Those whom with I spoke (Mom and Dad) already know my first day at Tadeo was a VERY rough day and I was very discouraged. The children were mean to each other. A child smashed my head into the wall because he asked me to push him on the swing and I asked him to wait until I was done reading a book. I found children drinking out of a dirty gutter and received no help in stop them. I found 3 children playing in the laundry room -which is off limits- and one of them had climbed to the top of a ladder and was crying, not knowing how to get down.
Dinner was the worst. An older boy made another child give him all his food and I heard that this happens often. So I took his plate and put all the younger boy's food back on his plate. BIG mistake. The rest of the 3 older boys (including the boy I was trying to help get his food back) hit me with their butter knifes. When I grabbed their arms to stop them I was asked by a nun to not touch them, but to simply ask them not to hit me. I saw this same nun get hit and she just ignored it. The hard thing was that the other volunteers described the children's behavior as normal and seemed to just ignore it when they were treated badly.
As you can imagine I came home in tears, but committed with Lee to go back the next day.
I am so glad that I went back on Wednesday with Lee. These children rarely ever see men so thy were all drawn to Lee calling him "Papi". The three boys gave me stink eye all day, but never touched me. They played with Lee on the swings and had a great time. Although the children still misbehaved we enjoyed our time. We have been counseling with the Roseros about how to protect our volunteers and train them to stand up for themselves and earn/demand respect from the children.
Here is a picture of us outside the laundry room area on Wednesday. The children saw a cat run past and wanted to find it. As you can see we did not let them pass the gate in an attempt to begin establishing that the laundry area was off limits. This simple activity of watching the cat from a distance was so fun!
Slowly we encouraged the cat to come out to the playground. Here we are lined watching the cat.
The boy from dinner (whose food was taken Tuesday night) came to me at the end of the night and asked to if he could ride on my back. Healing began to take place.
