By Joonho Jo
It was Monday, and one half-week in, I was jet-lag free (for the most part) and ready to go. Monday's Day Care was designated for children ages 2 to 12. If I had thought that the teenagers were full of energy, I was in for a surprise. From the moment they walked/crawled into the room, CanSupport was full of energy. Without any tentativeness, some of them latched onto me and gave me a warm hug even though we had never met before. As the Day Care leader led introductions, one of the children jumped back into my lap and stayed there. I was happy to be his chair.
The activity of the day was arts & crafts. The children were to create little origami pockets and decorate it with stickers and drawings. To start, we handed out colored paper, demonstrating that they should fold a corner over, then cut the rectangle to create a square. This process took a while. Young Joo and I each folded around ten pieces of paper for the children, as they continued to hand their papers to us for assistance. I loved origami, so this was no problem. The next step was to fold the corners into the center, almost like a fortune teller. This, also, took a long time. Now the fun part. The children were given crayons and stickers for pocket decoration, and as you can see in the photos below, they came out great. This part required little to no assistance from the volunteers, as the creative imaginations of the children took over.
There was one little girl, maybe around four-years-old, who came late. She sat down, head-down. She wasn't disengaged or upset, like the boy from last week. Instead, it appeared that she wasn't really aware of what was going on around her. She didn't talk much, and sat quietly. I went over to her and held out my hand for a high-five. In my past experiences in working with kids, I found that a high-five was the universal handshake. But in this case, she didn't return her hand. Instead, she looked up and smiled. "Namaste," I said. Still no response. Just smiles. Since the other children were working on their pockets, I decided to help her start her own. I brought over a purple piece of paper and began to fold. After creating the general mold, I offered both the pocket and crayons to her. Slowly, she picked up her desired colors and began to draw. Unluckily, she picked up a purple crayon — to draw on a purple sheet of paper. Laughing internally, I brought over stickers for her to use. By the end of the decorating session, several of the kids were fighting over the large smiley face stickers. Seemingly, they would do anything to get it. I felt like I was back in the hectic atmosphere of the markets of Dilli Haat. In the midst of this chaos, the little girl was sitting quietly, working on her purple pocket. I decided to take a large yellow sticker to her, in hopes that no one would try to take it from her. When I pasted the smiley face sticker to the back of her pocket, it was as if her face imitated the sticker. The efforts I had made to retrieve the highly coveted object were entirely worth it.
After the pockets were finished, the room with the parents was joined with the room with the children. The parents had been undergoing laughter and meditation therapy with a trained therapist who had been brought in for the day. Evidently, they had been through a lot of stress, grief, and anxiety after their children were diagnosed with cancer, and this therapy aimed to relieve them of such emotions. It took a lot of "shushing" to get the children to follow the meditation but once that was accomplished, the rest of the Day Care was spent in peaceful silence. During this time, I reflected on the past two hours, and how these kids — so full of energy, joy, and imagination — have been unfairly forced to endure such grave diseases. Cancer did not consider who deserved pain. Cancer struck these children who had done nothing to deserve it. The least I could do was to smile, help, and make their day brighter. As the children left, I made sure to give as many high-fives and hugs as possible.
