it before we got inside. I got my dictionary for three dollars in Cuzco, so you can imagine it isn't the highest quality dictionary. I had been let down before, so I was praying it had the word in it. Yes, it did have it and nervously I asked Pancho. "No, no," he assures me. "The mother will take care of that." Pheeww, with that resolved, I was now actually ready.

All three of us go in to the small building to investigate. Well, turns out that the mother in charge is not there. Uh, so what are Amy and I supposed to do today...well, turns out she is just at the market and will be back shortly.

After a few minutes of waiting in the dusty street, we see the woman in charge running toward us to try to make up for lost time. She is friendly, though only speaks Spanish, and escorts us in. Feeling like we still don't completely know what is going on and a little afraid for Pancho to just leave us, we ask Pancho all sorts of questions about when he'll pick us up, what we are supposed to do, and anything else we are panicking about at the moment. He assures us that he will be back and will come in to get us about noon.

The room the daycare is in is off a small, dirty, rock courtyard and is about the size of my bedroom. There is a small bookcase in the corner with a few toys on it and the two year olds start pulling them out as soon as they arrive one by one. Amy and I sit on the floor and try to start playing. Being the reading teacher that I am, I instanly pulled out the tattered and torn books and tried to start reading them in Spanish. Pre-school books--Just about at the right (Spanish) vocabulary level for me.

The kids were shy at first, but soon were climbing all over us. There were four two-year-olds, one one-year-old girl, one seven-year old boy and one ten-year-old girl. The two older children are the children of the mother that runs the daycare and they help her out until they go to school at noon.

After having been there maybe half an hour, the mother tells me that she is going out for a minute. Wait, wait what? Us by ourselves? In my Spanish, I ask her for how long just invisioning me and Amy with these kids by ourselves the rest of the afternoon. She says only ten minutes, so I say ok. We continue playing and I remember that I am indeed a fully capable person. Soon one of the little boys wanders out into the courtyard and I follow him not sure where he is going. Well, he pulls down his pants and starts peeing into a drain in the middle of the courtyard. Amy and I look at each other and burst out laughing. Guess I didn't have to worry about that diaper thing after all.

The mother does return shortly (though certainly seemed longer than it really was) and we sing some songs and I tried my best to remember all the songs I should know...didn't do as well as I should have. Next, it was time for some breakfast and all the children sat around a little table and drank their warm oatmeal/milk mixure. After the snack, we played some more. The two-year-olds pulled out about six plastic balls and started kicking them around the tiny room. Not necessarily my idea of a good time, but they loved it (and that's all that really matters)! Then, I held a basket and they loved throwing the balls into it. I felt that I should be doing more with them, like teaching them all sorts of amazing things, but I felt completely unprepared and there were absolutely no resources there.

I enjoyed playing with the kids, but for the first time the poverty of this part of the country really hit me. The space was tiny and while they did their best to keep it clean, it so was not. There was nothing to work with. There was little training for the mother in charge. I realized, this is exactly why I wanted to come here. My eyes are really being opened and I am getting more eager to attend my regular placement next week. This is what I'm here for.

What I'm For, Pat Green