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Tuesday, September 23, 2008




OH WOW! I’ve had two full days of being the assistant nurse to Nurse Jessi and I just LOVE IT!!! It has been so much fun. I know it does not sound all that much exciting when I say that for the past two days I have helped weigh and measure about 150 kids so far, but it is WAYYYYYY more than just weighing and measuring. It is so hard to describe all I have experienced. First off, on the orders of the head (and only) nurse, I go to the classrooms and get 5 kids at a time and bring them back to the sick room. We have them all sit on a bench and remove their shoes and they have to take a pill for worms (this just got us to laughing so hard yesterday when we started thinking what they must think…like “so in the USA they sit down and take off their shoes to take a pill?”) They get the worming pill every 6 months. They don’t know that it is a worming pill, Jessi learned the hard way last time that they can’t be told that. The older girls heard what the pill would do to them and how they would ‘rid’ themselves of the worms and were afraid and refused to take the pills. So instead this time around she informed them it was an anti parasite pill. It was quite the process to get some of the little kids to get the pill down. Since it was a pretty large pill most of the little ones had to chew it up first and it was so yucky, by the time they had some water mixed with it which made it taste even worse, then they could not swallow it…anyway, they managed to get them all down. From there they came over to scales and were weighed and had to stand up against the wall for their height, put their shoes back on and then the ones who had a sponsor sat down to do their letter to their sponsor. So many of the kids would thank me for the sticker we gave them before they went back to class, and some were even saying it is English and so proud they could say it.

Putting their shoes on is a whole story in itself, the little ones needed help and it was so hard on some of them to get their feet into their shoes because they were way too small for them. Taking them off should have been no big deal, but it was to them, at least it was to the older kids. Some of the kids had the cleanest socks with little bows, some had socks with Spiderman and other super heroes, others had mis-matched socks, some had one inside out and one right side out, some had heals up, and some had huge socks on that had been folded under at the toes to make them look like they fit when they had their shoes on, some had filthy smelly socks, some had socks so holey that they may as well not had socks on and then there were the ones who had no socks on, and they were embarrassed and hid their feet under the bench. I didn’t know socks could make such a difference.

Hopefully when Jessi goes to get them all charted out, it won’t be too confusing to her. I’m not so sure I got it right on some of those girls with their fancy hair. They have so many hair things in and all that they could not get their heads against the wall or it was so high that I had to press the ruler down hard. And of course there were the normal joker boys who would raise up on their toes a bit as I measured and be about 3 inches taller than they really were. Along with that I tried to say all the numbers in Spanish as Jessi wrote them down so the kids could hear how much they weighed. Hopefully Jessi was able to decipher what I was saying. One group of kids I brought in, maybe 7th or 8th grade, the first girl to get measured, I asked her to stand against the wall, and instead of just putting her back and heels against the wall to be measured, instead she took the police pat down position…two hands pressed against the wall with her back to me! It was so hard not to laugh out loud!

The sponsorship letters have also been fun to do. That is what Candace is in charge of at the school. The kids are asked their favorite color, who their best friend is, their favorite thing about school, what they are learning this year a favorite Bible verse and what they like about Christmas. The color one is easy, their best friend is usually easy…funny too how so many of them either say Jessi or Candace as their best friend. It gets more interesting when you get to what they remember as their best thing in school, etc. Like ‘that my teacher expects me to work hard” as what he learned in school. Or things like respecting other people, sharing things, along with the typical reading, and math answers. The best answers to their favorite thing about Christmas were “that the disciples ate a special meal with Jesus” (umm, wasn’t that part of the Easter story?) and top answer…”SNOW”…now how often do you think he has ever seen snow here? Oh well. I wish I could really show them what snow is! I was surprised how so many of them really knew a verse for their favorite verse question. Not only did they know the place to find it in the Bible, some of them would even recite the whole verse to you. Along with the questions they answered, they had a picture they colored. While they colored, some of them would sing or hum to the music that was playing on the speakers. Doing this project with them was so good for me to see, how the kids who were newer to the school had such a hard time writing or reading or even understanding Spanish (ok, so maybe everyone has a problem understanding my Spanish), but you could see how much the school is helping the kids who are there by seeing the difference in the ones who are new.

