Let me tell you a little about my volunteer placement. I have been placed in a school called ‘Anjo Gabriel’. It is a school of special education & therapy for mentally and physically handicapped children. In this school, there are around 40 kids. And for these kids there is only one physical therapist, one speech therapist and one psychologist and around 6 or 7 teachers in all. There are 5 classes which are divided up in accordance to the capability of these kids. Each class has anywhere from 7 to 12 children and only 1 teacher and/or 1 teacher and 1 assistant. Being in any one class for even one day, you could see that 1 teacher is not enough for 7 kids! I don´t know how these teachers do it!
I am placed in the physical therapy room. I assist Juliana, the physical therapist, in providing different kinds of therapy to these children. These children leave their classes once or twice a week and come for therapy in groups of 4 to 5. So, I am happy that I see and know all the children of the school and I have worked with all of them.
I came to Peru knowing the two words of spanish – ‘Ola’ and ‘Si´ and now I speak to the children in spanish and tell them what they should or should not do! I enjoy my time with the kids in Anjo Gabriel. The children are very sweet and happy in their world. The teachers, the therapists, and the principal are all wonderful and they love the kids a lot. There are a lot of abrazas and besos (hugs and kisses) that go around :).
On my stay here, I’ve heard many inspiring stories – one is that of a woman who is not married but adopted a child when he was 3 days old. When he was 3 months old, she found out that he has ‘hydrocephalus´- which is an accumulation of extra fluids in the brain. He is almost 3 years old and you should see her dedication towards this child! She brings him to therapy twice a week and stays with us through the therapy session. She says, her son is a gift to her from god!
Another aspect to this trip is staying away from home but with a lot of people. All volunteers stay in one house and there are 3 to 4 volunteers in the same room. We are all very different from one another and of all different ages with only one thing in common and that is that we are here to volunteer. It is an interesting journey where we start off as strangers and leave off as friends(most of the time ;) haha ).
It´s going to be hard to leave this place, and that is why, as most of you know, I ended up extending my stay here. But time is flying fast and I will have to leave soon. But I am glad I came to Peru and volunteered at Anjo Gabriel :) .