Obey My Blog

My company is big on volunteering, so every year we have a day dedicated to going out into the community and volunteering our time. Last year I worked with Texas Hearing and Service Dogs, which was awesome. This year, several of my coworkers and I volunteered with TAP – Theatre Action Project, which works with youngsters to encourage creative expression while learning life skills, building confidence and just having fun.

I was immediately taken in by all the bright colors, the paper-mâché parade dolls hanging from the ceilings, the marionettes and all the crayons and glue and stuff (glue is fun!). Our first task – make signs! So we did. I painted a nice, lovely arrow for them and then my coworker April worked her artistic magic on the others.

While we let the paint dry on our signs, we were given a second task – tie together paper cranes. The paper cranes were to be sent to Japan in honor of a young girl affected by the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima named Sadako. Inspired by an old Japanese saying that a person who folded 1,000 cranes would be granted a wish, Sadako attempted to fold 1,000 paper cranes while sick in the hospital (or so the story goes). She fell short of her goal and passed away, but her schoolmates decided to complete the cranes for her and buried them all with her. Now kids from all over the world carry on this tradition and send their completed cranes to Japan in honor of Sadako. Kids from several different schools around Austin had created thousands of these colorful origami paper cranes too and they absolutely had to be strung together in strands of 50. So we got to work…

And they turned out beautifully! We managed to get them all strung together and ready to go. Our signs were finished and we even had time to help out with a few other tasks involving construction paper and glue (no rubber cement though unfortunately!).

This reminded me of volunteering in Costa Rica and helping the kids there make lanterns for the Independence Day parade. I’ve been saving money to do another volunteer trip abroad, but I’m having trouble deciding where to go again. My first thought was, India – absolutely! But then, after doing some math and then redoing the math again, I realized it was going to be near impossible for me to afford it. My sister recommended Thailand. I would love to visit Thailand, but the only affordable program is in Bangkok. I’m not sure I want to stay in Bangkok. I can handle big cities, but deep down I prefer smaller, less populated places (yes, I know…and I was considering India! So be it…). So now I’m actually considering going back to Costa Rica…

But now – time to go to Qigong!

So my second week in Costa Rica was a melting pot of frustration and rage (just kidding) but my first week was a rich combination of happiness, emotion, reflection and genuine gratitude. I wrote a brief post on Connection Cafe about my time volunteering in Cartago, but wasn’t able to really go into detail. Well, technically I could have, but it didn’t seem appropriate. I also didn’t know if I’d be able to convey something so personal in a forum that is, well, somewhat impersonal.

So, I will try to convey here how much the kids that I worked with came to mean to me and what they taught me. To give you a quick overview, I worked in a children’s shelter for abused and neglected children. This wasn’t really a children’s shelter though, in that the couple that lived there personally adopted all 37 children. They provided them unconditional love and a family life – something they just would not receive in a typical orphanage or state run shelter. It has provided these kids with safety and an opportunity to heal and just, well, be kids. So without further ado, let me introduce you to a few of these wonderful human beings. Although it may read a bit awkwardly, I’ll use their first initial since I want to protect their privacy as much as possible.

Little M, the youngest, was so precious – always a mess. Holding him while walking back from the park, he dribbled his sticky-sweet lollipop all over my shirt. Looking at him in all his innocence, I couldn’t help think how someone could willingly let this child go.

Little N was extremely quiet and shy. She would stare at each of us intensely, trying to determine – I assume – if she could trust us. At the park she cried for her mother, so I picked her up and carried her all they way back to the house. All the way there, she was quiet and content, moving her little feet back and forth as we walked.

L – physically and sexually abused by his father when he was just a baby and fed nothing but coffee in his bottle before coming to the house, he was 9 years old, but looked maybe 4 or 5. He was incredibly sweet – he didn’t talk but understood what was said to him. He loved to hear and see cars – especially trucks and buses and sometimes I got scared that he would run into the street. He loved to touch everything as we walked – the fences, walls, rocks. He tried to peer inside my shirt sleeve and at one time tried to climb under my shirt. I don’t know if it was just simply curiosity or his way of trying to feel safe.

