Snapshots From a Week at the Hogar

Kiddos from the school

2 weeks ago,  I received a visit here in Colombia from one of my best friends and most wonderful people in the world, Dolce Wang!!  Dolce wasn’t just visiting little ‘ole me in Colombia; oh no, she brought with her a group of wonderful people from LA to work, serve and love kids in an orphanage called the Hogar, Luz y Vida (Light and Life) started by a feisty, passionate and inspired nun, Sister Valeriana.  I had the privilege of joining them.  On day one, Dolce, Layna (a volunteer from the East coast) and I visited the school that was also founded by Sister Valeriana.  If you look on facebook, the pictures of us with the kids in red or turquoise outfits were from our time at the school. 

Dolce had spent months preparing for her visit to the school.  She developed a vision that the students- some of whom are not verbal and thus communicate with sign language,  (in one case, a lovely young woman, Rosita, cannot speak or move and thus communicates with her eyes), and ALL of whom communicate with Spanish – would be exposed to the art and language of visual communication through a photography project.  Dolce hosted a camera drive at her work through which 10 digital cameras were donated to the school.  She developed detailed lesson plans and created a photo diary for each student to log descriptions of photos that had to do with the daily theme: day 1 was “interesting people and things”, day 2 was “a day at the Hogar” and day 3 was “love.” On the first day at the school, we taught the kids some photography basics and distributed the cameras.  On the fifth day, we threw a party for the kids and displayed the beautiful photography that the students had taken throughout the week.  And in between, a lot occurred.  Three main “snapshots” (in the spirit of photography, and I actually do have photos of all three to share with you!) stand out the most vividly in my mind.

One of these snapshots occurred on that fifth day, the party day.  While the kids were watching Monster’s Inc. in Spanish, a nine-month old baby named Ruth, suffering from spina biffuda was dying.  Ruth had been abandoned by her mother at the hospital once she knew the severity of her child’s defects and Sister Valeriana took her in to the Hogar shortly thereafter.  When I met Ruth on the second day at the Hogar, her skull had just split open from the pressure created by fluid in her brain and her vitals were not looking good.  By that Friday, her oxygen levels were depleting and her heart rate was gradually becoming slower and slower.  I walked over to the “baby floor” of the Hogar once I heard the sad news and found many staff workers, as well as Sister Valeriana, crowded around Ruth’s tiny crib.  Sister was bent over little Ruth, praying quietly and stroking her hand, which was white as a sheet and about the size of a postage stamp.  Ruth was absolutely motionless except for the sporadic shifting of her eyes, which occurred every couple of minutes.   What struck me so profoundly about this moment was the pure love and deep sadness in the eyes of the staff that surrounded Ruth as she slowly died. I thought about what would have happened to this little baby and the circumstances in which she would have died had it not been for Sister and the environment of love, care and acceptance that she has established at the Hogar. I was rendered sad and speechless as I observed the way in which this little girl had impacted the lives of the staff of the Hogar.  Ruth died about an hour after we left the Hogar and we thanked God that the pain was over.  I will not forget that day and that moment by Ruth’s crib.

Baby Ruth (photo taken by Susan Logie)

My second “snapshot” of the week was Heidy.  Shortly after we distributed the cameras to the students, I noticed a little girl, Heidy, balled up in the corner of the room, hiding behind the curtain of a window, sobbing.  Some of her friends were trying to comfort her and asking why she was crying but she was completely unresponsive.  I walked over to Heidy and one of her friends told me she was upset because she didn’t want to share a camera (we only had 10 cameras for 16 kids).  I sat down beside her and asked why she was crying, to which she didn’t respond.  I sat with her for some time as she cried and rocked before she suddenly stood up and ran out of the classroom.  I followed her downstairs and into an empty classroom where she put her head down on the desk and continued to sob.  I just sat with her and rubbed her back and said, “No llores, querida” (don’t cry, sweetheart). She wasn’t opposed to my presence but she still wasn’t responding.  Her sobs finally turned to sniffles and I told her I was going to check on the class upstairs, but that I would return in 5 minutes.  I asked her if that would be ok and she looked into my eyes and nodded her head.  As I walked out of the classroom, Heidy followed me and grabbed my hand.  She was half smiling now and we walked hand in hand back to the classroom where she got to take some really great pictures with her shared camera.

This is Heidy and I shortly after the “meltdown"

And from that moment on, we were inseparable.

 I don’t know all, or even most of, Heidy’s story.  I know that she, for whatever reason, lives in an orphanage, that she has deep scars on her hands and arms and that she thinks her neighborhood is ugly because “everybody is poor” (she told me that while we were riding on a bus together).  But I also know that she has a heart full of love, she loves to give and receive hugs, she loves to sing, she cares deeply for her friends at school and at the Hogar and she knows how to take fantastic photographs.  And that I’d probably adopt her in a second if somebody asked me to. 

My third “snapshot” from the week is best captured by the bus ride from the school back to the Hogar.  In a sentence, the kids all know how to take care of each other.  The kids from the Hogar are integrated with other community kids at the school.  The kids have a wide range of disabilities and special needs, yet all the kids know exactly what every person needs.  For example, there are a handful of deaf students at the school and because of this, every student at the school knows how to sign!  One student, Rosita is 18, very smart and wheelchair bound due to cerebral palsy.  She cannot move her body and thereby, communicates with her eyes.  Yet all of the students know how to communicate with her and care for her!  Rosita is the adopted daughter of Sister Valeriana.  She found Rosita stashed under a bus seat as an infant and took her in.  Therefore, the standard for the school and orphanage is based exclusively around the standard that Sister has for the needs and dignity of her own daughter.  Dignity.  That is the word that just makes these places tick.  Every child is valued and cared for by every other child and it melted my heart to butter to see kids thriving and meeting their true potential; especially when I think about the stark, heartbreaking contrast of what their lives could look like without the Hogar.  The school struck a special chord with me given my experience teaching special education at a very non-integrated public school in LA.  My kids were the ones who were expected to adapt to the expectations and culture of the school, not the other way around, and they were certainly not in an environment that encouraged the fulfillment of their potential.  It was a beautiful and inspiring day for me.

Helping a friend get off the bus

But the most poignant moment of this integration and “dignity factor” happened on the bus.  At the end of the school day, all the students who live in the Hogar, as well as many staff members, boarded a big bus to go home.  Along the way, we stopped at a few centers and facilities to pick up more kids.  Many of the kids were carried out of their wheelchairs or walkers (oftentimes by other kids) and onto the bus.  After the second stop, there were like 4 kids to each bus seat; the younger and disabled kids sat on the laps of the older and stronger kids, who wrapped their arms around them like seatbelts.  The staff members were standing in the aisle, busy wiping snot off of noses, comforting crying kids, readjusting paraplegic children who had slipped out of the bus seat, and replacing rubber caps over the PEG tube on the tummies of kids who are fed through a tube.  I smiled the entire 45-minute bus ride, feeling choked up at times, at the pure chaos of the situation, but simultaneously the environment and culture that had been created that made these things normal and acceptable.  

All the kids know how to care for each other. 

I truly cannot overstate what a gift it was to see Dolce and serve with her and the team that week.  This week was such a delightful and rich alternative from daily life and a powerful reminder to keep opening wider my own heart.