Fabricio: Getting Better Little by Little (Julia)

Fabricio: Getting Better Little by Little

This week I’ve been getting to know the baby Fabricio better. I love to hold this baby and give him as much love as possible. His muscles aren’t strong enough to sit up straight, or even hold his head up yet and he can’t see very well, but he does react when someone’s in front of him so we think that he can at least see light or shapes. At the beginning, I never knew who Fabricio was even though I’d heard his name a lot until one day Katie brought him over to our house to take care of. We now like to babysit him in the mornings, along with the other babies, and I think that ever since we’ve been taking him out of his house and helping him to exercises, he’s been getting significantly better.

Antonia's Dream (Mitch at the Aldea)

Another amazing week! Every day I feel like I am making more and more connections with the kids, especially the older ones this week. Their shells are a lot harder to crack than the little ones, but with all the time I am spending with them has sure helped. I taught the four older boys how to play uno and since I was eating at their house this week, we must have played it everyday at least 2 or three times. The weird thing is that they were the ones that kept asking me to play and didn't want to stop. I guess they are not so big and bad after all.

On friday the older kids, another volunteer and I did a caminata from the athletic stadium to Huaca del Sol (some ancient town that had been buried under earth). Besides the fact that it was scorching hot and we were walking for 3 hours and then on the way home we ran out of gas and had to wait another two and a half hours till we were on our way again, it was a productive day. I got to know a little better a girl named Antonia. She is 17 years-old and will be having to leave the Aldea soon. She has a little boy that is two years old and from what I understand it was not her choice to become pregnant and have a child. She is one of my favorites cause she is so responsible and mature compared to the other youth there. She doesn't have to be told everything in order for her to do it and she is really good at complying with what others ask her to do. She never fights with the other kids but is usually the peace maker of the bunch. She always participates in the activities that are planned for her. Her dream is to become an English professor, I say go for it. Whether she ends up teaching English or some other subject doesn't really matter to me, but i made her promise me that when she does leave the Aldea that she will do everything possible to make her dream become a reality.

meet the Bueno Palacios family

Remember the family with seven children who moved near El Bichito because the mother heard we would help feed her children? Well, meet the family...and in case you missed Pam's email telling about their plight, I've included Pam's email with this family's story again.

(January 1st). Today we planned to take vegetables, rice, noodles, and oil to a very needy family of seven children ... Dina, Carmen, Israel, Eva, Lazaro, Marta, Madai. I don't know that I have the words to describe how they live, but I'm going to try. The children and their mother moved to Puylucana because they had heard of El Bichito. The children show signs of being severely malnourished. The family had no way of supporting themselves. The father, in prison, has served two years of a ten year sentence. The mother doesn't make enough money to pay rent, so the landlord lets them live in a one room mud hut. Three small beds take up most of the room where all eight of them sleep. When it rains, it is evident that part of the room gets soaked because of the gaping hole in the tin roof. These humble people have no possessions -- only what have in two large sacks.

They share a "kitchen" with the landlord -- an adjoining mud hut. You wouldn't feed your animals in there. Often these children have no food other than what they get at El Bichito on their way to school.. Their mother makes whatever she can by doing laundry and cleaning. Today, we waited for the mother to return home after finishing up a laundry job. She washes twelve articles of clothing for 3 soles = $1. She can't even afford to put clothes and shoes on her own children.

The oldest child, Dina, who is fifteen, has not been able to go to school because the family cannot afford the school fees and school uniform required for secondary school. She is the primary caretaker of the family while her mother works. We committed to helping the family as long as the mother sent Dina to school. The mother is a sweet lady who was overwhelmed by the generosity of the Southern Cross volunteers. She cried in Wayne's arms. The children cried. I am happy that I got to share that special time with Cameron, Kate, Wayne, and Feliciana. I will never forget this day.

And stay tuned to hear about how we hope to help this family...

flashback friday (natalie)

Remember Daniel? He's the REALLY cute kid at the Aldea who needs some medical testing to find out the cause of his challenges. Well, in our last newsletter, we decided to dedicate the money raised from the "Goodsearch" site to Daniel's medical fund.

