We are all beautiful flowers in the same garden

There are always moments in life where you realise you’ll never forget what you just saw. Some are because of a traumatic, disturbing event, some because of something wonderful happening. 

Others are harder to define.

On Friday we were given the opportunity to see the other side of La Paz in a visit to a state-run disability centre in the city, just down the road from where we live. From the outside it looked much larger than I had anticipated, and as we went inside, it seemed vast. The corridors were wide and clinical, although a clear attempt had been made to make it look welcoming with a colourful border painted on the walls and bright chairs lining the corridor. However this did not particularly diminish the bleak atmosphere and the feeling that you were inside an institution, as the paint was faded and there were bars on all the windows and gates at every stairwell.

We were taken to a particular ‘ward’ for children with a wide range of disabilities and the feeling we got was that this was where there were the most staff and the children were the least challenging, as they were certainly out to impress us. This ward was a home for the children without parents (or indeed without willing parents), where they played and slept, and those that could also attended classes and therapies within the building.

When we arrived, the children had just finished dinner and were busy being cleaned up so we were given the chance to speak to a doctor in the centre, a gentle seeming man in his early sixties who spoke very good English. He told us that he had worked at the centre for 27 years and that the ‘motto’ that they went by was ‘we are all beautiful flowers in the same garden’, a message of inclusiveness and solidarity in a country that often fails to provide for the most vulnerable in society.

The first child to be brought in to the bright room covered in soft toys (which was considerably more child friendly than the corridors outside) was a young girl who seemed unable to walk and had to be held and repositioned on the floor constantly. We were told that in the last few days she had entered a depressive state and had stopped walking very suddenly.

In the next room, a small dorm room, a very small boy was carried in and placed in a cot and we were told he had a number of conditions including reduced movement in his left side and an abnormally small brain size. Then two more boys were brought in and placed in cots and left alone with us (8 ICS volunteers and two Bolivian volunteers). Both captured my heart instantly. One Miguel*, had a condition in which he was unable to process images that his eyes saw, in his brain. His eyes looked around quite wildly and he had a number of repetitive movements which he seemed to make as a form of communication. He didn't respond to touch at first and seemed unable to grab my finger but after some time (and a few verses of twinkle twinkle little star) he grabbed hold of my finger tightly and didn't let go. 

The boy in the cot next to Miguel, Jonathan  had a similar brain condition to the first boy but with the added complication of severe epilepsy. Whilst we were in the room alone with him he started to choke on the medicine that he had just been given. Our Bolivian volunteer scooped him up and quickly rushed him through the next room and next door to where the staff were working. My instant reaction was, quite naturally, what would have happened if we hadn't been here?

Back in the main room, many more children had arrived including a number of boisterous and happy children with Downs Syndrome, who smiled, laughed and chased us around the room quite happily. Another boy was brought in and instantly tied to a pillar with a piece of rope which was placed around his middle. We were told he had Autism and was hyperactive. Clearly from our ‘child-cruelty’ westernised eyes, this was unacceptable. But as more and more children were brought into the room the ratio of ‘community mothers’ to children was rapidly dwindling.  What else could they do? They did not have the money to have enough staff to properly deal with the children’s needs and had therefore found ways to cope.

We were told that the community mothers were not necessarily trained, but all seemed to show genuine care and affection for the children and anything which we perceived to be unacceptable could easily be attributed to a lack of funds and a lack of staff. The children in this one ‘ward’ had such complex and different needs that it seemed impossible that they would all be given the care and stimulation they really needed to develop well in this environment.

Every member of staff we spoke to told us that the children lived for days when people like us came to visit, and some even pleaded with us to come back as soon as we could. The community mothers told us that what these children really lacked was love and affection. The centre was able to provide for the children’s needs in terms of their medical and physical needs, but there was not enough hours in the day to ensure that all the children received the kind of nurture and care that we would want and provide for our own children. They might have all been flowers in the same garden, but their garden seemed a long way from ours.