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In 2016, Catriona Franck travelled to Peru to volunteer for a childrens’ charity. Her experience left a lasting impression. Here she speaks about her time with the charity.


MISSIONTOPERU... “I went to a part of Peru that receives


almost no western tourists. It takes 8 hours to get there, on a bus that goes over one of the most dangerous mountain passes in the world. I found myself dealing with daily extreme


altitude sickness, at the same time as I was being thrown into work.


Whilst incredibly rewarding, it was also undeniably intense. In the morning I worked with small children, aged between 2 and 4, some with severe psychological problems. I have never in my life seen a child not smile for a whole day of school. Here it was commonplace for a child not to smile …….for the entire day. There was nothing wrong with the school itself of course, it was a wonderful refuge from the things (or more accurately the lack of things) going on at home. I was told that a lot of these children had no memory of their parents as they had left when they were very young to work in the cities, and instead their grandmothers looked after them. Whilst they looked after them well for the most part, they were old and could not play with them. These children were also often the victims of terrible abuse and had many things to contend with in their little lives and no outlet for the trauma they had experienced. My job was to entertain them, to play with them, teach them how to colour, how to glue, just normal ‘kid’ things.


But how are you supposed to teach a child normal ‘kid’ things when these belong in a normal ‘kid’ world? For these Peruvian children, their reality is so far removed from normality, a world away from the childhood games and freedom that we assume naturally form the building blocks of human development, that there are often insurmountable barriers to any child development through play. The Old Cornelian SUMMER 2016


For the majority of my time there, I felt as though I was beating my head against a brick wall. Attempting to encourage a three year old who has stared at a Lego brick for an hour, unmoving and unresponsive, to try and glue some eggs into a basket is nigh on impossible. Moments like this were heartbreaking and frustrating in equal measure. But there were also moments of pure, unsurpassable joy. A little girl who I formed a close bond with, smiled for the first time as I tickled her neck with a toy. She smiled and laughed, a free and natural toddler laugh, and I have never been prouder of anyone else, or myself. Occasionally, there were fleeting glimpses in their behaviour of normal children, but for the majority of the time there was nothing, it was sobering and distressing to witness and exhausting to try to rectify. And yet, it was rewarding beyond measure. I learnt the importance of resilience.


In the afternoons (when I wasn't being sick from altitude) I went to a worker childrens’ project. The children here were older and were hilarious and constantly smiling. It was like jumping into a parallel universe. Except that in reality, it wasn’t. These smiling children, had been through the same things as their younger counterparts, and worse. There were twelve year olds who had been working all morning, just to stay alive and to support their


families, who still came to school in the afternoon. And we thought we worked hard for our GCSEs. Nothing seemed more ridiculous to me after Huancayo than my own concept of hard work.


I stayed working on these projects for 3 weeks, and then spent a week experiencing the classic tourist side of Peru – Cusco and Machu Picchu for a week. Visiting these incredible places was breathtaking, but what I keep with me from my time in Peru is not these natural wonders, but rather, the sheer persistence of life, under any circumstances, man’s natural desire and struggle to survive. What I experienced and witnessed and helped with, will stay with me always. For anyone wishing to learn more about the charity I volunteered with, please contact Claire Ball in the Alumnae office and she will pass your details to me.


OC CatrionaFranck (Class of 2014) 13


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