plaid flannel shirt

My eyes are tired and my heart often beats with the fear that I am missing something...something big here in Peru. It feels much too easy to fall into a routine here than the live-out-loud experience I 'wanted' this to be. But I suppose that's what I get for having expectations and beliefs about what I could really do here...to help, and to travel. Fatigue is a nearly constant companion of mine these days, but so is happiness.

Yes, I am happy here. I find myself laughing and smiling at so many things each day; the orphan boys tipping each other out of the hammock, one of the children at Pachacutec flanking a volleyball into the neighbouring 'yard' so that we have to recruit one of the younger children to squeeze in between two of the boards used to separate properties in this shantytown to retrieve our ball or Marie and me singing "We are the Champions" after our first successful bus trip alone.

Although it has taken me awhile, I am beginning to find some peace here. And I truly think it is because I am starting to see a clearer reality of where I fit and how I can help. It is still hard for me to see past the overwhelming (correct) stereotype of myself as a wealthy white girl coming to 'help' the cute brown children, but as I begin to form relationships with the people I am trying to help, I am realizing that my money will run out, and can only go so far, but that the love I can give them will, hopefully, make an even bigger impression on them. Celia told me the other day how she really tries to be a mother figure for the orphan boys at Hogar because they don't really have any female role models, and that everything we do for them is a memory in their childhood. Just like I have memories of camping and road trips and Brandon Fair, if we make an effort to do special things with the boys, it will hopefully help them to look back on their childhoods a little bit more fondly. There was a little girl at Pachacutec on Tuesday who would not stop clinging to me. Everytime I looked at her I saw only sadness and loss in her eyes. We sat for a long time while I sang to her.

I think one of the biggest things I can do here is simply listen to people. I know that sounds ridiculous because I don't even speak Spanish, but it seems to me that many of the people with whom I am working are in desperate need of a listening ear, a back rub, and a hug. On Wednesday one of the special needs ladies at Hogar (she calls me Mama) came up to me and was crying about something. We just sat and for a while she told me what was going on (yeah, I had no clue what she was saying, although I can't say for sure I would have even if I WAS fluent in Spanish) and then I held her hand and rubbed her back and we sang together for a little while. Later on when one of the other ladies was crying, she was brought to me to 'release her burdens'. I find it rather amusing that someone as lost and confused as myself can seem like such a stable comforter to anyone, but these women are in desperate need of people they can trust and who love them and who are willing to take time to sit down and listen to them, to feel with them. I can do that.