Inright, Outright, Upright, Downright

I’m inright, outright, upright, downright

Happy all the time!

I’m inright, outright, upright, downright

Happy all the time!

Since Jesus Christ came in,

I gave my life to Him!

I’m inright, outright, upright, downright

Happy all the time!

The past two weeks seemed to have followed the lyrics of this kids’ song, and they decided it can’t be sung without the motions. Jumping all around, all the emotions and events slung me around like a roller coaster. And God is with me in the midst of it, teaching me to be happy all the time.

Inright

“Pack ‘em in!” That’s what Melissa told me when Esmeralda’s family just kept showing up. “It’s the Bolivian way.” Sleeping two to a bed, we now have her sister, mom, and two nieces living here indefinitely and feed her brother and his girlfriend and her three kids sporadically. Stated in complete sarcasm, it’s my favorite thing to be halfway done cooking a meal and be informed that the rest of the family will be joining us. Even better is when I thus fix them food and they don’t show up!

Laundry inside is a sure sign of rainy season. Shirts and shorts hung on hammock straps between my bed and the window, a dress clothes-pinned to the fan blowing at full force, the musty sour smell of clothes that got rained on twenty-four hours ago and still haven’t dried fill the air. It’s a battle to decide whether to risk washing clothes on a sunny morning because chances are if the sun is super strong, it’ll rain that afternoon (or so T. Abi and Esmeralda say). I LOVE when it rains and all the incredibly pleasant temperatures that comes with it. My clothes do not. So inside they stay.

Not only is this house full of Esmeralda’s family and my laundry inside, but Las Lilas has seven new girls, four of which have been here before in years past. The first showed up Thursday, Rubí (8) and her older sister Yamilé (12), and they immediately had my whole heart with their absolute sweetness, trustingness, and love. (These two have pale skin, light hair, and surprisingly American faces and clothes.) Sunday was when the other five new girls were supposed to arrive, but only two did: Jasmín (9) and her sister Jhaslin (10), who has Down’s Syndrome. Also an incredibly sweet pair. Monday brought sisters Marianely (12) and Zeinet (3), extremely quiet, rather dirty and smelly, and they had one duffle bag of clothes between five siblings. Separation anxiety between the two can be explained by abandonment by their mother and being punished by their father whenever they sought refuge with their grandparents, so Marianely raised little brothers, Zeinet, and Zeinet’s twin brother, on the streets of Rurre. So we’re a full house: by the time school started, as Miriam hadn’t yet left for boarding school, we had seventeen people living with eleven beds (the rest not yet built). “Pack ‘em in!”

Outright

Emilianne moving out was a jolt to my system. Not that she ever actually lived here, but all last semester she was with Las Lilas all day Sunday and often in the afternoons during the week. And for the past month, she’s spent every waking moment in Las Lilas. Suddenly we were informed that we were opening a second girls’ house in what used to be the SM girls’ house, so out moved Emilianne and her companionship, incredible help, and connection to these girls. Now she and Elizabeth have been thrown in the deep end as a moms to eleven pre-teen girls and a little brother.

But it wasn’t just Emilianne who left Las Lilas. Off to Las Frutillas with her went Edith, Nora, Ana, Lisvania, Mariana, and, worst of all, Milenca. Girls moving out is the most heartbreaking thing for someone who’s been their mom for six months. And I cried.

Outward actions are something that I’ll miss from Milenca, my little bear-hug-giver, kiss-receiver, and bouncy joke-teller. When I wore short shorts to bed one night when the rest were wet, I had no one tell me “oo-oooh Teacher!” and heard her voice say it in my head. When I reached in the cabinet to put away the nutmeg, I saw my Tony’s creole seasoning and realized no one would ever ask me to get it out. When I bagged up freshly-sprouted sprouts, I didn’t have anyone to exclaim over their “favorite little plants.” Outright missing Milenca.

Upright

Keeping a ship upright is easier when you have a heavier load on the bottom because it acts like a weight to ground the vessel in the water. But when kids don’t have good grounding, when their love cups haven’t been filled up enough to be heavy enough to keep them upright, sometimes they, like a top-heavy boat with no ballast, tip over.

