Day 3

I'm exhausted. Today I had my first day at Mother Teresa's Home for the Dying and Destitute and as predicted it was extremely intense. It is located in La Victoria, about 20 minutes from Surco where I am living. The poverty is actually worse than Villa de Salvador that I saw yesterday. The biggest differences were that these streets were filled with people on dirt roads and there is no longer any hope there. At least, from what i'm told, Villa de Salvador's people have hope although they don't have much but here in La Victoria people have given up. Many of us would agree that if you don't have hope, you don't have anything.

The actual building was not visual and there was no sign. A sketchy door was there and you had to knock for someone to look through a peep hole to let you through. Inside were lots of nuns, wearing the same clothes you always see Mother Teresa wearing. The bottom floor has about 100 elderly men and the top floor is for children. I was stationed with the elderly men.

My responsibilty was to help with rehabilitation with select men, kind of ironic seeing I just finished rehab with my shoulder. Anyway, many of the men were severely disabled with missing limbs, severe CP, or worse.

I knew I was in for some work when they gave me medical gloves and a jar of Ben Gay. I think it's safe to say that I'm great at giving massages! Besides giving heating pads to these men, I was rubbing and massaging problem areas. Learning words like - fuerte- harder or -sauve- soft. many of the men i worked on had limbs the size of a 4 year old boy and were extremely fragile. I had to physically help move men out of wheelchairs to put them on the floor to massage backsides etc. I also fed Mario who could only open his mouth for me while I fed him soup and some rice and chicken.

From what ive been told, these men have been found in dumpters, abandoned by their family, or have no family left. yet, they are smiling and happy to keep talking to me in spanish when i didnt understand a word but kept smiling myself. After being a bit overwhelmed and after 4 hours i realized that instead of asking a man his name -se llama- i said te amo - i love you-. great laughs at the homebase when i told them that i got a strange reaction from this innocent man, ha! some men are a little more friendly than others and want a kiss from the americana, aka gringa. I guess all old men are the same...ha.

although i could go on about the sadness that lingers at Mother Teresa's shelter, I actually feel uplifted knowing that these people have been rescued and although they are dying,they have people there who truly care. i'm such a tiny piece of that, but it feels so good.