For two days in a row last week, I was working at Nazarena, which is the bigger school in Pamplona.  The first day I was working, I met this adorable boy named Christian and his older brother Jherson.  Actually, his name might be Jorge.  It’s kinda confusing as a lot of these kids seem to have two names and I can’t work out whether they’re playing with us to try to confuse us (if so, it’s working) or if they just have one formal name and another name that’s more like a nickname they use with other kids.  Anyway, he said his name was Jherson, so we’ll call him Jherson.

So you’ll better understand little Christian, I’ll tell you about a situation that happened the day I met him.  As the only volunteer at Nazarena that day, I was in charge of picking up the kids and getting them down the hill to the school.  Basically, I walked up to the top of the hill to get the kids from that area of town then we all rode down together in a combi.  By ‘down’ I mean we got in the bus for about 300 meters then hopped out and walked the rest of the way to the school.  Yes, I’m having trouble understanding why we don’t just walk it, but I figure that’s yet another way to keep these kids interested in going to school.  Maybe they would be less likely to go if they had to walk?  I can’t say.

But little Christian and Jherson are among the kids that live at the top of the hill, so they were part of our envoy.  From the get-go, Christian was stuck to my arm.  I think what attracted him to it in the first place was this little bracelet I’ve been wearing since I was in Ecuador last year.  It having been there so long, I don’t really notice it that much and most of the time it’s obscured by my watch.  But you know kids… they see everything so before I knew it, he was fiddling with it trying to get it off my arm so he could keep it.  I looked at his wrist and saw about 3 other bracelets… apparently he collects them.

So it went, little Christian sat beside me on the bus and when Jherson saw him getting all the attention, he sat on the other side of me and tried to get some for himself.  He saw Christian messing with my bracelet so he went one step further and started trying to take my watch. 

“Give it to me.  Give it to me.  I need a watch.” He said as he tried to work out how to undo the band.  I explained to him that I need to know what time it was too and that if he took it, we couldn’t get to school on time.  I then pointed out that we were already late.  By this time, Christian had fallen silent at being overshadowed by Jherson.

After the bus ride, we started walking toward the school through the labryntine streets, around little buildings and blocks that, confusingly, all look the same.  This was only my second time to walk to Nazarena and my first time to walk alone with the kids so I was letting them lead the way.  We came to one intersection where Jherson wanted to go one way and Christian wanted to go the other.  When Christian wouldn’t cede his opinion, Jherson reached around me and popped him a good one in the face. 

You know when you’re a kid and something terrible happens how it takes you about 2 or 3 seconds to process it before you start crying? In that two or three seconds, I saw Christian’s little expression turn from complete disbelief to a visible attempt to just brush it off to a little mix of anger and fear to full on tears.  It was amazing.  It was like you could see his brain clicking away trying to work out what to do and then the sting set in and he couldn’t help but give in.

For the first time that day, he released my hand and put it to his little reddening cheek, then turned and started walking away.  I called him name and asked him to come back but he didn’t react, just kept walking.  I turned to Jherson and asked him why he did that and if he was proud to see his brother crying.  I told him he should probably just go home instead of coming to school because we don’t allow hitting.  He had a really weird look on his face like he was slightly amused at me repremanding him. 

With one kid walking away and the other standing there like a bump on a log, thinking about whether to head back home or not, I realized I was lost.  I had no idea where the school was and this recent mutiny meant my guides had left me to the wolves.  I took off after little Christian who’d managed to walk about a block up the hill.  Calling after him, he wasn’t paying much attention, just walking weakly with his hand still to his cheek.  When I reached him and he refused to stop walking in the opposite direction of the school, my first instinct was to beg… I was desperate.  I was lost.  But I started by telling him that the school was a safe place where he wouldn’t get hit anymore and that he shouldn’t neglect school because it was his brother that hit him.  He didn’t look convinced… I felt like Christopher Columbus trying to convince his sailors not to turn back after a month of not seeing land.  Then I just told him the truth. 

“Look Christian, I need your help to get back to the school.  You’re obviously the only one that can get us there so show me the way.  If you leave, I won’t be able to find it.”