When Nora came to Las Lilas with her severe arthritis, she was suffering physically from the results of chikangunya and socially from spending most of her life in bed. And some of my girls saw it as an opportunity to step on someone “lower” than them. At first, their comments about her special food (“Oh it’s sooo yummy!” when she didn’t want to eat) and trying to get her fed didn’t bother me. But when Nora informed us their comments were the reason she didn’t want to eat until they left the table, Emilianne and I immediately mandated that NO ONE was allowed to say anything to Nora regarding food or eating. That’s when their boat tipped. While we made lunch, every girl went into a room and made a pact to not say anything ever to Nora. Anything. Ever. Also, they agreed they would never sit with her. Never. When they sat down for lunch, one girl tested the waters, asking what Nora was eating. After I have a reminder on the rule, one girl got incredibly angry at my “unfairness” and started a yelling match. She then proceeded to lead everyone in standing up from the table; everyone (except Maribel) moved in sync to the other table, leaving Nora alone at the far end. I’ve never yelled at the girls before, but this time I did. I’m pretty sure all of campus could have heard my fury as I gave them three seconds to move their butts back over by Nora or be marched to Melissa’s office. They moved, except the ringleader, who took her food to eat in her room.

Turning the situation upright required higher intervention. Fixing a bullying case meant calling in Melissa, who didn’t have to ask the name of the instigator, sadly. She came and gave them the worst tongue-lashing I’ve ever seen, reminding the girls that her mom died of starvation from a similar autoimmune disorder and that if they wanted to see her mom they could come to her office and look at the urn on her desk. Bless. Bringing the ringleader to tears took sixteen minutes. After the fact, all the girls were their normal, sweet selves again, wanting to visit Nora (who’d moved to the clinic) and make her cards — elaborate cards with love and apologies. Upright de nuevo.

Downright

This same week, this house seemed to potentially be falling down. While the bathroom door came down off its hinges, the outdoor sink acquired a second issue. I finished making lunch to the sound of incessant pounding coming from inside the house. Soledad had carried a fist-sized rock in from the garden, and when I came to check on the noise, she was hammering the top hinge of the door back in place. The fix lasted 12.5 hours before the entire door fell off. Lifting a door into place every time you have to pee is very annoying for adults and impossible for little girls. (Thanks to Randy, Esmeralda’s brother, it’s functioning after two days of this.)

The outdoor sink has never been great. In fact, for a month or two it didn’t even have running water. But now water it has! The problem is that it doesn’t drain, as we think the pipe is crushed down the line. So we resolved the issue of backed-up water with taking the pipe off the bottom of the sink and letting it all run into a minuscule bucket that rapidly fills up and overflows onto our floor, which makes for a great swimming pool of one-inch-deep standing dish water, ever-present despite my efforts to sweep it. Then as one girl was washing her dish, SWOOSH, the entire faucet flew off, clattering onto the floor with a splash. With a powerful stream of water gushing forth in a fountain featuring water pressure I didn’t know existed here, sink water hit the tin roof above and began to rain down on everyone within range. Sliding around on the wet floor and ducking against the waterfall above and geyser below, I cranked the thing shut. This issue is unresolved beyond cramming the faucet back on, but it remains kind of hilarious.

There is a wooden table next to our stove that’s used for food prep. As the gas stove has open flame, one would think this combo could end in a little fire. Well, whoever thought that would be correct in their assessment. Chatting with Emilianne in one of our last joint meal preps, I looked over to see the flame of the front eye a little too big. Then I did a double-take and exclaimed, “Oh my lands, the table is on fire!” After a good splashing with rice water, there is now a little half moon burnt into the left side of our poor wooden mesa. We moved the stove another inch to the left.

Getting down to business (even if it means fixing things that have fallen down) should never trump getting down on the kids’ level. And getting down to music is a joy in Las Lilas. Remembering I brought a ukulele all the way to Bolivia, after it’s sat unused since school ended, we had a late-night jam session with Miriam and Greciana, who wanted to write the lyrics to some of my favorite songs. Music having the power of bringing people together is an understatement.

