I did a few tourist things last week. I visited Tiwanaku. It is a set of ruins only 45 minutes outside of La Paz. The Tiwanaku culture is even older than the Incans, as early as 1500 BC. Mostly it was just of old rocks. Maybe we needed a tour guide to appreciate the depth of the site. The best part was a below ground temple. There were all these weird heads coming out of the walls, and strange statues in the middle. I did however enjoy the museum. It had a lot of artifacts from Tiwanaku culture and cultures after and did a good job showing just how ancient this culture is.
I also went to Valle de la Luna. Very close to the south of La Paz, this valley is a small park that has very strange rock formation. You do feel like you are somewhere on the moon or another planet. Good thing it is so close though because there really isn’t much to see besides the same weird rocks.
Work has been good but also frustrating. I was able to go on a new home visit with Caritas last Wednesday. I visited the home of a 21 year old girl with multiple disabilities. She is a new case and her father is very reluctant to any help. I am going to try to make her a communication book so she can better express her wants/needs. Mostly I think she needs more stimulation. Caritas is great at working with the whole family, so hopefully we can get across to the grandmother and father to just give her more stimulation throughout the day.
In this family there is also a 9 year old boy who is not currently going to school. He was diagnosed years ago with ADD. He attended 2 schools but after trouble in the classroom (disrupting, climbing on desks, running out the door) he was “kicked out”. I put that in quotes because if you ask the teachers or administration they would deny that he was kicked out. Only that it was not the appropriate placement. This case really got to me, and made me think about what I could do here for the special education system. The government supports inclusion. But so many of these kids are not ready for inclusion. And the teachers are not prepared to handle them. There is no middle ground. The students can go to specialized schools like the deaf or blind school, or a school for severe disabilities. None of these places can meet their needs and get them academically or socially ready for inclusion.
I will stop there on this rant, as I will probably dedicate a longer entry on this topic later.
I finally got to go to Hacha Uru, the association of parents with disabled children. It was such a great experience. I can tell that this group has a lot of motivation and can do great things for the community. I met a small group of kids getting extra help with academics. Then we started the crafts group. The moms were a mix of hesitant and excited. I think it will take awhile to get them to make things they can really sell. But the best part is the atmosphere. It was the first time I have felt completely comfortable with a group of cholita moms. There is something about women creating together. All I was doing was braiding old scraps, but with your hands busy it is easy to converse. I started to learn about their stories. I was happy to learn about a new special education school. Unfortunately, she didn’t remember the name, but I will find out next session. I am going to start going on Wednesday to help the kids with homework and then work in the crafts group. I hope to learn a lot from these moms!
Carolina and I have finally started the process of trying to get new hearing aides for some of the kids. The phono-audiologist Dianne has used in the past has become hard to work with for many of the families. She does not want to work directly with the school because she thinks that they will not keep up the relationship or the school will get shut down because they don’t have enough students. I don’t understand why we don’t just use someone else. The whole thing is slow and frustrating.
I can’t believe how fast my time here is flying by. I leave for my next set of travels in less than 2 weeks. This weekend I’m going on a mini adventure to the town of Sorata with Soraya. Should be fun!
