A Good Day

Right now I am sitting on a side porch to our living quarters. It is raining gently and even though this is considered Jamaica's dry and brown season to me it looks beautiful. A tree in our back yard has brilliant orange and red flowers on it and the sounds of the rain falling on thousands of leaves is soothing...a nice break from the reggae music.

I realize that I am going to have to do a better job of explaining just exactly what I am doing in Jamaica in the near future. For now, I just want to say on Thursday I had a really good day. Three days a week I am going to Spanish Town, which is an outskirt of Kingston. The apostolate there is called Jerusalem!. It is our largest apostolate with a Dare to Care Center which houses about 20 children from the ages of 5 to 13 who are diagnosed with having HIV. We also have The Village which consists of about 13 cottages for our older residents (over 18) who have physical disabilities yet are higher functioning. We have the Children's Home which has over 100 residents with various levels of physical disability which in some ways may also effect their mental ability. And finally there is The Little Angels School for children from the community and our Dare to Care kids, some of the kids from the Children's Home go there also even if they are older because their mental capacity is that of a young child. At Jerusalem! they also have a small farm with chickens, sheep and two fish ponds. I recently got them to get two rabbits for me as well. This leads into my day on Thursday. The reason for the rabbits is my secret wish to begin to do some animal therapy with the children. My senior thesis was on animal therapy and whereas it will not break or make therapy it is a helpful tool, has been studied and proven to increase the rate of improvement in ill individuals as well as numerous other benefits. I was able to get a little head start on Thursday as a stray dog in the area had a litter of puppies that I found yesterday.

Okay, a little Jamaican culture for you here. There are A LOT of stray dogs in Jamaica. They don't run in packs and tend to be pretty malnourished and many of them limp around from having broken a leg at some point in their lives. If I took the four minutes it might take to walk to the end of the street I live on I could count 8-10 dogs just laying around. They are EVERYWHERE. SO! Jamaican's don't really view dogs as cute or as pets. If someone has a pet dog it is a really really well taken care of dog and they usually get it imported or something. But its a rarity. So, there is Maggie and I playing with all of these puppies and the other Jamaican caregivers looking at us like we are cute and stupid Americans cause we were laughing and playing with them. The Dare to Care kids came over and they were playing with them also. I was kindve surprised the caregivers let them but it gave me an idea. I went up to Ms. Clark the head care giver for the children's home and asked if I could bring the puppy over to show the kids if I washed it first with soap and water. She looked surprised but gave me her permission!

So I washed my favorite one!

It was SO AMAZING to be able to see the information I had worked on for my thesis and knew intellectually practically applied with so many good results!! WOW! I wish I had could just blurt out all the interesting things I noticed. However, here are some of the highlights.