So I just checked our Goodsearch site, and we already have $33.04 raised in October. It may not seem like much, but Daniel really only needs abouut $100 US to get his testing started, so Goodsearch should do it for us in just a few months at this rate. What's Goodsearch you ask? Well....

Goodsearch is a search engine powered by Yahoo and is dedicated to helping non-profit organizations such as us. You simply go to www.goodsearch.com and enter "Southern Cross Humanitarian" under the "Who do you Goodsearch For" line. If you want to use it as a search engine, we receive a penny per search. But the BEST way to use this site, is to use the Goodshop feature. Everytime I rent a car, book a flight, buy something on Amazon, eBay or a BUNCH of other companies, Southern Cross receives a percentage or a small donation. At first it was a pain to use, but then I downloaded the Goodsearch TOOLBAR and now my searches and my purchases AUTOMATICALLY go to Southern Cross.

It appears from our increase in money earned this month that many of you have answered the call and downloaded the toolbar. Daniel only needs less than 300 soles (about $100 US) worth of medical testing (that we know of so far) and at this rate, we'll definitely have it soon!

To re-read our intern Brian's account of Daniel's need...see below.

Thanks again....keep Goodsearching and Goodshopping!

Natalie

From Brian:

This week, I have noticed a few things. There is a boy named Daniel in the Aldea. He lives in Casa 1 with Tia Alejandrina and a number of younger children. He has some mental difficulties that affect how he behaves. It's not to say he misbehaves and fights with others. Just the opposite. He's socially awkward. He has a hard time listening well and chooses to ignore instructions at times when they are given, especially when he is being corrected for the better by the Tia who runs the house. He needs help. He's a good boy and the Aldea is waiting to accumulate funds to continue running tests on him to see what is wrong.
I talked with the Aldea nurse, Martha, this last week and she says the Aldea needs about 280 soles (about US $97) to continue running tests on him. There are also at least two other children with speaking difficulties who need some specialized attention from a Speech or Occupational Therapist. They are both under ten years of age and are the cutest kids you've ever seen. I know the nurse has seen these kids and that things are not progressing as rapidly as they could. The Aldea needs funding to run these kids through tests to get them to the therapy they need fast and the sooner the better. These two kids are growing up fast and the longer we wait to get help to them, the harder it will be to correct their impediments.

to me, this is what it's all about... (natalie)

A HUGE thank you to everyone who came to our annual banquet last Friday! I loved seeing friends from past expeditions and meeting new friends.

Thanks to everyone's generosity, we raised money which will be used for the construction of The Little Bug. Right now, The Little Bug (El Bichito) is a drop-in center, but we are helping them convert it to a home.

We had both a silent and live auction. Both fun. After the auctions, we told the story about little Delia shown here. Delia is one of our El Bichito children and she came for a medical exam with the doctors on our summer expeditions. They found a fairly large tumor in her ear that needs to be removed. Telling someone down there that they "need to see a doctor" does no good. They don't have the money so they simply won't see a doctor.

Last Friday we outbid each other for Jazz tickets, for vacation packages, for chocolates and other goodies. But when we simply asked people to help us pay for Delia's surgery without anything in return, several hands went up.

And that's when I cried.

So thank you. Thank you Annette Bell, Morgan Humphries, Ron Steele, Grant Southworth and Wayne and Pam Merrill. Thank you for taking care of Delia.

And I WILL keep you informed of Delia's progress.

Alegria de VeVir (Laura)

One of the things we found most remarkable at the Alegria de Vivir, in Trubaco, Colombia, was the level of volunteerism and dedication to provide care for handicapped children in the community. Every women at the home was a single mother, or grandmother, of a handicapped child who could not pay for medical treatments or evaluations. The four young women running the home, all under 30, had seen the need in their own community so they decided to bring the physicians to these children. They went through the paperwork of registering the home, spend their free time contacting doctors who will donate their expertise and do local fundraisers to pay transportation costs for the doctors.