Casa de fantasmas

large empty halls leading to large empty rooms full of many empty beds

Last Friday, I took a walk around San Juan de Dios with Sole, who is an extraordinary woman, and she echoed the sentiment of horror vacui. “Ahorita, San Juan es como una casa de fantasmas,” she said, sighing.

Soledad is an extraordinary woman, and her name suits her. Before I met her, everyone told me–Soledad will become your mother, just like she is the mother of her children, and of everybody. When I first met her, however, I did not get this feeling. There was something heavy about her, something guarded–don’t get me wrong, she was perfectly kind and wonderful, but not exactly what I expected from the description “motherly.” She was not exuberant, affection and warmth did not spill from her every pore, infectious and overwhelming, as with many women in this country. Her face did not melt into reassuring, honey-like smiles, rather, it seemed to be instilled with quiet suffering and resilience. Compared to Marta, to other volunteers, to my host mom, she seemed stern.

I have now known her for 3 weeks, and every day I am understanding more and more why and how she is the mother of everybody. Watching her with the children in San Juan, and especially watching her through Marden’s leg amputation, was and is truly a wonder. The amount of care she holds in her soul for those around her is miraculous. Sole does not mother superficially. She does not nag, she does not lather you with kisses, she does not spoil. Sole mothers by taking that little space inside your head, or your chest or tummy, or whatever, where you keep your worries, your cares, your burdens, and adding it to her own–all without making you feel guilty about being a source of worry. She mothers silently, steadily, from a distance but very close.

I have been meaning to write about her for a while now, but haven’t felt able to do her justice. I still do not think I have completely communicated what an admirable human being this woman is, but for now this must suffice.

In lighter (?) fare, I found out over lunch that the two children in Medicina D who have swine flu are Jhon and Lady, two of the children that I worked most closely with. I don’t care what doctor host dad says, I think I have swine flu.

Horror Vacui

I’ve been trying to figure out for a while now why exactly Hogar Clínica San Juan de Dios makes me feel so much heavier than the other two places I go to work. I thought at first it was because the illnesses are more permanent and visible–the children in San Juan have some some of physical disability, one of the boys just got his leg amputated, and lots of them have Cuban splints in their legs to make them grow–but that isn’t really true, because HIV is pretty permanent (Posadita), and Lady’s various crazy diseases (Hospital de Niños) are both permanent and extremely physically apparent. Furthermore, the kids at San Juan are active despite being in wheelchairs, and they give the best hugs ever.

However, working in places like this is always bittersweet, because the more you adore these kids the sadder you are about their misfortunes, and San Juan is the most bittersweet of all. My newest theory on the bitter is horror vacui, or fear of emptiness. The hospital clinic is run by a Catholic order called San Juan de Dios, and functions by donations. Because of mismanagement and over-generosity of the brothers in the past years, the financial situation has declined, and the clinic no longer has the resources to operate at its full capacity. This means that most of the beds in the large hospital are empty.

Posadita is always loud and overflowing, because there are lots of kids and they are all very energetic. Hospital de Niños is always jam-packed–there are never enough volunteers for the number of kids, and we only visit 4 or so salas out of many many many. In San Juan, right now we have only 4 permanent students. They live in a wing of the clinic that could easily house 50 with 3 or 4 bed-bound children. It sucks to grow up in a hospital. It sucks more to grow up in a hospital with flaky or nonexistent parents, and a permanent disability. But to live in a hospital with only 3 other children you can communicate/play with, with large rooms and spacious halls, where the sound of laughter and rolling wheels bounces off the dark empty walls? Very heavy.

On a lighter note, the movie theatre I went to last night to see Transformers 2 was not empty. Also, it was a pretty awful movie. However, Peruvian women laugh a lot, and in very funny ways, so I was entertained.

Happy Things, Sad Things

Happy things:

My parents are safe and healthy. They called this morning at 9am from China, while I was deep in sleep. Now I can spend the long bus rides to and from work clutching my purse tightly and worrying about the stranger who is nearly hugging me, rather than thinking about imaginary terrible things that might have happened to mis papás. Happy.

