The Puc Puc children… 22 février, 2008

There is a back road to the Casa de la Cultura where some of the poorest families of Tulum live in tiny wooden shacks. GVI Volunteers used to walk to town this way and because the kids were always yelling ‘Hola, Hola, Hola!!’ we started to get to know them. Little by little we knew the mum, Antonia, the dad and a few brothers and sisters (11 children all together) We found out that the youngest kids in age for school: Marcelina (9), Manuel (7) and Gricela (6) actually never went to school mainly due to costs reasons. Although primary school is free in Mexico, poor families can’t afford to send their kids as they don’t have the money for the books and stationary they would need to buy. I started going a few times during the last expedition and I go as much as I can during this expedition, with Rita, our intern who leads the project with grace. It is one of the most rewarding experience to see the smile of these kids when they manage to write properly one of the first letters of the alphabet or find the proper sound and word starting by this letter.

          

Its also sometimes sad to see that they are actually quite clever kids but don’t have the chance to be able to develop at school but need to work at the house. This week was extremally sad for all of us. The Mum had also 2 twin girls 8 months old. Rita came back to the base on Wednesday nearly crying as she just discovered that one of the 2 twin babies died due to asthma. We spent the rest of the week doing rounds to look after the kids. Rita, Rachel, Jacky and Fran managed to get the parents agreement to take Marcelina, Manuel, Gricela and Sandy to the beach today. That was their first time. They were crazily happy discovering this new world. We decided to take them again, I can’t wait to go this time!