The Rainbow Centre!

The first few days at the Rainbow Centre have been intense! They are currently short staffed so us volunteers have a lot of responsibility resting on our shoulders, which is why it has taken me so long to blog :p Anyone from the second and third generations of Team Peru will know that it doesn´t take much for me to get emotional when it comes to the Kiya children. So when I first walked into the centre and recognized so many faces it was all I could do to stay in control of my tears, thank god I lasted through the day dry-faced! I was remembered by most of the staff, the children however needed their memories jogged a little before they remembered that this was not my first visit to the rainbow centre. Many asked about various members of Team Peru, and asked me to send my love. The children were particullarly happy when they found out that I was friends with Prof Alex and Prof AC. A very enthusiastic Lizandra begged me to ask Alex to please please return to Peru, so Alex there you go! Because the children found it hard to pronounce Chloe, I have now been named ´Claudia´, always with the word ´profe´ in front (teacher), a title which I quite enjoy. Because it is summer school there is not much teaching going on, and the kids were divided into classes according to age. I have my own class(!!!!) that I´m in charge of and my kids(!!!!) are the 6-8 year olds. Those of you from Team Peru might remember Juan Cito from the rainbow house, he is in my class and he is extremely fiesty :) After school Ely took Carolin, Suzanne and I to the Rainbow house were the orphaned children of the centre live with a surrogate mother. These children are Solidad, Lizandra, Juan Cito, Marco, Yelson, Fernando and Matilde. All these children, except for Solidad, are related and came from an extremely poor and abusive family before being taken into the care of Kiya. Now most of the children are in mainstream school, and Lizandra is working. Fernando now has a room at the Rainbow Centre where he works. At the rainbow house Ely talked us through the various emotional, physical and mental problems that each of these children have and what our responsibilities would be concerning them. One of my jobs is to take Lizandra to work, and pick her up when she is done, another is to try to take two children on one on one outings once a week. After this information sessions we were let loose to bond with the children. I immediately sat down with Lizandra. I had forged a strong bond with her three years ago, and it was to her that I made a promise to return to the Rainbow Centre. As soon as I sat down Lizandra started talking about school, her cell phone, profe Alex and how much she missed him(!). After half an hour of gossiping, she became serious and she told me her life story, She talked about living in a one roomed mud hut with her abusive father and mentally ill mother, about how her mother was so ill that it became her duty to look after the children while her brother Yelson cleaned the house. She told me her life was hard, and that she understood that her mother was ill, that it wasn´t her fault, She sat quietly for a while then she looked and me and said, ´My mother was very beautiful,when she was in hospital one day Ely came to see me and I thought she would say your mother is better, she is fine now. But she said my mother was dead. I miss her, even though she was ill. I miss her. I wish you could meet her.´She then went on to say that she could not believe how great her life was now. That everyday she thanks god for bringing Suzy Butler (the founer of Kiya Survivors) into her life, that she loves Suzy with all her heart. That now she knows that she and her siblings are safe and loved. I sat there listening feeling like my heart was going to burst, Lizandra had matured so much since the last time I saw her, she was so willing to open up and talk about such hard years of her life. It is a conversation that I am going to remember forever, and makes me even more dedicated to the cause and the children here.

Ah...that was a lot to get off my chest. The conversation with Lizandra left me somewhat overwhelmed and it feels good to put it all out there and ´tell´someone.
No pictures yet! I didn´t want to bring my camera into school on the first week. SO next week I´ll post some.

Please leave comments, It would be nice to feel like there is an actual conversation going on and that I´m not jsut babbling to nobody in particular, even if thats exactly what I´m doing!

Lots of Love from Peru!

Off to drink some Pisco Sour tonight, here people party on Wednesday :)

xxxxxxxxxxx

Profe Claudia :)