He perked up almost immediatly.  There were smeared tear tracks down his cheek when he looked up for the first time.  He kinda looked at me questioning whether I was serious or not.  Clearly I was, so he grabbed my hand again and started shuffling back down the hill toward the school.  Jherson, refusing to go home, followed along side trying to make conversation.  I told him he should probably just be quiet if he was going to join us.  He never really did shut up, though.

Seeing this situation introduced me to Christian.  He probably gets overlooked by his parents all the time just because Jherson demands so much attention.  It’s easy to see Christian loves going to school and interacting with all the other kids, talking about coloring techniques and what kind of snacks are the yummiest.  But above all, he adores attention from adults.  Even if the teacher is being terse and didactic, he hangs on every word she gives to him.  So, having me around to hold his hand and walk beside him was like being on cloud nine.  But he kinda had this little bit of apprehension on his face even though he was clearly enjoying the attention.  I figured he’d probably hear it from Jherson later and get made fun of out of jealousy.  Who knows.

But the story for the second day was that I brought my Frisbee.  Normally, the kids have a choice between volleyball and soccer with volleyball being almost exclusively feminine.  But Christian loves volleyball and doesn’t seem to mind only playng with girls and is completely oblivious to the boys’ attempts to get him interested in a soccer game.  So there’s usually a soccer ball and a volleyball to play with but this particular day, the volleyball was hiding. 

At first, Christian and I tried playing volleyball with the soccer ball and it seemed to be going pretty well.  But after a while, both of us started noticing the welps on our forearms and Christian asked if we could just go back to the classroom.  I pulled out the Frisbee and asked if he wanted to throw for a little while.  We got to throw for about 5 minutes before the teacher called us in to start the next lesson or whatever.  He was learnng like a champ!

So at the end of the day, we got another chance to play outside and I immediatly started with the Frisbee.  We were just passing it around casually, me giving advice here and there on how to make it fly better, when Adres, another kid, came out with the soccer ball. No body was really intersted in playing soccer so he was kicking it around by himself, getting rather rowdy as he started trying to intercept the Frisbee and play two sports at one time. 

Somewhere in there, another girl started throwing the Frisbee with us.  About the time she was just getting the feel of it, Andres came through with the soccer ball and gave it a nice hard kick, sailing it right past my head just as I threw the Frisbee to the girl.  While I was distracted looking for the soccer ball, the girl threw the Frisbee to Christian who, unfortunately, was also distracted by the flying soccer ball and Andres who was standing beside him.

I don’t know if you’ve ever been hit with a Frisbee but it’s guaranteed to hurt as it’s hard plastic flying at body-chopping speed.  Poor little Christian had his head turned when the Frisbee made contact with his face, hitting just under his bottom lip.  I was still messing around with the rolling soccer ball when I turned to see Christian walking toward me with a dripple of blood smeared from his lip to his chin.  Oh shit.

He came to me and planted his little body against my leg, crying at a suprisingly minimal level.  Just looking at it, all I could see was the little puncture wound with a little blood.  Nothing too serious but enough to shake up a kid.  I escorted him to the classroom, all the while telling him he’d be just fine.  The teacher cleaned him up and looked at the wound.  She pulled down his lip and looked on the inside to find that the puncture went all the way through!  Dear god, his bottom left canine tooth had stabbed through his lip!

I felt terrible the rest of the day.  I was so worried his entire lip would blow up and that it would scare him.  Crap.  What did I do?!  I was just trying to give the kids a chance to play a sport that I really love and sure enough, it ends up hurting the one kid in the class who thinks the world of me.  Great.

By the time we were saying good bye, he said it still hurt but didn’t seem too bothered by it.  Then the next couple days I worked at Minas so I didn’t see him.  Finally, on Friday, I saw him for a few minutes when we all met up after class.  It was healing really rapidly and he said it didn’t hurt anymore.  Good.  Whew.

But the lesson learned is this: When you’re teaching a kid to play Frisbee, one of the first things to remind them of is that you have to keep your eye on it so it doesn’t hit you because if it does, it’s gonna hurt ESPECIALLY if it hits you in the face!  Knowing this now, after the fact, I realize Christian will never touch a Frisbee again in his life, which is really unfortunate as it’s a great sport.  I just can’t believe that, of all the kids who got injured by my desire to introduce them to new things, it had to be sweet little Christian who looked up to me so much.  Strange how things work.