Some details about work

Me and Ismaha. She is deaf. One day last week she suddenly showed up with a head covering, basically in the fully veiled ensemble minus the part that goes over her face. I am always sort of disgusted to see such young girls covered because I just think "Really? She's 9 and you are sexualizing her hair? Pervs." It was just so sudden...and I wonder if there was an instance or if she had a birthday or something that made her parents start changing her dress.


This is Fahid. Very cute. Very energetic. Very tiring. The main reason I now have a cold.



Don't tell the other kids but Ibrahim is my favorite.

10/01/09

This past week has been a little rough for me. Working with the handicapped kids kind of wears on my soul a little bit. Some of the kids with downs syndrome are really poorly behaved, and I feel as though their parents completely ignore them at home. One kid, Farid, the littlest one, has had a cold since I've been here and its gotten progressively worse. He always has thick mucus running down his face and his eyes have become crusty and watery also. He is also very poorly behaved which I refuse to believe is solely the product of his condition. He knows full well that throwing things at other children is bad behavior. I hate to be the bad guy, but I feel that if I don't discipline them somehow then they will never learn. Nothing crazy, don't think I'm a Nazi or anything. But if you throw the legos after I ask you to stop, then you don't get to play with legos and you have to sit alone with me for a few minutes and not play.

Another kid...well he's 25 actually though you'd never know...is mentally and physically disabled. His name is Saiid and he lives his life in a wheelchair. He likes to draw. We tape all four corners of a piece of paper down in front of him and put a pencil in his hand and with with concentration than I've ever had to use he puts pencil to paper and creates all he can. He also loves to play this one memory game with very large pieces which he can actually flip over, though it takes him a while and quite a lot of energy. The amazing thing is that I lay the pieces out face up and leave them for 15 second or so then flip them all over. He owns me every time. And not like he gets a match or two more than me, he has a map of the game in his head and is never wrong. I suppose that's what happens when your life IS observation. I can't help but think about all the obstacles present in his life. If we're talking in theatre terms...what your objectives even have the possibility of being is completely changed by those obstacles...and he has to make concessions about what a successful achievement of objectives are based on those things which are completely out of his control...

I think that last bit will make sense to a couple people reading this blog...

Our mission is to teach these kids how to function as properly as possible in society. And I refuse to treat them like they are incapable of learning. Whenever I try and work with Fahid my boss says "No, no, its ok, he will make you tired." I politely tell him I don't mind and continue doing what I'm doing, but secretly I'm thinking "You have no idea how much tiredness I can handle buddy. Working with one kid three hours a day ain't nothin."

The three volunteers who work at the center rotate days helping out the teachers with the "normal" kids. They are so tiny, 3-5 years old, and the classes are absurdly large. In one tiny classroom there are 43 children, and in the other there are 31. This is a very general statement, but I feel like the children here in general are very poorly behaved (of course this is from my Western perspective - I have no idea what "well-behaved" means here). It is very difficult for me and I feel very useless because I can't speak Arabic, so I really am no help at all controlling the kids. Usually I just say "la!" (that means "no") with a lot of conviction then stare them square in the eye until they look away....animal style.

I wish the classrooms were larger - that way we could do more physical activities that would keep the kids engaged. What kind of 4 year old is going to sit still for three hours, however well-behaved they are? I think the center accepted way to many children and now everyone is suffering. I'm still trying to figure out what I can do with the handicapped kids one day. All we really do is give them toys and paper and crayons - it's not really an active time and I would like that to change. There is a park closeby and my boss has mentioned several times taking the kids there, but so far it hasn't happens. Peut-etre un jour semaine prochaine. Ou peut-etre je se dis de je voudrais aller un jour chaque semaine. hmm....(again pardon my lack of accents and the grammatical errors...mais j'ai besoin pratiquer souvent!)

Another strange thing at work is when the fully veiled women drop their kids off. I still have a strange reaction to these silhouetted figures of relatively human forms floating through the streets. They seem goulish and frightening to me, and I feel like I'm not supposed to speak to them...mainly because I don't know how to speak to people when I can't see their eyes. Usually I mutter a "Labess?" ("How are you in Dareeja") in their general direction and keep walking like I'm busily going somewhere. This is behavior I will have to work on. But I guess acknowledging that they kind of freak me out is the first step.

....right?