Happy All the Time

I’ve always believed that people with Down’s Syndrome are some of the sweetest, happiest people alive. And now that I’m a mom to one such girl, I know it. Our first interaction was on the night she walked through our front door and immediately ran up to me with a grin and a hug. Didn’t even know my name. (Now she calls me “Kita.”) Granted, having her here has been a major adjustment for everyone, as unwanted kisses, hugs, pushes, and games are abundant now. “¿Que hace?” (“What are you doing?”) asks my constant shadow on repeat all afternoon. Disobedience is a funny game, especially removing artwork and behavior sticker charts from the walls. My suitcase has disappeared, drug across the floor into her room for chistes. My phone in my pocket must be removed to take selfies. Sometimes she’s adorably funny. Sometimes she tries my patience. Sometimes she wants to be carried like baby Abi and says “Te amo.” Through all of it, we’re happy all the time.

Be Alright

Monday night. I was dead asleep for two hours and apparently slept right through a terrible rain and someone letting out a blood-curdling scream that scared all my girls. I was shaken awake at midnight by Esmeralda’s sister, and, as I cannot process Spanish at 12:30 AM, I got down out of bed after the word “crying.” Indeed, every single girl was sitting up awake in their beds and Rubí was sobbing uncontrollably. As I squatted outside the mosquito net and became a midnight mosquito snack, I learned that Jhaslin had gotten out of bed and wandered into the other girls’ room and rubbed her hand over all of their faces. Being touched in their sleep is traumatizing for girls with a history of abuse. When I went to see if I could talk to my little culprit, she was asleep in her bed with her sister. I brought Rubí back to sleep in my bed, and she clung to me all night, clammy with a scared sweat. She kept waking up scared and, as I didn’t fall asleep again till 3:45, I kept reassuring her, “Estas bien.” What do you do in this situation? I don’t know, but, “Todo va a estar bien.”

The song “Be Alright” by Evan Craft was my favorite this past summer, and as I sang it with Greciana at my table, she was so excited to see it in English (originally Spanish):

There’s a Name that can silence every fear,

There’s a love that embraces
the heartache, the pain, and the tears.
Through my faith and my doubting
I know one thing for sure:
His word is unfailing,
His promise secure.

Todo va a estar bien!
Everything will be alright!
The whole world's in His hands,
your whole world's in His hands.
In the darkness and the trials
He's faithful and He's true.
The whole world's in His hands,
y todo va a estar bien.
Oh-oh oh-oh-oh
Everything will be alright

Father, You say everything is gonna be alright
but my circumstances say I won't last through the night.
I need Your word to hold me now,

need You to pull me through,

I need a miracle, a breakthrough, I need You.

They say You hold the whole universe in Your hand,
but my world's falling apart like it is made of sand.
Am I small enough to slip through the cracks?
Can You take my broken pieces and put them back?

Give me faith to believe You are on my side.
Open my eyes to see You working in my life.
Let the past remind me You never fail.
Tell my soul "It is well."

Y todo va a estar bien!
Everything will be alright!
The whole world's in His hands,
your whole world's in His hands!
In the darkness and the trials
He's faithful and He's true.
Your whole world's in His hands,
y todo va a estar bien.

Padre te confieso a corazón abierto
Que todo es muy incierto en este desierto
Mi vulnerabilidad está al descubierto
Siento que mi barca está muy lejos de su puerto
¿Por qué será que ya no sale el sol en mis días?
¿Por qué mis noches son tan frías?
¿Por qué será que siento que me falta algo?
¿Por qué este camino gris se siente tan largo?
Sé que estás obrando aunque no te sienta
Sé que estás obrando aunque no te vea
Sé que voy a salir de esta odisea
Sé que voy a ganar esta pelea
Sé que va a cesar esta marea temporaria
Que en ti yo viviré una vida extraordinaria
Que aunque no pueda entender
Me consuela saber que:

Yo sé que
Todo va a estar bien!
Everything will be alright!
The whole world's in His hands,
your whole world's in His hands.
In the darkness and the trials,
He's faithful and He's true.
Your whole world's in His hands,
y todo va a estar bien.

He's got the whole world in His hands!
He's got the whole world in His hands!
He's got the whole wide world in His hands!

¡Todo el mundo en su mano está!
¡Todo el mundo en su mano está!
¡Todo el mundo en su mano está!

Love from the it’ll-be-alrights,

Katie-Jane

🤍 Make it All Right