the kids

The kids in my “reading club” (more like “come over and play club”) have slowly evolved over these two years. Maybe the ones who used to come by are older now, or they’ve seen all my stuff, or they have other things to do, or maybe they don’t like to play with the new crowd. The new kids are mostly boys, speak almost entirely Guarani, and some of them (I’m still not sure exactly which ones) are part of a family of 8 kids whose mother died and whose father is apparently not up to the task of raising them all. The town’s children’s welfare officer has supposedly been to the house, and the school teacher too, to try to get these kids to enter school this year (though the teacher seems to prefer that they don’t go to school, since the day a couple of them did they ran around like crazy then left 2 hours early). The family is also now receiving that social assistance from the government that requires the kids to be in school and vaccinated, so hopefully they’ll get there, and there’s apparently an older sister who’s being pushed to step in as mom, but there’s only so much she can do. One neighbor tells me that there are days when the kids go without eating.

It breaks my heart, they’re sweethearts and obviously haven’t been shown much kindness. The new favorite game is bubbles, left over from my friend Pam’s wedding back in May (and the fairy princess wand from Mindy’s bachelorette party that somehow made it into my suitcase!) One kid came by a few days ago and said that he wanted to learn how to write his name before he went to school, so we practiced. It’s hard too, because when I try to show extra love by handing out some bananas or school supplies, it comes back to haunt me when a zillion other kids come by to ask for stuff. Even though the schools aren’t supposed to require the kids to have uniforms, notebooks or pencils so that they’ll all GO, it’s hard to expect them to not feel embarrassed when they show up with nothing, so one day I gave out pencils and paper anyway. There’s not much I can do really – even if I pay to feed and clothe and supply them all right now, that stuff won’t last forever.

I am trying to be content with planning the big birthday/going away party that I promised them, where there’ll be a big cake and a “raffle” where I’ll give away all my books and toys to the kids. They get so excited to take home a drawing that they did, I can’t wait to see the looks on their faces when they win a book or a deck of cards or the magic wand. I might even buy some more books in Asuncion this weekend just to be able to give more away!