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Busy day at Mama Carmen’s!
- Sep 5, 2011
We had a great Day 2 at Mama Carmen’s orphanage. It was nice to have the entire day to work with the kids there. Just as we predicted, Paige did TONS of speech evaluations today! Holly and Abby did more work on some of the equipment, and there were several moments when tools went “missing”, only to discover that one of the kids across the room was playing with it. They were quite fascinated by our stash of allen wrenches and velcro!
Since this is our first trip to Guatemala, and our first time meeting all of these kids, we weren’t 100% sure of what they would need in regards to supplies or equipment. Thankfully, we were able to leave a giant bin full of stuff for Mama Carmen and her staff to use with the kids that we saw today. We went over every toy and every tool so that they knew exactly how to use them to help each particular child. At the end of the day, Mama Carmen jokingly asked if she could also put one of us in the therapy bin to keep! But the truth is, she and her staff are all so amazing and so eager to see these children’s development improve. We have no doubt that they will take all that we shared with them and try their hardest to work with these kids between now and our next visit.
Not only did we leave a therapy bin at Mama Carmen’s, but we also were able to leave both standers that we brought! One of the standers worked perfectly for Cesar. We told Mama Carmen’s staff that it would be fine for him to start off easy with the stander, and maybe only stay in it for 5-10 minutes at a time at first. But Cesar impressed us today by standing for 40 minutes straight! We were also able to use our second stander for 4-year-old Merlin, and we adjusted her wheelchair for better support as well. A woman named Cindy who works at the orphanage is the main caretaker for Merlin, so we each talked with her to make sure she knew how to use the stander, how to sit Merlin in the wheelchair properly, and what exercises she can work on to help with Merlin’s speech and language.
Definitely one of the most encouraging things was seeing how dedicated Mama Carmen and her staff are to helping these children as much as they can. They all expressed multiple times how they can’t wait to see how much progress the kids make by the next time that we come. They all seem very committed to keeping up with all the exercises we showed them, and the adjustments we made to the wheelchairs they were using for three of the kids will make such a difference as well!
Tomorrow we go about an hour outside of the city to Mama Carmen’s coffee farm, where we will work with families in that community who have children with special needs. We have no idea how many families will show up, but we are excited to do all that we can to help those that come!
