Stuffed Penguins and Jackhammers

A fascinating first week at Entre Todas! Wednesday began with a bit of drama as one of the girls’ mothers came to talk to the social worker because her daughter had run away the night before. As I forgot to mention in my last post, not one but four girls ran away on Tuesday. At the evening snack time the tías (staff) asked the girls if any of them knew where the missing girls were but ten girls yelling quickly in Spanish was too much for me to understand. The veteran volunteer at Entre Todas told Chris and I, the newbies, that this happens all the time and that the tías don’t really do anything about it because it’s so common. Apparently the girls usually go home to their families when they run away but since they’re all legally in the custody of Entre Todas, there are only specific times when they’re supposed to go home; some of the girls, though, are never allowed to go home because of whatever dangerous situation waits for them there. However, the girl whose mother came to talk to the social worker never went home on Tuesday, so God only knows where she spent the night. Egad.

After lunch on Wednesday I had the opportunity to take one of the eleven-year-olds to an appointment with her psychologist. The tías told me she knew her way, which she absolutely did. She led me to the Metro, told me when to get off, then led me on a fairly long walk to the psychologist’s office. I asked her lots of questions about herself on the way, which she answered fully and politely, but she never really engaged in conversation. It seems to be her personality to be so quiet, though. During her appointment the receptionist put Ice Age in English on the TV for me, though I was too fascinated by my surroundings to pay much attention. There were signs in the office noting its affiliation with SENAME (Servicio Nacional de Menores, or National Service for Minors), a program developed after Chile signed the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (interesting tidbit: Somalia and the United States are the only countries who haven’t ratified the convention). I won’t bore you with more details on this, I just find it interesting to see how Chile actually attempts to follow through on programs that protect children’s rights. On our way out of the psychologist’s office, he helped the girl pick a lemon from the tree in the front yard, which she proceeded to eat without a grimace on our walk back. We must have made a ridiculous pair walking down the street, a stylish Chilean girl with a long, gorgeous ponytail and me, an awkward gringa approximately twice her height. She’s like, so much cooler than me, it’s not even fair.

On Thursday we made Christmas cards with about four of the girls. As I’ve come to realize, our only real project time is between lunch and the evening snack, and a lot of the girls follow specific telenovelas that air during that time, so they don’t seem to consider participating in our activities. On Friday, though, we made stuffed felt penguins—the veteran volunteer at Entre Todas had brought all the materials for these little stuffed Christmas ornaments—and the day felt like the most successful of the week. Although we only had four girls with us, again, the girls were really engaged and did an amazing job sewing the little critters. We only had dull, fat needles because it would be dangerous to give them real needles, so it was a challenge to push the needle through the felt, but the girls did it, two of them completely the entire complicated project that day. Of course the day was not without the usual challenges. There’s a girl at Entre Todas who’s been dubbed the house piercer, and whenever she can get her hands on a needle or pin, someone’s nose ends up pierced soon after. She managed to sneak into the pins and steal one and run away with it, laughing and screaming, not listening to us at all when we asked her to give it back. She then told us she “dropped it” and “couldn’t find it,” but we know what that means. The day also ended with a physical fight between the six-year-old and the eighteen-year-old who they describe as “Special Ed.” The six-year-old clearly started the physical aspect of their disagreement, as she quickly resorts to violence when she doesn’t get her way. The eighteen-year-old began to fight back a little and then it erupted, to the point that one of tías came out to the patio to put an end to it. Interestingly enough, her lecture was to the older girl about how the younger girl was just a little girl who didn’t know better. It’s frustrating to see how they treat the older girl, but I can’t change their system, so for now I’ll just focus on learning what I can do to help her feel treated fairly by at least the volunteers.

Yesterday all the VE volunteers came to Entre Todas for a repair day. VE holds a repair day at one of the institutions at the beginning of every three months. I was thrilled ours was at Entre Todas so I got to see the girls in a bit of different setting. We painted the walls of the patio white so the girls can paint a mural there, put up a mesh shade across one side “yard” which is really just a cement area, put up a new wall in the laundry room, weeded a small garden in the other side “yard” and used jackhammers to remove most of the cement from that side yard so that grass can be planted there. It was a really fun day and we worked really hard. The male volunteers (they refer to themselves as “Team Man”) and one brave chica absolutely rocked the jackhammers. Some of the Entre Todas girls even helped scraping and painting the patio. And, because you never know what’s going to happen at Entre Todas, the girl who showed me the poetry she’d written on Tuesday told me that she didn’t like me, and a girl who’s never given me the time of day showed me how if you pull out a certain part of one of the plants in the garden, there’s a little bit of honey-flavored juice that you can drip onto your tongue. This is how it goes.

We celebrated last night with a disco-themed party at the VE Volunteer house out in the suburbs. I absolutely love this group of people! They’ve really got the whole work hard, play hard thing down. Also, on Wednesday night my housemate and fellow volunteer spent a few hours chatting and she’s just fantastic. We are absolutely kindred spirits. It will be a huge bummer when she leaves at the end of January, but for now, yay!