Long day at work

It was such a long day at work today.

First, i was in the nursery, and that is always fine, the babies are cute, they didn´t cry too much today, and they are easy to handle.

Then i went outside to play with the kids between the ages of 3-6. I was chatting with a Canadian from Quebec, when the horror happened.

A kid comes from behind me and says "he peed on you".
I turn around to see this devil of a child pulling up his pants, and i look down at my own pants and he had peed on me. On purpose. On BOTH calves.

What did I do? Of course i was furious, but more shocked at a child would do something like that (they fully know its wrong). I chased him down, and harshly scolded him (as best as i could with my english-accented spanish). The Quebecois later said to me "wow, you show a lot of restrain, if i were you, i would´ve given him a slapping." I said, "well, if he was my own kid, i would too, but he´s not".

And that is when i really felt the limits of my presence there. I can never be there mother, and I am to follow the organizations way of raising children. Which is usually pretty good and I agree with most of the ways they do stuff, but its simply impossible for 2 "mamas" (local workers) to look after and raise 50 children.

Us volunteers are there to assist, but sometimes its really hard for us to take part in the disciplining area, because the children are smart, they KNOW that us foreigners are only here for a limited time. They know we don´t have the power to punish them. So usually, when i try to get them to do something they don´t want to do, they just don´t do it. But all that needs to happen is for a mama to come and repeat what i was doing and -viola! they do it. Those kids, as young as they are, they KNOW who is in charge!!!

So after the peeing incident, I didn´t have an extra pair of pants or anything, so i just let it dry. What can I do right? (but i was surprised at how fast it dried...but anyways......)

Earlier in the day, a different boy had said to me "My mom hasn´t come...". I wasn´t sure if she was really supposed to come, probably not, but he was under the assumption that she was going to come today. He is one of the older ones, almost 6 years old, and he just came recently, maybe 3 weeks ago. I don´t know why he is there, but I suspect he was abused by one or both of his parents.

Around dinner time, when it started to sink in that his mother wasn´t going to come, he started to cry, and all throughout dinner he cried, and even after he continued to cry. I usually leave when they start to eat dinner, but he had motioned for me to come over when he started to cry, and i just couldn´t leave the poor fellow. I ended up staying over an hour longer than usual, but he was still crying when i left.

He sometimes wimpered "mama...." and the whole time he was looking outside, scanning the surroundings, searching for his mother. I couldn´t help getting teary myself. I can´t even imagine how difficult it is to be so young and to have parents but to be taken away from them. And i felt so helpless, I didn´t want to say some random soothing words like "maybe she will come tomorrow", and get his hopes up. All i could do is just be there and try to be a comfort to him.

Its really hard emotionally when you want to give those kids everything you can offer, but the one thing they want - parents - you can´t give. Even the devil child (the one that peed on me) - they all need families, parents that love them, care for them, and at times scold them. Would a normal child do such a thing as go pee on someone? I don´t think so.

I can only hope that more people come to adopt those beautiful children.