Maybe I need to describe the school. It is in a barrio outside of the town Jessi lives. There are about 200 kids there now. Most of them have families, but a few are orphans. If they are orphans, they are living with another family. The kids here go to either morning or afternoon classes. They are required, but not enforced to go to school. It is free to go to school here, but in order to go to school, they are required to have a uniform. Some kids can not afford to buy a uniform, so they don’t go to school. The Kids Alive school is a before or after school school for kids kindergarten through 8th grade. They have to qualify to go to it. They have to keep up on attendance, grades and behavior or they are kicked out. One of the things that they get when they get into the Kids Alive school is a uniform that they also wear to public school. They also get breakfast if they are in the morning session and lunch for the afternoon kids. They have classes to reinforce what they are learning in public school and Bible class. There are so many kids in that area that need it and there is a waiting list of kids who want in, but there is no room. Kids who don’t make it in are sometimes waiting out by the gate watching in. Parents of the kids who don’t get in come asking if they can get their kids in. Parents whose kids are in try hard to keep their kids in.

I have loved most of all the last two days watching Jessi in action. At first I was going to take pictures of her with her patients, but there ended up being so many of them, her day was so full! On top of the weights and measures and anti worm medication which is her project for the week, she took care of flu, colds, headaches, sore throats, mouth sores, foot sores, scrapes, scabies, tooth aches, lice, she put Band-Aids on cuts that were there weeks ago and were healed already. So many of them were only there for their moment alone with her…and that is what she would give them, she would ask them the routine questions, look them over just in case there was more that she should see, then give them a hug and a vitamin if nothing else . I don’t really know how it got started but two little ones come in each day after their lunch just to sit on Jessi and Candace’s laps for a while. Not only does she take care of the kids health, there are also staff who stop in for something for themselves or for kids they live by that need something. They love to play with her hair. I think LOVE was the most important medicine I saw her pass out. One little girl that got her medicine said to Jessi on her way out, “thank you for taking such good care of us”, isn’t that so sweet? They love her and she loves them back.

It was good for me to see the faces to the kids that she has talked about and then the personalities of the ones that she has sent pictures of. As little ones would come in she would add in other little stories that would come to mind. Some sad, some just funny. Things that I know happen all over the world, things that probably go on in all schools and that I would hear and see, but since it is my first time behind the scenes at a school, some pretty tragic things. A little girl, in the second grade who had been raped, when it was discovered what the man had done he was forced out of the barrio, a boy whose mother just died of AIDS, the kids who come to school hungry and the meal they get there is the only one they will get all day, you can see scars on them from burns or cuts, probably gotten innocently, maybe not, but had they gotten proper care, maybe they would not have the scars. It makes me sad, but what can be done more than what is being done?

Jessi is working on the weights and measures to chart their growth in order to start a nutrition program for those who need extra help. She has already noticed a couple of obvious ones who did not grow enough in the past year.

Because we are around so many Spanish speaking people, I have tried really hard to speak to her in Spanish when they are around. It is really odd for me to communicate with her like that. We have tried it in the past around the house in Oregon, but it never lasted for more than a sentence or two and now here we are having full conversations like this.

Just after lunch at the school today, before the afternoon session began, we had to take a trip back in to town to pick up extra med for the kids. They have zero restrictions on how meds are given out here. She just walked in and requested what she wanted and out she came. Can you imagine that happening in the US? While we were in town, we stopped in at a little shop and picked up a doughnut and coke and the three of us ate it in the van by the park. Then she said “Can we do this everyday, even next week?” I wish I could, but next week I will be home…she knew that.

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