There was music, dancing, volleyball, soccer, etc. There was also 5 nights of music, lasting until 5AM. I did not get a lot of sleep.
The most interesting event was the wrestling. Balancing on a edge just below a wall that surrounded the mat, I clung to the wall along with a couple hundred other people. We were shoulder to shoulder and could barely move. The first to wrestle were middle school boys. They were shirtless with karate belts tied around their waists. The object was to get the other opponent on his back on the mat. Not an easy feat. The boys grabbed at each other's belts, trying to throw the other to the ground. As I was watching the wrestling, I looked around at the crowd and noticed a man holding a rooster. My heart leaped in fear as I thought, "Are they going to have cock-fighting too?" Turns out the winner of the wrestling tournament gets a rooster. (Sigh of relief).
After the winner of the tournament was declared, there was a mad scramble to collect on the bets. As all the adults around the mat ran to a desk, the children got up to jump on the mat. In the midst of this chaos, I noticed a man taking off his pants. At first I thought he was the next wrestler, but when I noticed he was wearing underwear under his pants and not wrestling shorts, I grew worried. I watched as the now pantsless man ran to the mat and began jumping with the children. He tried to grab their hands and bounce with them. The parents watched at laughed. Soon the police arrived and the man was, not without resistance, escorted off the mat.
Soon the adult wrestling began. I didn't stay to watch the finish but I was told the winner received a ram.
We have two more babies in our group, which makes our total up to 16. It is a mad scramble getting everyone fed in the morning. At it is blazing hot. Since they are afraid of children catching a cold from a draft coming through a window, the keep them shut at all times. There is also, obviously, no air conditioning or any other way to cool the room. As soon as I arrive in the morning, the caregivers ask me to start taking children outside. There are two large cribs outside and a lot of strollers that we place the children in. There is a nice breeze and we all can cool down.
The two new babies are Nicoleta and Sabrina. I'm not sure how old Nicoleta is but if I were to venture a guess I would say around 1 month. She has dark hair and is starting to get dark eyes. She is still a little jaundice, so when we were outside yesterday I held her in the sun for little while. At first I thought I would get yelled at for this, but then I noticed the nurse positioning the strollers so that the children were in the sun. Their faces were shaded by the stroller top but their legs and arms were in the sun.
Sabrina is around 6 months old. She has very dark hair and dark eyes. She has been without a diaper this entire time. I wrapped some sheets around her in order to pick her up, but she wet through them so quickly I didn't get to hold her for long. That is another issue with not having enough diapers. No one wants to hold the diaperless babies. I rocked two babies (separately) to sleep in my arms yesterday, which felt very good. I've also notice all the babies have this little red bumps all over them. I've asked what they are and was told alternately bug bites and allergies. I now wonder if they are some form of a heat rash.
While I was at the orphanage on Thursday, a small group of people entered our room and it was clear they were on some kind of tour. One of the women in the group came over to look at the babies by me and I heard her speaking English. I started to speak to her. She was from Italy and she and her husband and a friend were visiting the orphanage because they donate a lot of clothing to the orphanage. She was very sweet and we chatted for a while about Moldova.
It is getting hotter here but there is usually a nice breeze to cool me off. We are eating fresh apricots and cherries from the garden. Two more volunteers are coming tomorrow. One will stay with me in the village and one will stay in the flat. We were supposed to have two volunteers last week but they backed out at the last minute. Their fathers kept calling Victoria asking her strange questions like, "I noticed there is a street named Vitalie in Chisinau, but there is also one named that in another city..." I think the girls were very young and the fathers were over protective. We might have been better off without them because it might have meant a lot of babysitting.
No comments:
Post a Comment