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| The entrance of Casa de los Angeles |
Quieres hacer pipi? O popo? (Do you want to pee? Or poop?)
This Summer, I spent a month volunteering at Casa, a free daycare for children of single mothers founded by Donna Quathamer. Casa is based in a small colonial city called San Miguel de Allende and boy, was I blown away by the colonial architecture and colours of the city, and the lovely people that worked with the organisation. Casa does amazing things - they provide mothers with free care and food for their children so they can go to work, on the conditions the mothers find a job and earn over a certain amount per week. It is paramount they also contribute 1 hour of volunteer work a day at Casa, which encourages them to get involved within the community. You can find out more about this amazing organisation
here.
I worked with children of 6 months to 4 years old, changing nappies, (force) feeding babies, cleaning poop, playing and conversing with them in my broken Spanish - all for the first time. Surely after a month of volunteering here I would feel well-equipped to be a mother, but this wasn't exactly the case. Kids can be very cute yet vicious animals. The teachers too, are very inspiring, most who were exactly like these single mothers coming to Casa for help. A teacher, V, has an extraordinary story of struggle and hardship, where only she can tell you.
So I came back with thoughts - extraordinary ones. I want to live in Mexico at some point in my life if not in the near future to continue empowering those in need. My mind delved in silly thoughts too - I've decided to name my kid Diego. You'll see why in the following photo. Here are some photos from the Christmas play and La Posada (a Christmas tradition I might talk about in the next post) at Casa.
