Primeros días en Cor

            The volunteering has officially begun! I had my first visit to FundaciónCor last Friday with Federico, ISA’s ELAP coordinator. We took the train from Belgrano (the barrio where I live) to San Isidro, another barrio further north of Buenos Aires proper. The train takes about half an hour and another 20 minutes of walking puts us at the door of the hogar.

            From the street, you’d have no idea that this house was any different from the other single-storey painted stucco structures on the same street. Same cracked sidewalk tiles, a front patio encased by a wrought-iron fence and partially covered by a corrugated overhang. A heart-shaped sign hanging on the outside wall reads “Cor”. Fede rings the bell and a chorus of young voices erupts from within the house. I notice a few small boys peeking out of a window while a woman dressed in a green smock (one of the cuidadoras, or caretakers) comes to unlock the gate for us. Camila, or Carmela, I don’t quite catch her name, but we exchange besos and she leads us inside.

            The inside of the house is dim and pleasantly cool. A few kids are sitting around tables, some working on homework, one carefully arranging pieces of a puzzle. Fede seems to know them all and several of them rush over to give him hugs and demand to be picked up. We exchange besos with the other cuidadoras, whose names I manage to mishear once more, and after a bit of chatting we manage to make our way through a hallway and into an office crammed with books, papers, a few chairs, and a small woman who looks almost identical to every 50- or 60-something abuela in Argentina. Fede introduces her as Silvia, la loca, and another round of besos ensues. We spend the next half hour talking about all kinds of things – Fede asks about some of the kids who have left the hogar since he was last there, we decide which days I’ll be coming to Cor (Sundays, Mondays, and Tuesdays, to start), Silvia uses some colorful language to describe the political situation regarding donations to organizations like Cor, and finally I’m offered the chance to buy a raffle ticket to put me in the running for a 32” LCD television, which I accept (I figure I’ll leave it with my host-mom if I win). After snagging a snack of toast and dulce de leche from the kitchen, Fede and I head back into the city. We decide I’ll start that coming Sunday by going with Lukas on the train.

Sunday

            So Sunday marked my first official day of volunteering. Altogether it was a pretty uneventful day. Lukas and I took six of the kids to the park. According to Lukas, this is always an “interesting” adventure for a number of reasons: 1) kids are kids, and I have not met a single kid on earth who is happy to leave the park when it’s time to leave the park (these kids are no exception), 2) kids of different ages like to egg each other on, so once you get one out of the tree, another one will climb up it, 3) not having the greatest command of the language doesn’t make you sound like a very convincing authority figure, especially when the authority figures these kids are used to can also yell a lot louder than Lukas or me. Getting all six of them out of the park and back to the hogar without anyone being hit by a car or disappearing into a random shop was challenging, but we managed.

Monday

            Monday we were scheduled to go to San Isidro again, but the trains were shut down for over an hour because of some mysterious mechanical accident. By the time they were up and running again, it wouldn’t have been worth the time to get out to Cor and back, so Lukas and I let them know we wouldn’t make it that day.

Tuesday

            The next day, Tuesday, had been arranged for Lukas and I to cook dinner for the kids with another volunteer, Tessa – the meal consisted of hamburgers, oven fries, salad and crepes with apricot jam (Tessa’s Austrian contribution). Not exactly what I’d envisioned when I had thought about cooking “healthy meals”, but I didn’t choose the menu for this one ;) Either way, the kids loved it! The cuidadoras kept shooing them out of the kitchen while we were cooking, but I managed to snag one of the girls I’d taken to the park, J*, for a few minutes to help me tear up some lettuce leaves for the salad. The kids were so eager to be involved, it made me think I might have a good chance of getting some sort of cooking thing going with them on a regular basis. After the (charming) chaos I’d observed the past few days, I assumed mealtime would be more of the same, but I was wrong. I’ve never seen so many children eating so calmly! Not only that, but about three quarters of them wanted salad, and ALL of them ate it! These are kids mostly ranging in age from five to eleven and here they are requesting salad. Not to mention almost every plate came back cleared. After that, it was off to bed for most of them. Brushing teeth, changing clothes, taking medicine, and out like a light.

            As much fun as we had that night, before I left I got a stark reminder of why I am here at Cor, and also why the kids are here. Not all of the kids at Cor have HIV, some are just from families where the parents are positive or have passed away from complications related to AIDS. But many of the kids here are positive. No one tells you who is and who isn’t, kind of like how at Voices we’re not always told everything about a particular client. But you figure it out on your own, you talk to other staff about what you notice, you familiarize yourself with medications, you learn to recognize reactions and behaviors – they know that you know, you know that you know, but everyone saves face by not asking directly. It may seem cryptic, but it helps to maintain a sense of normalcy, so that your day-to-day life is not just about the virus, about jail, about the abuse – the  person is not their illness, or their past, they’re a person.

            This hit home for me as we finished up dinner with the kids. One of the girls I had taken to the park, L*, was called over to the big medicine cabinet to take her meds before going to bed. As I was walking by, I noticed a chart taped to the inside of the cabinet door; the chart consisted of boxes with kids’ names, followed by the list of medications they were taking. The first name I saw was L’s, and at the top of the list of six or seven medications was AZT. I felt like I had been hit in the chest. The little seven-year-old who could barely write her name and who insisted I carry her to the park on Sunday and push her on the swings until my arms gave out, L was positive. Somehow it made the situation much more real and it made me sad, but in a way also hopeful. Sad because it was entirely not L’s fault that she contracted HIV, it was so unfair, and it would probably mean a lifetime of preventive drugs and dealing with the social stigma that still dogs many people who are HIV-positive. But in some ways I feel hopeful, too. Like I said, you would never know any of these kids have HIV just by looking at them. If you didn’t see them at medication time, you wouldn’t know they were taking medications at all! The technology for antivirals has gotten so advanced that for these kids, managing their HIV is like someone managing type 1 diabetes – sure it’s a pain in the butt sometimes, and it means being extra careful, but kids can learn how to do the day-to-day management part of it. And they are troopers the whole time.

            I’m so happy I chose to do the ELAP program, and I’m so glad I chose to do it with FundaciónCor. I can just tell this is going to be a really fun and challenging experience and I’m very excited to get back to the hogar on Sunday and see the sweethearts again. I’m hoping to do more research on how organizations like Cor are funded and run, how kids get accepted to live at the house, and if there’s any way they link up with other organizations (like Lutheran Social Services, perhaps? *wink, wink*). For now, though, it’s time for me to call it a night. More updates coming soon, and maybe pictures later!

* I'm following the tradition of the social sciences and educational fields of not using names when talking about specific kids. Part of it is because of the HIV status and part of it is because they're kids. Hopefully this won't get confusing for those of you reading, if it does, just let me know and I'll try to clear up any ambiguities!