Daniel D.: Daniel is a boy I met when I came out March of 07 for one day. I have not looked at his file but it clear that Daniel is both deaf and blind. It is hard to assess his mental capacity because he does not know anything else than black. No words can form in his mind if he has never heard any and he has no concept of how to use his body because he has never witnessed what a body is or how it can operate. I have been taking him out of his wheelchair every time I have been at Jerusalem! and laid him on his back, manipulating his body, learning his muscle strength and what he is capable. I am convince he could learn how to walk if someone started the battle of bring him out of the blackness. There is nothing wrong with his legs or his body. The only thing I can find that keeps him in a wheelchair is that fact that he is blind. Daniel has emotional reactions to things. He gets the most beautiful smile on his face when he is caressed and a big grin when you tickle his stomach. He exhibits inquisitiveness if you walk up and gently scratch your finger nail over the top of his wheel chair without touching him as if he waiting to see what that vibration is associated with and he can show fear when I sit him up on a ledge and he feels the free air around him as his legs dangle. He loves to be massaged and loves to be held. One thing that has concerned me with Daniel is he doesn't use his hands to explore his environment. This could be due to the fact that he has spent so much of his developing years with no stimulus. But I still had an underlying fear that he was developing contractures...when the muscles begin to tighten and draw the forearms and hands up tightly against the upper arm and shoulders. Yet I knew that his hands were loose...he just held them sometime as if he was developing contractures. Was this a "choice" Daniel was making? Or was his body slowing forcing it? I have tried putting different objects in his hands hoping he will figure out that he can "see" the world with his fingers. But he won't grasp onto things I put there, he doesn't finger them. Then I brought him an alive animal...a little puppy...and his face grew so still and grave. It began to lick his hands and Daniel lifted his head puzzled. After a few minutes I pulled the puppy back into my hands. Daniel waited. I put it back on his tray and a half smiled appeared on his face. He reacted to outer stimulus that wasn't human...good. I brought his hand up and guided it over the warm puppy. Over its body, over the tail, felt each leg, lingered over the face and the ears. Tired after being held by so many children the puppy curled up and pushed its little body against Daniel's little body and feel asleep. I waited...and watched Daniel. He didn't move at all, he just sat there...but I could tell he was aware of the puppy by the look of awareness on his face. Ten minutes passed and I kept staring at his face hoping to gain some insight into this little boy as he slowly breathed in and out as if listening so hard, as if knowing that once there was sound in his world to help him understand the world. Daniel doesn't try to make any noise which is indicative of deafness for most of his life. My breath caught in my chest as so slowly Daniel opened up his slender, perfectly proportioned hand and brought it over the back of the sleeping puppy. Over and over he ran his fingers through the fur and began to grasp at the loose full and close his fists around it. After weeks of wondering about what Daniel's world was like and whether or not if he was capable of putting together outer stimulas to something which he can control is beginning to be answered. This was the first time I have seen him be interested is something of his own accord, not just being happy something was touching him, or something was taking care of his needs, but that HE, DANIEL, can react back to his environment. Incredible moments that made my whole day amazing.

One after another, through using the puppy, the children revealed themselves unwittingly. Those who I have been told are non-verbal said the word "puppy". Those who I have never seen smile - laughed. And our patients that seem to live in a world of their own seemingly incapable to entering into a relationship with any external stimulus made eye contact with me. One girl stands alone all day staring off into the distance with a glazed look. She has absolutely no affect at all. You could move her to another chair, feed her, talk to her and it would be like she never say you. Yet I brought this puppy in front of her and talked to her about it anyway. I said "hey, do you want to hold this puppy? See how soft it is? You have to be really really gentle - like this." Suddenly she lifted her hand and patted her lap!! What!? Not only did she acknowledge me she understood what I was saying and could respond back?? Taking a deep breath and risk if she wasn't gentle, she brought her hand up and pet the puppy over and over. Another resident came over and she even interacted with her in that, without making eye contact, she turned her body so the other girl could pet the puppy to. How therapeutic as their hands intermingled. Finally, curious to see how she would react, I said to the girl holding the puppy "okay, we have to share so it someone else turn now. Can you hand the puppy to me." This girl, who never moves, awkwardly picked up the dog and placed it in my hands! WOW!

Here are a couple pictures of the kids playing with the puppy. The first is Kemar. Everytime he sees me he yells out "An-gah-LA! Angala!" He is SUCH a joyful spirit. I couldn't let him hold the puppy because his grip is stronger than he realizes but I would rest it on his chest and he would rub his cheek across the fur.

This second picture is of a resident named Shantal. Shantal took the above picture. I just love her. She is very verbal and one of the funniest kids there I think. She is the one who would lead me around to all the kids that she thought would like to see the puppy. She would place her hand firmly on the small of the back and take my arm with her other hand and bring me up the children and tell me their name and then explain the the children how the had to be gentle and the puppy wasn't going to hurt them because he was 'ju likkle and nice" (just little and nice). I began walking up to a girl who was in constraints and told Shantal "hey, maybe she would like to see the puppy". Very seriously and calmly Shantal put her hand on my chest and said "No, we can't show her. She will eat it. She eats everything she can." And then shantal lead me away. I laughed so hard. One, because I believe her, and secondly I have to see the humor in that that sentence was a normal sentence in the life of this child. "Don't give her the puppy. She will eat it." I mean...wait...what? Imagine a child saying that nonchalantly to you. Its just one of those things you don't ever think you will hear.

Well, I know this was pretty extensive. I want to remember these highlights as well! Hope those that read through enjoyed a little bit of my day. Not every day will be like this one but how fulfilling it was!