On Wednesday I got to follow two of the project´s social workers to home visits. I went to see a man who had contacted the organization (it is that well known, I guess) asking for a wheelchair. He had one foot that was swollen and awful-looking due to diabetes. His other foot was in a cast because he broke it (or his ankle?) walking with his crutches. The rest of his body was skinny and he moved, it looked like, with difficulty. He doesn´t have any family and can´t leave his bed to work. He seemed to be living in a rented room. He had electricity and a television, but that was about it. It kind of smelled in there. I was uncertain how much a wheelchair would help him (Guatemala is the absolute opposite of handicap accessible.), especially considering the bumpy incline/steps one needs to walk up just to get to his residence. However, whatever little extra mobility a wheelchair might give him is way better than his current situation. Laying on an old bed in a smelly room all day and all night. One of the project´s social workers talked to the man and took a couple pictures while the other social worker took notes. After that visit, they decided they would give him a wheelchair.
The other visit we went on was just to pick up the mom of one of the kids who goes to school at the Dreamer Center. This kid doesn´t live with his mom (I think the social worker said that he lives with his aunt and uncle because his own family treats him badly.), but we brought him with to get his mom. I think we had to tell her that her other kid is sick and in the hospital, then we dropped her off at the hospital. I´m not completely sure about this situation because my Spanish is so bad. Maybe she already knew her kid was in the hospital and we only had to pick her up. She didn´t look that surprised. Anyway, there are two notable things about this second visit. First, this lady lives up a steep hill. The social workers and I were totally out of breath by the time we got to her door (which was not a door but a piece of painted corrugated tin). Again, people here go the extra mile just to live. It is wild. Second, I had a failure of a conversation with the kid who was with us. He told me he was in third grade, and I asked him if that meant he was 9 or 10 years old. I thought that that was old for a third grader, but I also thought he looked bigger than 8. Turns out he´s 13. A lot of poor kids here are smaller than they should be (due to being undernourished for parts or most of their lives) and obviously some of them are behind in school. I am hoping I didn´t embarrass him too much.
Aside from the always upsetting view of poverty, I got something else from these visits. Confidentiality is a luxury. I walked into the social workers office and it was so easy for me: ¨Yeah, we´re going to see this guy. Here is his file. Look at pictures of his foot. Read this information about his condition. You´re free to know the names and whatever else we know about the people we´ll visit today. And yeah, go ahead and blog about it later.¨ I take a lot of things for granted, and now I can recognize confidentiality, also, as something to appreciate.
Since this post was kind of a downer, and since my language became a bit yucky and cliché at the end, I will leave you with the knowledge that I have heard Roxette´s ¨It Must Have Been Love¨ in Spanish. It was mindblowing.
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