By Joonho Jo
There are very few things that children enjoy more than friends. One is arts and crafts. Another is Snapchat filters. On Monday, we created paper hearts (which is a great and easy activity to do for children — highly suggested). Once we introduced the "how to's" of the creation, the children used their imagination to make a variety of adaptations of the hearts. For instance, the child pictured below designed a necklace. Some of the others created a wheel of hearts that amounted to something that looked like a flower.
While the majority of the children were occupied with this, some who were visually impaired were sitting away from the crowd. The head coordinator suggested that I go over with large Lego blocks to play with them. As an avid supporter of Legos, I gladly brought the suitcase of blocks over to the children. Building high towers with these children brought me back to eighth grade. During my last year of middle school, I participated in a program called RAPP (Reaching All Peer to Peer) which gave me the opportunity to work with children with disabilities every Tuesday lunch. Each week would bring a different activity, but the go-to for me was Legos. Even without talking, the children and I built spaceships, homes, and gardens together.
Fast forward six years and I still playing Legos with children. We stacked blocks on top of each other until there were no more. Then we turned this "building" sideways and created a sword. The kids had a blast with that. We broke down the structures, and built them up again. With smiles and laughter, the children used all of their strength to stick the Legos into where they wanted it, eventually marveling at their creation. After a while, the blocks lost the attention of the kids, and I looked for another way to keep them occupied. Then, I remembered last week, when during a home visit, two brothers absolutely loved SnapChat filters. I took out my phone and as you can see below, the kids enjoyed it. Never having seen something that changes your face before, the child I was working with pointed to the screen and then called for his mother. "Maa!" he said, and I couldn't help but smile. An unlikely hero, SnapChat had given this child happiness. Wanting to take pictures himself, he borrowed / took his mother's phone and pointed the camera at me. I motioned him to turn the camera around and took a selfie. Kids these days.
As the adults were drawing their exercises (sewing & knitting) to a close, we began to take down the barrier separating the children room and the adult room, while shushing the children to tone down their unbridled energy. This was tough, but not impossible. Once the children were quiet, we asked them to lay down and join their parents' meditation therapy. After whispering "lay down" in Hindi for around five minutes, I decided to lay down myself, in hopes that they would follow the example. They joined, and the remainder of the session was spent in silence.
When the meditation ended, the children began to grow loud again. The adults sat quietly, waiting for their family's name to be called for food receiving. Each name was called, and a six pack of eggs, two packed lunches, six bananas, a bag of coffee, and two bags of chips were given to each caregiver in order to supply them breakfast for the upcoming week. Without these nutrients, there would be no way for these children to have basic nutritional health during their treatment. I realized again that cancer was not the only evil harming these children. Poverty was too.
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