Skip to main content

Back to the children

The clock is telling me I should close the laptop and leave this for tomorrow. The heart is bursting and I can not spend another day without sharing with you my Saturday in the Orphanage.

The mosquito that would not let me sleep got me out of bed at 6.30, an earlier start than usual. I blame the mosquito but I know the emotion of meeting “my children” again was not going to let me sleep anyway. The drive seemed longer than usual and the secondary road seemed to bring a new light, new huts, new trees that I had not seen before. Or maybe I had seen it after all but the joy is always immense as if I am there for the first time…

The children welcome me singing, and the sound of their happy voices warms my heart and tells me one more time it is worth every step of the way

I welcome Zezito in my arms, he is using the t-shirt I once gave him, with his name and our picture hugging. I still remember the first time he met me, his eyes staring at the hairs in my arms, playing with it with the innocence of a 2-year-old that has never seen white skin before. But now he is all grown up, 6 years old, going to first grade and learning how to read. He is even more grown up when I am around, because he feels important, he knows I am everyone’s “godmother” but I am slightly more his own. He will be in my arms or sitting on my lap as long as I will let him, help me with pictures, carry my bags or my files, showing off his “madrinha” to everyone.







Distracted taking everyone’s pictures, my friend that went me pull me aside and asked “don’t they have anything to play with?”. I thought I had seen a bag with some toys somewhere, but in fact, they were just sitting there, entertaining us, and no doubt they must have been bored, if it wasn’t for the bright red lollypop that I had for them






And that is when I remembered, that deep in my bag my Mum had sent something “for the children”. The moment I took it out I wanted to cry. It was difficult to keep the tears away seeing the emotion that two simple beach-ball rackets and a tiny little ball had made in those beautiful eyes








Before leaving, we were greeted with more music and invited to dance along. The joy in their voices always makes it an irresistible offer but it is the laughter in their eyes when you actually dance along that makes it all worth it!









(I will have a video where I dance along too, but not just yet!)

The day was filled with emotion. The nursery is now beautiful (though unfurnished), the water well starts being drilled next Monday, the 1st graders started having school under a tree close by… But so much more than that, each smile tells me a story. I will leave you with some here over the days, hoping to be able to reflect them the way they are so sharp in my memory





Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Best Self

The last classes in Leadership try hard to make you think and figure out what to do about yourself. So we talked about our best self, not just about what it is but more of when it happens. We had to ask a couple of former colleagues, friends and family to give us three examples of when we were at our best. The point is not to skyrocket your ego, don’t worry. It is about understanding what are the environments that make your strengths come out. Because if you know what they are, then you will look to pursue a future that exhibits these characteristics. A “what brings the good in you” kind of thing. It was interesting to get that feedback. More than interesting, it was insightful. It was amazingly consistent throughout and it was curious to see the examples that people remember about you. I do recommend to anyone in need to find a bit more of where they should go. The thing about the examples is that they do have something in common, whether they came from people I worked with recently o
1 comment
Read more

Flying Sunday

It's been a while, I know. But time is really a precious asset and I have not been leveraging on it well enough... But today I did and I am proud. I threw all the plans out of the window and took the irrefusable offer I was made "Do you want to go flying today?". How does no work as an answer there? Here is one of the c. 30 airplanes you could see there. First reaction from our pilot: "Why are all these planes here, don't people realize it is an amazing day for flying?". Well, I had not untill he told me so! But the best is still to come, as the only girl in the group I got to ride in the front, get first view in take-off, listen to the radio of the air control all the time (we get Boston airport frequency), check the map, speeds, everything... I guess throughout the way we were some quiet passengers, in the wonders of realizing you are on air, the curiosity of identifying different places and the struggle to take the best pictures as we pass the Harvard
2 comments
Read more

Is this morning on a Saturday?

I have to admit, it has been a long long time since I was awake on a Saturday morning on my own free will (last week, with Patricia waking me up at 8am jet lagged does not really count, it was really not my own free will). And in a way it feels good. I mean, the sun is beautiful. The biggest reason for it to feel good is probably because I have not set my feet out of the door yet: I am claiming that I will study this weekend, and for that I have been out of bed for a couple of hours though it is still barely lunch time here. Well, I am reading about this Mountain Dew drink that is apparently super famous and I never heard about before, I read last night about the Iridium failure by Motorola and some finance case that I will have to negotiate on Monday. Things are fun fun overall but it is not exactly my cup of tea for a Saturday morning. Soon I will start doing my recruiting activities; going through immense websites and try to figure out what is it that will make me get out of be
2 comments
Read more