Glee

I walked by one of the rooms and saw Hermina sitting on her bed. The thirteen year old (?), developementaly slow girl was rotating the trunk of her body back and forth, shaking her hands at the writs and staring upwards at the air with a gleeful smile. Her joy seemed so bright that it was almost other-wordly. Three days ago, Hermina jumped out of a second story window and fell on the dirt road beside the building. She spent the weekend in the hospital. She broke no bones and seemed to have suffered very little. "She must have had an angel on her shoulder," a Dutch volunteer told me in broken English when we disgussed the outcome of Hermina's fall.

Today I tried to have patience and help a girl with Cerebral Palsey eat her food. "How old is she?" A woman visiting the center asked. "Eight or nine years old," I guessed of the skinny and fragil girl I was easily able to hold in my arms without assistance. The woman looked at me with surprise. "Why is she so skinny? so small?"

"I think it's because she eats so little," I said. "Her mouth muscles are difficult for her to control and she can't swallow. As a result, she eats very little."

The woman I spoke with had come with her seven-year-old son to the center so that the nurse here could take a look at her son. The seven-year-old boy had some sort of problem that kept him from walking.

He sat on the orange couch with a smile. "I can walk!" he told me with excitment. His mother held him under his armpits wile his nearly limp legs tried their best to make a walking motion. "I can walk!" He told everyone who came into the room with perfect glee. One girl from the center ran into the room only to slap the unsuspecting seven-year-old visiter. His mother came to his rescue while a volunteer simontaniously pulled Ana Maria out of the room and explained that Ana Maria only hit people in order to get attention. Her son was not singled out; Ana Maria did this to everyone. I can vouch that this is true. Twenty minutes later the seven-year-old was using his hand to scoot over on the couch in order to throw his arms around another girl from the center he had never met before. This girl was seventeen. He seemed the ideal picture of childish happiness, even though his little legs wouldn't move and he'd earlier been hit for no fault of his own. How much I could learn from such a tutor?

How to Talk to Aurel

I held a little one and a half year old for the first ten minutes. Her feet are deformed and she doesn't speak. Her name is Luminita. It means "Little light" in Romanian. Today I saw Luminita's standing in her crib and reaching toward the girl in the crib next to her. The girl in the crib next to her is named Maria and she has Cerebral Palsy. Maria arched her back as much as she could look back at Luminita. It was not easy to place Luminita back in her crib after just 10 minutes of her in my arms.

Next I walked with Aurel. He is blind and deaf. Both of his eyes do not have the colored part, so when you look at him all you see in white. When you touch him in his crib, this eight year old starts to grab for you. As soon as he can get ahold of someone he uses all his strenght to try and climb from his crib. When I first tried to walk with him, it was difficult. He keeps going in circles and he seemed to have a mind of his own. Does he do this because he has no sense of space? After having experienced walking with him I feel more comfortable with the task. I took him to the enclosed balcony so that he could feel the breeze on his light skin. I wonder how Aurel understands the world? His world is a crib and he loves to rub bits of string with his long fingers. Sometimes he hits his chin, and seems to derive some pleause out of this. Ingay (another volunteer at the center) told me that we feel a lot of vibration with our jaw, and this is why Aurel hits himself so peculiarly there. In Aurel's world pleasure doesn't come from what he sees or hears. It comes from vibration, touch, smell, and taste (I'm guessing here, I'm no expert). I've observed that when I hold Aurel close to me, this is when he is most likely to tap himself on his chin. Why is this?

He smiles big when I talk him out of his crib. When he walks with the support of my hand, he smiles. When I press on his soft nose with my forefinger, he giggles. When I pat him on the chest he laughs. I can't think of a way to reach Aurel except to allow him to experience the pleasures of walking, being outside of his crib, and, most importantly, being with someone. I am trying to indulge him in these pleasures. Experiencing pleasure is an important part of being human.

A little earlier in this post I wondered what Aurel's world is like. I wonder if the world is made of different sized cribs for him. The bathtub is one kind of crib. The enclosed balcony is another, bigger crib. I want him to know where he's at, and so I try to walk the same path with him when we walk in the hallway. He doesn't seem to understand the idea of sitting in a chair. I try to sit with him in my lap, but the sitting position seems foreign to him. Standing or sitting on a flat surface are the only positions he seems comfortable with.

I have a lot to think about when I walk with Aurel. How can I speak to him? Would he ever be able to understand there is such a thing as communication? If you happen to know the answers to any of these questions - I am listening.

I'm Thankful For

I am completly thankful for my past experiences with Romanian culture. Walking on the streets, riding in a crowded bus, greeting strangers on the street, all these normal activities are different then they were in my previous experiences of them in Romania. There is no longer a strangness about these things. This world is not different , as it was before. This place makes sense. In short, I am becoming more comfortable here. This is because I have spent so much time here in the past. I thank God that these past experiences have allowed me the privilege of feeling at home in a differnt culture. Oddly, this feeling of familiarity is an entirely NEW feeling, because I've never flet comfortable in another country before.

Also, the differences that I notice are smaller now then they once were. As the superfishal differences cease to amaze me, the differences in the details become easier to observe. Instead of noticing how people dress differently in general, for example, I notice the uniqueness of dress that one person has from another. Noticing the simpler things is sweet. I've also been able to get a glimpse into a new dimention of the culture. The people have endless complexities.

There is a girl who had an operation in December at the orphanage, but she has not recovered. She no longer walks so much. Today I walked with her. She was scared, but made it down a long flight of stairs with my help and encouragement. When I told her we were going to go back up the stairs, she couldn't handle this. She screamed in the hallway, giving a little tantrum in response to my statement of returning up the stairs. Although she can understand most of my Romanian, she does not speak for the most part. I tried to understand what her screaming meant and decided it meant that she had walked enough. I carried her up the stairs.

I am so thankful for my pervious job in the states at Green Pastures. My exposure to kids who have trouble waking at Green Pastures has allowed me to begin to understand the importance of foot orthotics. I got a hold of a Phusical Therapist and she gave me the idea of making sure that Elena at least has strong boots that come up around her ankels when she practices walking. I found some winter boots. One pair was missing a shoelace. When i asked a worker, she found a shoelace and give it to me.

I am amazed by the amount of hope and light I have felt at the orphanage in the past week. Many people from outside and INSIDE the culture have taken time to help some of the children, and this makes things so hopeful. Prayers for help and growth have been and are being answered in extraordinary ways. Another way I saw prayers answered today was that God helped me to understand a staff member at a key moment that allowed me to connect with them. This is an answer to prayer.

As I consider that there is so much to be thankful for, I find that I am wishing for one thing more. There are kids who may be more desperate than the ones I've worked with so far. I want to help them. I want to reach out a hand to kids I am afraid to touch. Pray that I will do this.