*Note: You must ignore the sweaty, hot, Central America me in the photo at the end. I don’t look good in Central America! Thank goodness most of you will be drawn to the beautiful face next to mine and won’t notice me!
I’m glad everyone is enjoying the photographs of the girls. They are indeed all very beautiful and healthy. The orphanage is run by Nuns and currently there are about 17 girls living there, ages ranging from 4-13. The 2 eldest girls go to school in the morning outside of the orphanage, but the rest of the girls are taught at the orphanage by the Nuns and volunteers. They are taught english, math, religion and spanish from what we saw of their notebooks. They are in need of a blackboard!
{Rebeca}
There is one bedroom full of bunk beds that the girls sleep in. They have small cubby holes where they store their clothes. There is a chapel, kitchen, laundry room and some open areas with tables where the girls do their school work. The bathrooms are in the open courtyard and the kitchen is very basic. They have a deep freeze and a refrigerator, however they don’t have electricity during the day to run them. They also have a computer, but apparently it doesn’t work and since there was no electricity, Cliff was unable to take a look at it to see what the problem was.
{Girls playing jump rope, you can see the bathrooms behind them}
They do seem to take very good care of the girls, tonight they were all going to the Dentist. I believe their main food is rice and beans. I’m sure meat rarely comes into their diet, and when it does it is in very small amounts. It seems the main needs of the orphanage are a constant supply of food and electricity so that they could store milk and other perishable items. Our hotel owner told us that a woman from England who just left had spent the last 2 weeks volunteering with them and plans on trying to organize more assistance for them once she is back in England. She is going to give us the woman’s email address, so hopefully we will be able to help in some way once we are back home.
{Tania, she is one of the eldest girls and has been there the longest}
The girls like to practice their English, I have to say it is adorable the way they say Cliff’s name. Because the letter “i” seems to be a problem for them (e.g. tiger becomes teeger) instead of Cliff they say Cleef. It is so cute, of course my name is just too darn hard to say! If only my mother had named me “Sue”, I’m sure it would have sounded adorable out of their mouths also. But they do know a number of English language songs which we were honored to receive a performance of. Included in the night’s performance were, B.I.N.G.O, Head shoulders knees and toes, and the alphabet song. Naturally the section of “L, M, N, O, P” was mighty mumbled and stumbled upon. Honestly the song should be slower at that section! Even English speaking children stumble upon those letters when first learning it. Perhaps it was made that way because it is so darn cute when they mumble over those letters.
{Performance of ‘Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes’}
It’s true, we have fallen in love with every single one of them! If we could take them all home we would. Every single one is so special and so loving, they deserve a home. Especially Tania, we can tell she is very comfortable at the orphanage. She is obviously a favorite of Mother Superior and is very responsible. She helps take care of the younger girls and she laughs so easily it is infectious. In the photo above you can see Tania standing against the wall in the back covering her face, she was laughing and Mother Superior was teasing her because she wasn’t joining in with the other girls singing. But boy she needed affection, she came running up to me and jumped into my arms, at first she was goofing off, having me pick her up and swing her. But them she just held on tight and put her head against me and didn’t let go. It surprised me, being the eldest there I thought perhaps she would be too “old” to go ahead and get a hug that she obviously wanted and needed. I held on tight to that girl and didn’t let go.
{Tania and me}
Posted By: Cliff & Chandra on May 7th, 2008 | 5 Comments »
Filed under: photographs, travel
