malcriados
today i had an encounter with chaos, de nuevo, or once again. today we visited a food bank and later, one of the comedors, or soup kitchens that partners with the food bank.
at the food bank we washed and boxed hundreds of containers of marmalade, peach marmalade. it was sticky, to say the least. i wouldn´t say that i had a great interest in marmalade to begin with and now it´s really towards the bottom of my gelatin favorites list.
later we took a micro, or a little bus, down to a villa, or slum, on the south side of la capital federal- buenos aires. the comedor that we visited was manned by two brave women, one of whom smoked outside (and inside as well) while we were there and ther other that left part way through. I say they´re brave because inside the comedor, which was actually a partially constructed building with a staircase without a rail, various construction things lying around and an absolute dearth of tables and chairs.
what happens inside this building is hard to describe. imagine fifty small children, all yelling and running, the boys fighting (including but not limited to kicking in the face, punching, slide tackling, wrestling and sleeper holding), and various particularly slo or small children crying or looking distraught in various fixed locations.
oh look, here comes 12 strapping young college students, i have an idea, let´s leave all of the kids with them and see if they can understand each other! great. so we tried to play various games and sing songs, but alas, all turned to chaos eventually. even kids who were good at one point eventually went over to the dark side. it was very hard to believe that the kids were actually acting that bad. i almost cried, actually. then i saw a little three year old boy who had a huge scar/open wound on his head. I asked one of the women if i could go buy antibiotic cream for him nearby. she told me that there wasn´t anywhere nearby but that the wound actually happened because of the family´s cat. later my friend told me that his sister said that he had fallen on his head. both sources reported regular application of some sort of cream, so i can only pray that the pobrecito will be okay.
another little guy named ariel wrote his name down on a piece of paper for us, but he´s left handed and when he wrote everything came out exactly opposite as it should be. if you held his handwriting up to a mirror, it would be perfect. i´ve never seen anything like it before. another little guy wouldn´t stop kicking people in the face so i decided to make him my project for the day. i told him to stop many times, and finally took him aside to sit with me so that he wouldn´t fight. he tried to run away many times, so eventually i got his arms and legs locked so that he couldn´t go anywhere and started talking to him. i don´t even know if having semiefficient punishment for half a day will help him at all, but geez. i let him go on the condition that he wouldn´t fight again, but he did so i took him the corner and held him there while he wailed for help like i was the devil himself. eventually he relaxed a little and i even let him draw some when he agreed not to fight again, but of course this was after he had lied to me that his mom had arrived so i had to let him go.
it was almost sickening. were these kids like a musem for us to marvel at? no, it was real. no one was taking care of them. they are all alone in a concrete prison every afternoon in order to get free dinner in the evenings. i hope that something good somewhere happened on their end from our visit because if there wasn´t any benefit, then i consider my actions either entirely unethical or entirely pointless. neither are desirable positions, huh? i´m going to mull this over a bit more, but hey, what a day. and that´s just half.
on the way back from the comidor, i saw a sign that said "Argentina, un pais. En serio." For me this is best translated as Argentina, a country, fo´ real. Although it could also be Argentina, a serious country. Take your pick, the first me da risa!
