Los niños de Misión México Albergue (the kids of Mission Mexico orphanage) - Part 1: The Chiquitos

In the next few blogs we'll introduce you to some of the 50 plus kids at Mission Mexico Albergue.  And our favourite sayings and anecdotes from each one over the last 2 and a half months...  But first of all, we should explain that the kids at Mission Mexico are divided into 4 main age-groups, with staggered dinner and bed times accordingly:  Chiquitos 4 - 8 years, Pequeños 8 - 12 years, Medianas 13-15 years and Grandes 16-plus.  This blog is about the chiquitos.

Kique, 4 years.... 'Erin said ''mochicha'', he he he'. 

Kique, short for Enrique, had a sharp memory for when one of the volunteers mispronounced 'mochila' (school bag) one day, and proceeded to remind her and all the other volunteers about it every day thereafter for at least a month.  Note the home-made swing, which was simply a bit of rope, with a cardboard seat!  Happily, Kique and his older brother Antonio are about to be adopted by a mexican couple from Puerto Escondido, so they will get to spend their growing years surfing Mexican pipeline - lucky boys.

From bottom left, clockwise, Kique (4), Jimmy (6), Junior (4), Sammy (7), Albi (6), Alli (7), Enetilla (7), or otherwise collectively known as 'los chiquitos' ('chick-key-toes'), saying the pre-dinner 'oracion' (prayer / grace).

The prayer or grace at the start of the meal time for the chiquitos and pequeños was always really cute, and their was often a fight over who would say it.  Sometimes they got really creative with what they would pray for, e.g. please bless such and such (inevitably singling out one of their mates - and no one else!).  Of course, there was always the usual suspects mentioned at the start of the prayer which I think I could nearly say word for word in Spanish...it would usually go something like this...''Padre, gracias para las comida, los voluntarios, mama y papa, Doña Marie, Zafi y Christy (Lord, thank you for the food, the volunteers, mum and dad, Marie, Zafi and Christy (the paid workers)).  They would also inevitably add in about helping 'los niños pobres y los niños de calle en Tapachula' (the poor children and the street children in Tapachula).  Very cute.  One night Jimmy even thanked god for Aleesha (one of the other volunteers) 'por que ella tienes bonita ojos' (because she has nice eyes)!

Alejandra (7), Albi (5), Enetila (7) and Junior (4) all lined up before the chiquitos bed-time (waiting for their bed-time story).  Ally, Albi and Ene were so tiny they all shared a bed...so cute!

Petrina 'negotiating' bedtime with Jimmy one night. And she thought negotiating with her work stakeholders was tough!

Jimmy again!

Jimmy shows us his stuff....Don't be suprised if this little one is a professional athlete of some kind one day

Another gorgeous Jimmy portrait.  His catch-cry was 'Hey!' and 'Shoulder ride!'

Nearly every single sentence that came out of the mouth of Jimmy (7-ish), Junior's older brother, began with a frantic ''Hay, hay'', follwoed by ''give me xyz''.  Petrina and one of the other female volunteers were getting frustrated with the lack of manners, and we must have started saying ''My name is Petrina'' quite a lot, which the kids evidently picked up on.  Anyway, by the end of our stay, the kids were all correcting Jimmy when he made one of his frantic demands they would chirp in (totally seriously) ''Ella nombre es Petrina'' (her name is Petrina).  They were also asking in perfect English, ever so politely, ''may I please be excused'' when they had finished their dinner.  Awwww!

Our other favourite anecdote about Jimmy was that you could pretty much get him to do anything if you gave him a shoulder ride e.g. to the shower, to bed, to find a broom for his chore etc. etc.  Only problem was, you had to go around the whole house before he'd had enough.  The love of shoulder rides must be genetic, as his younger brother Junior shared his passion...

Junior having a heap of fun during a Steve shoulder ride, as usual

And again....You should all know this little one by now...Junior (4), the one who has stolen our hearts.  His catch-cries were ''Looking, Looking'', ''You touched the poo-poo!'' & ''I'm a street kid, give me food!''

Junior's way of getting your attention was to say ''Looking, looking''  or ''looky, looky'' (when what he meant was ''look, look'').

Junior (along with his same-aged amigo Kique) has a memorable game he likes to play with the volunteers when we walk them to kinder.  Whenever we see ´caca´ (poo poo) on the road, they say ´´¿tu tocar la caca?´´ or ´´¿Junior / Quikue tocar la caca?´´ (which means you / Junior / Kike touched the poo poo?) and then they reply ´¨!no, tu tocar la caca!´´ (no, you touched the poo poo) and then this goes on for like 5 minutes and amuses them immensely.  Then I ask them if ´´¿la caca es desde un gato o perro?´´ (the poo is from a cat or dog?) and they make up whatever answere they feel like at the time - usually 'un gato' for some reason(-:  Ahhh, good times.

In fact, these little walks to kinder are some of the funnest times of the day.  Junior and Kique treat the whole world as their playground - any wall, door, plant, step, piece of rubbish etc etc that lies in their path, well, it will get touched or banged or poked on the walk to school!  And anyone out the front or in the doorway of their house in eye-shot of these two little monkey gets a resounding ''¡Hola Señor / Señorita, beunos dias / tardes!'' (Hello man / lady, good morning / afternoon).  We quickly learnt that on the walk to school we must stop at the bridge over Hepatitus River (see previous blog for the explaination on that one!) and play 'what's in the river?'.  The answers are always the same - basura (trash), pescada (fish), arboles (trees / plants), agua (water), naranga (oranges - well their skins anyway), botella de leche (milk bottles) - but that didn't matter, it was an important pre-kinder ritual.  One day on the way home from kinder with Steve, Junior also confidently announced in an extremely loud voice - ''looking, looking, Señor Señorita'' (man lady) as we passed a transvestite on the street!

Junior's final memorable line was 'Tengo hambre, mi un niño de calle, necessito comida' (I'm hungry, I'm a street kid, I need food), which he would confidently spruke around the volunteers dinner table, just when we were eating...  Very funny and you were so tempted to give him extra food off your plate just for the cute factor!  Doubly funny was that when Junior got something to drink, he would always call it his 'coca cervesa' (coke beer).  We have no idea where he got that one from, but what a little character he was!

Junior again...how can you resist that face?

Steve and Junior (again)....Boy, are we going to miss this little fella when we leave here....Even if he did give Petrina head lice repeatedly(-:

Alejandra (Ally), AKA 'Princessa'...''I no like it'' was Ally's response to almost anything - requests to do her jobs, to eat her food, to go to bed, to brush her hair.....  you get the picture....

Petrina and Ally during chore time.  Yep, we finally got the kids to do some of their allocated jobs...it only took two and a half months!

Stay tuned for installments on the pequeños, medianas and grandes!