Last night I went to a Peruvian wedding! The couple (and/or their families) were rather loaded, so there was lots to drink and lots to eat. The bride was beautiful and glowing (not in the Asian manner), the sushi was delicious, the chocolate city wasn’t bad either, and I danced until 4am.

The british chick who is living with me (she arrived a few days ago) who got her purse snatched yesterday in a chifa got her purse back with the money gone but the keys to the house intact. A security guard had found it in a trash can in Central Lima and called the house. Milagros!

Sad things:

A 14 year old boy in the Hogar Clínica San Juan de Dios got his leg amputated on Friday. It was for the best, but still. I went to visit him after the operation, but didn’t know what to say. He’s been living in the hospital for quite five years now, and his family is poor and AWOL–Sole, the coordinator of the San Juan aula, doesn’t remember them visiting the hospital once. Sole was also very sad on Friday because of this, and I didn’t know what to do about that either.

I have to make dinner for 6 tomorrow night. This is not exactly sad, but a little bit alarming, especially because I will be using a strange kitchen and strange ingredients.

My feet hurt a lot from dancing so much last night.

Suerte

“Suerte que mis pechos sean pequeños, y no los confundas con montañas” – Shakira

My first day of work was exhilarating–much smoother than I expected it to be. The coordinator of the Hospital de Niños (where I was working), Marta, was so extremely sweet and very helpful that I felt perfectly comfortable. After a general tour of the hospital, I was assigned to work in Medicina D, more specifically with a girl named Lady (like much of the rest of the world, Peruvians have taken a liking to semi-English names) who I think has some type of sclerosis–she is 15 but itsy bitsy, so thin I’m scared to accidently snap her bones when I touch her, and wheelchair bound. Her head was wrapped in bandages, and according to Marta she is just recently losing control of her hands. Also, according to Marta, she doesn’t really have a family. But despite all this she is extremely bright, remarkably intelligent for her age, upbringing, and physical condition. She’s also sassy, really something else–since she can’t really move at all she’s gotten accustomed to asking people to do things for her, and orders around the nurses and Aprendo Contigo workers like she’s their boss. People endearingly refer to her as “la jefe del hospital.” I really probably should not have been so happy after my first day of work, because I saw so many beautiful little children with pipes and tubes sticking out of their bodies, which is quite a sad thing, but I think Lady made it easy. I returned home light, starving but bouncing on the soles of my feet.

After my second day, however, I feel much heavier. Today I went to a different location, to the Hogar Clinica de San Juan de Dios, a live-in hospital that treats many children who were born with some kind of physical disability or deformity. I work two days at San Juan, three days at Hospital de Niños, and half a day at Posadita. San Juan de Dios is very different from the Hospital de Niños because there is a special space for Aprendo Contigo–the organization has a very large portion of the clinic all for itself, with three classrooms, where the children come to have class from their hospital beds. The Hospital de Niños is much larger, and cannot have a classroom setting for that reason and also because the children have a multitude of different problems, not just physical disability, some of which are infectious. Maybe San Juan de Dios seemed sadder because it was darker, or maybe the classroom setting made the state of unhealth feel more permanent. After all, the hospital is literally a home–some of the kids have grown up in this hospital, some of them learned everything they know with Aprendo Contigo in the makeshift hospital school. The oldest boy, in particular, makes me feel very heavy. He is 16, a little shy but strong, he doesn’t use a wheelchair like many of the others but prefers crutches–he has lived for 4 years in San Juan de Dios, one of his legs is about a foot shorter than the other and basically useless (I think he has a Cuban sort of splint in it right now to make it grow)–and to top it off, he is currently only at a 5th grade level, or worse, because he cannot multiply. It really seems like nothing he has been given in life has gone right, or will go right. Even if he miraculously got two working legs, what chances does he have in a country like Peru with barely an elementary level education? Will he be like that ex-student who visited the other day who is now living on the streets, most likely stealing to get by? Seeing all this in such a tangible way really makes me feel kind of bratty for being born with a working body, for having parents that care for me, for my education, for having the luxury to aspire and daring to dream.

Heavy. Yesterday I was naive enough to forget that every adorable smiling little face has a very sad story behind it, and most likely is facing an even sadder story in its future.