More on my crazy week
Quito pics are up.
So, for this week’s continued adventures...
Monday I planned to stay in and catch up on writing. Got a call from the Patio (shelter #1) that a kid was there looking for me. This boy is a badass. I’m not sure if I’ve talked about him before, but let’s call him Miguel. Miguel is 19 and was in the shelter when I first got here 8 years ago. He never had much family, was raised by an abusive uncle who was also a drug dealer, and had all the behavior problems you could expect in that environment. He was in and out of the shelter for many years, at times doing pretty well and at other times not at all. It was tough to know what to do with him because he tended to bully the other kids and there was a tension between trying to help him and making sure he didn't hurt anyone else. He left for good about 2 or 3 years ago and things just went downhill. He’s been stealing, smoking up, and dealing drugs. He’s covered in scars from assorted knife fights and bullet wounds and has been in prison a couple of times. He's also banned from the shelter. Kind of a scary dude. Also, it makes me really sad, because I and others tried really hard with him, and I always wonder if there's something we could/should hae done differently
Despite being a badass, he's also kind of attached to me, and has always been respectful with me. When he's high he generally won't talk to me, but even then he still behaves himself. For the past year or so he keeps calling me his godmother (even when I remind him that technically, I'm not...the first time I told him that I was a little nervous of how he would react, but he just kind of laughed it off and keeps calling me madrina. So, Monday he showed up at the shelter and they called me to see if I could come talk to him.
Surprisingly, he's doing relatively well. Mostly he just wanted to talk. His girlfriend's pregnant (yikes) and it seems to have sobered him up a bit. He's been working for her aunt and gotten a bit cleaned up. Says he's no longer dealing, which I tend to believe because they were both pretty broke. We talked about getting her prenatal care & made plans to talk again later this week. I'm not going to get my hopes up, but if by some miracle he does manage to make it and get things together...I'm never allowed to doubt another kid again :).
Yesterday it was back to shelter #3, where I teach English. After class I was reading through my students' homeworks in their English notebooks, and found that on the page after his latest assignment, one of my students had written something scarily like a suicide note. Instant jump from teacher-mode to psychologist-mode. Talked to the staff psychologist, then alone with the kid, then with the psychologist and the kid. He's doing ok & is getting the extra attention he needs right now, promised me and the psychologist he wasn't going to do anything. Long day.
Today it was fighting with the public health system...details would be boring, but I think that on your 3rd visit to the place that is supposed to do your frickin´ CD4 test, you should actually be able to get the thing done and not sent back to the other hospital across town for a 4th visit, where they will only tell you to go back to the testing center and insist more insistently that they do the test. AAAAAAAARGH. Every time this person needs to get tested he has to miss work, and his boss is going to wonder why, and there aren´t a whole lot of legal protections here for people here with HIV. And with the exception of a few folks from the amazing doctors without borders, people are generally just rude, mean, and apparently uninterested in helping anyone else. It´s a mess. And then they wonder why patients are ¨non-compliant¨?????
Ok, mini-rant over. After the extremely frustrating morning, I walked halfway across downtown (about 30 blocks or so) just because I needed to do something. I was going to go into the shelter today and try to interview some kids but I realized that I was in just too grumpy a mood so I stayed in to catch up on writing. And I got to watercolor with a 6 year old. So, at least it wasn´t a complete waste of a day.
Seriously, when I rule the world? Quality health care from polite people. Is that too much to ask?
So, for this week’s continued adventures...
Monday I planned to stay in and catch up on writing. Got a call from the Patio (shelter #1) that a kid was there looking for me. This boy is a badass. I’m not sure if I’ve talked about him before, but let’s call him Miguel. Miguel is 19 and was in the shelter when I first got here 8 years ago. He never had much family, was raised by an abusive uncle who was also a drug dealer, and had all the behavior problems you could expect in that environment. He was in and out of the shelter for many years, at times doing pretty well and at other times not at all. It was tough to know what to do with him because he tended to bully the other kids and there was a tension between trying to help him and making sure he didn't hurt anyone else. He left for good about 2 or 3 years ago and things just went downhill. He’s been stealing, smoking up, and dealing drugs. He’s covered in scars from assorted knife fights and bullet wounds and has been in prison a couple of times. He's also banned from the shelter. Kind of a scary dude. Also, it makes me really sad, because I and others tried really hard with him, and I always wonder if there's something we could/should hae done differently
Despite being a badass, he's also kind of attached to me, and has always been respectful with me. When he's high he generally won't talk to me, but even then he still behaves himself. For the past year or so he keeps calling me his godmother (even when I remind him that technically, I'm not...the first time I told him that I was a little nervous of how he would react, but he just kind of laughed it off and keeps calling me madrina. So, Monday he showed up at the shelter and they called me to see if I could come talk to him.
Surprisingly, he's doing relatively well. Mostly he just wanted to talk. His girlfriend's pregnant (yikes) and it seems to have sobered him up a bit. He's been working for her aunt and gotten a bit cleaned up. Says he's no longer dealing, which I tend to believe because they were both pretty broke. We talked about getting her prenatal care & made plans to talk again later this week. I'm not going to get my hopes up, but if by some miracle he does manage to make it and get things together...I'm never allowed to doubt another kid again :).
Yesterday it was back to shelter #3, where I teach English. After class I was reading through my students' homeworks in their English notebooks, and found that on the page after his latest assignment, one of my students had written something scarily like a suicide note. Instant jump from teacher-mode to psychologist-mode. Talked to the staff psychologist, then alone with the kid, then with the psychologist and the kid. He's doing ok & is getting the extra attention he needs right now, promised me and the psychologist he wasn't going to do anything. Long day.
Today it was fighting with the public health system...details would be boring, but I think that on your 3rd visit to the place that is supposed to do your frickin´ CD4 test, you should actually be able to get the thing done and not sent back to the other hospital across town for a 4th visit, where they will only tell you to go back to the testing center and insist more insistently that they do the test. AAAAAAAARGH. Every time this person needs to get tested he has to miss work, and his boss is going to wonder why, and there aren´t a whole lot of legal protections here for people here with HIV. And with the exception of a few folks from the amazing doctors without borders, people are generally just rude, mean, and apparently uninterested in helping anyone else. It´s a mess. And then they wonder why patients are ¨non-compliant¨?????
Ok, mini-rant over. After the extremely frustrating morning, I walked halfway across downtown (about 30 blocks or so) just because I needed to do something. I was going to go into the shelter today and try to interview some kids but I realized that I was in just too grumpy a mood so I stayed in to catch up on writing. And I got to watercolor with a 6 year old. So, at least it wasn´t a complete waste of a day.
Seriously, when I rule the world? Quality health care from polite people. Is that too much to ask?