Home Visits

Social workers with the program make unannounced visits to affiliated families, to keep up to date with their needs. We have been asked to go along on these visits. I went on one this afternoon. Domingo and I were dropped off the minibus in a village outside Antigua, and started to walk up a cobblestone street. Off in the distance a group of children spied us and shouted, happily, "Domingo!!" Clearly he's a Friend. We chatted with the kids for a while, and they loved making silly faces for the camera.

In one home, as Domingo chatted with an older girl, her younger sister was playing with some scissors. On the table was a roll of toilet paper. I unrolled a foot of paper, asked her for the scissors, and made her a paper doll chain. She'd clearly never seen such magic and was delighted.

We went next door to another home visit, and who should follow us but my friend with the scissors, with 4 friends, calling, "Gringa! Gringa! Un autre" (sorry - my French is better than my Spanish, but I knew they wanted another!). I made a half dozen chains from toilet paper, including several with 8 dolls in a row. As we left the homes, walking down the path, through the trees, along the side of a steep hillside, my scissors friend and a 9-year-old boy each took my hand and we walked together for a while, till our paths separated. No photos except on that permanent hard drive in my mind.