As I woke up this morning, I was thinking about how grateful I am to have such a great mom and looking forward to celebrating her today. What an important and beautiful role our moms play in our lives and I'm so fortunate that I was blessed with one like mine! After a bit, my thoughts bunny trailed to all the other wonderful women in my life who are moms and I thought about myself being a mom someday. Immediately, my mind flashed back to my 44 babies I left behind in Peru and realized, for those 6 weeks, I took on the role of their moms. Some of the kids have wonderful moms who visit and miss them everyday that they were living away. But the sad reality for some of the kids living at the Hogar is that their moms have passed away, they have moms who didn't want them, or have moms that were unfit to take care of them. My heart breaks all over again thinking of the kids who were abandoned, abused, or neglected. This is part of the reason this post has taken so long to happen; it has been 12 long weeks or processing that experience, missing those babies, and thinking about how to share them with you.
Let me back up, in case anyone doesn't know what the "Hogar" is! About 3 years ago, I stumbled upon a documentary on Netflix called "The Human Experience". In this film, 2 brothers from New York decide they want to experience life in other places. They travel to Africa to a leper colony, live homeless in New York in winter (crazy!), and lastly they travel to Peru and volunteer in a children's home. Instantly, my heart was magnetically drawn to the children and I knew I needed to go someday. I saved the home's website link as a bookmark on my computer and decided it would happen. This Peru experience became my plan b in case I didn't get accepted into the rigorous and competitive Speech Pathology grad program. Well, I got in, which was fantastic, but my heart ached a little not to get to go to Peru quite yet. Fast forward to December 2014, graduating from my program, and I realized I would have roughly 6 weeks that I couldn't yet start work while I would be waiting for my license to process. I happened to notice that little bookmark that had lived in my computer for all those years and knew right away that this was the time. From the generous donations of friends and family I bought my ticket and was able to give extra funds to the home. I flew to Peru and spent 6 wonderful weeks of my life living in the Hogar.
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| Hogar San Francisco de Asis |
More about the home! It's a 3 story home in a little suburb about an hour outside of Lima opened by a doctor from Florida, about 30+ years ago, who wanted to do more with his practice. He takes in children with health problems from the area and surrounding jungle as well whose families can't afford the medical treatment the kids need. The children range from newborns to just under 18. When I was there, there were around 12 infants and 30+ older kids. Some of the conditions they were being treated for were: tuberculosis, leukemia, malnutrition, missing limbs, cleft palate, club feet, severe burns, cerebral palsy, and various other ailments. Some of the children have lived there their whole lives, but a majority of the kids are there around a year or less and are able to return home to their families or other caretakers. As a volunteer there, you help with everything from serving meals, washing dishes, tying shoes, emptying bed pans, holding sweet babies, and riding the insane Peruvian buses nearly everyday to take the kids to their medical appointments in Lima. Here is where the bus post comes in! I had no idea how many buses I would ride or how nutty the rides would be!! A little bit of the medical care is provided in the home by the doctor or the full time nurses who work there, but a majority of the appointments, surgeries, and various therapies (including speech-woohoo!) required a trek into town.
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| Piero y Lucero |
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| Yuneli playing during baby hour |
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| Baby Blanca at her physical therapy appointment |
Thankfully, a staff member from the house would accompany the volunteer(s) and kid(s) on these trips to help navigate, chat with the doctors, pay for the appointments, etc, but the volunteers sit with the kids on the long, hot, crowded bus rides and wrangle them throughout the hospital and waiting times. Most of the trips would be about 2-3 hours ride EACH way, and sitting and waiting in the hospital for about a 5 minute consultation or medicine pick up. Here's my best description of the actual bus ride, picture this-
- it's 80 degrees outside with 80 percent humidity, no air conditioning, and you HOPE you are near a window
- a baby or small child on your lap who is also 98.6 degrees against you
- loud music with all kind of bass and beats happening, which I actually grew to love
- people shuffling on and off and at times literally pushed up against each side of you
- the bus screeching to a stop and then going again about every minute
- the cobrador (the guy who stands at the entrance of the bus and collects the money) yelling the stops out the door, motioning people to move, banging the outside of the bus to notify the driver when people were coming on or off
- horns honking all around from other buses and cars
- the bus driving much, much faster than it should, weaving in and out of traffic, nearly rear-ending other buses
- vendors selling sodas and popsicles thru the windows and clinking the coins on your window to get your attention
- crying baby, wiggling baby, sweating baby, or hopefully sleeping baby on your lap
Can you picture it?? I'll never forget the first trip in. I was so mesmerized and amazed by all the sounds and events happening all around me. The other thing that blew me away was how the Peruvian locals could just sleep through all of it and magically wake up right when they needed to get off the bus. I told myself, nope you must stay awake and hold tightly to the baby and watch carefully for your stop. After a few weeks though of the same routine and acclimation to the beautiful chaos, I too was a sleeping bus rider, enjoying the long naps on the way home and somehow waking up just as we neared the Hogar's stop.
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| Edelberto y Percy riding to speech therapy |
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| Little love, Eloy, asleep on the ride home |
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| Waiting for the bus |
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Maria, a volunteer from Italy with Eloy
and Danielle, from Chicago, with Nicole |
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| Derydis and I on the way to a post-op appointment |
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| Edelberto and Andrew, volunteer from Washington |
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| Eloy and I enjoying the window breeze! |
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| Baby Maria and I after a pre-op appointment for cleft lip and palate |
Overall, it was an incredible 6 weeks. I plan to go back and provide some speech and language therapy to the kids in home, to avoid the long trips and get more therapy done! It was such a privilege to help those children move through this tough part of their lives, living away from home and enduring painful operations and recoveries. It was humbling, eye opening, and refreshing to be reminded of how blessed we are to live the states and made me ever so thankful for what I have and the family and friends who love me and I get to love in return. Please check out the home's website and if you ever have any spare dollars, send them their way. The house runs entirely by donations and costs about 30k a month to function. Every little bit helps these babies receive life changing care they desperately need. Thanks for reminiscing with me on this adventure, what an honor it was.
villalapazfoundation.org