C was mentally challenged, but quite sharp and very loving. He was always kind to the other kids, even if they weren’t kind to him. He got upset frequently and would curl up with his head down. We all comforted him, even when the other kids complained that he was just doing it to get attention. So what? I was happy to give him attention. We clicked from day one. I tried not to give one child my attention, but C was indeed special, so I made an exception for him. He liked to clap hands so most of the time our greeting consisted of clapping our hands together back and forth. It always made him laugh.

D was a much older child – maybe 10 or 11. I don’t really know his story. He helped us walk the littlest ones to school, all the while encouraging them to run ahead of us – faster, faster. I pleaded with him in Spanish – in my horrible Spanish – to stop, but it only made him laugh. He got a good scolding from one of the women at the school. Apparently he had taken us the most dangerous way, with the most traffic. Despite his mischievous behavior, I kidded around with him on the walk back. I understood why he was testing us. He is a good kid, despite his pranks. Later, I helped him to decorate his lantern for the independence day celebration. One of the girls teased him about me helping him. I felt bad for him and pretended not to notice. The second time he helped us walk the kids to school, he took us the right way and didn’t encourage them to run. Horsing around with one of the other kids on the walk back to the house, he fell and skinned his knee badly. One of the other volunteers and I tried to comfort him. She cleaned and bandaged his knee, while I wiped the tears from his cheeks. It was pretty bloody, but in typical kid fashion, he was up and about in no time as if nothing had happened.

Saying goodbye to the kids was hard – harder than I expected. When it was time to say goodbye, most of the kids sulked, stared at the TV and tried to pretend they didn’t care. It broke my heart. At the time I thought, well, maybe it’s better for them this way, so I said goodbye and walked away, respecting their space. But now I deeply regret it and I feel I should have just grabbed them and hugged them anyway. Why didn’t I? I got choked up and it was all I could do to get out of the house before any of the kids could see me cry.

My trip to Costa Rica is over. So what do I have to say for myself? Thank God I am out of the jungle! Yes, the Yoga / Nature Retreat was fun and relaxing at first, but by day three I was ready to go. I began experiencing major culture shock I suppose. The jungle is not relaxing. It is noisy. Try waking up to cawing birds and howler monkeys every morning (they call them howler monkeys for a reason…). On top of that, I practically smothered myself in insect repellent and still got bit (I’d like to take this moment to thank Tara for telling me about Botflies. Now I am completely freaked/grossed out.). But even that wasn’t that bad. I think what really got to me was the isolation of the actual property and having to rely on the staff to get anywhere. I like being able to go and do as I please and that just wasn’t possible here. I had considered renting a bicycle – before I actually arrived and realized how ridiculous and possibly dangerous this would be. Just going into town had to be arranged. And going into “town” wasn’t all that exciting anyway. I’m sure the people of Puerto Viejo are wonderful (I met a few nice peeps there) but I had a miserable time there. It was only worsened by my increasing homesickness. Add to that misinformation about transportation, misinformation about payment information and you have one frustrated, exhausted, worn out American in Costa Rica.

On a lighter note, I actually enjoyed myself in San Jose. Who knew! San Jose is quite dirty, run down and very 1970′s in appearance. My mother would have a heart attack if she knew I had been exploring streets like these (evil grin). But it is so full of life, and once I got past the fear of being mugged, I allowed myself to relax just a little and take some of it in. Stepping out of my hotel I followed the streets to a little vegetarian restaurant and had a veggie burger with a pineapple fruit and milk drink – a bit of a weird combo for me, but tasty! I know what you might thinking – a veggie burger in the middle of Costa Rica?? But trust me, I had been eating casado (rice and beans) for the entire previous week in Cartago (more on that later…). I needed something completely unrelated to rice and beans. After filling up on a non-burger and stepping back out onto the streets, I was assaulted by the smell of exhaust fumes and wafts of sweet things baking in an oven somewhere. It instantly reminded me of Prague and Brno and I caught myself becoming nostalgic. There’s something about that combination that makes me feel strangely alive.