The Great Morning Routine
Distributed to an email list and published online (2010)
Ilay in bed listening to the pitter patter of feet across the hardwood floor. The stillness of the morning is broken by first one giggle and then another. I glance at my watch sleepily. It’s only 5:45 am and we have another 30 minutes before we have to be up. I hear Eleni cry to the girls from her bed, “Todo el mundo a la cama!” The feet scurry and scamper and I hear blankets being tossed as girls leap into their beds. The atmosphere is like Christmas morning but it is only Saturday. I love Saturday mornings here at Casa Guatemala; we get an extra hour of sleep.
Monday through Friday, Eleni and I wake the girls up at 5 am. We both set our alarms so we don’t accidentally oversleep; there’s no chance of being woken up early by the girls during the week. They are all slumbering peacefully in their beds and it takes arduous prodding to get them up. Some of them pretend they can’t hear us. Others burrow under the covers. For anyone who has had to wake up a child who didn’t want to get up, imagine multiplying your effort 23 times. The girls look so sweet when they finally do get up in the morning, though, with their half-closed eyes and their rumpled hair. I always make my way around the room, rubbing backs and waking girls up, then helping them make their beds before the chaos of getting 23 little girls into the shower begins.
Nothing represents our group as much, perhaps, as shower time. It is chaos incarnate. Clothes fly towards the hamper and girls grab their towels, then jockey for a position in one of the three stalls. We have a rule, no more than two girls in the shower at one time. This way we can make sure that they wash themselves well and don’t just do the cursory dunk under the shower head. Morning showers are usually subdued, as the girls are still sleepy. Afternoon showers, however, are something to be reckoned with. The other afternoon I came in and the girls were doing naked sit-ups on the wet bathroom floor. Why? I’m not sure. Other times they dance around, always being silly and giggling. Sometimes they all collapse on the floor in a heap of laughter, unable to stay upright because they have amused themselves so much with jumping jacks, a song, etc. During afternoon shower time I pace in front of the stalls, putting shampoo on every wet head and doing my little dance to demonstrate all of the places they need to put soap. It is a constant chorus of, “Champu, por favor! Cassandra, champu!” After they have washed up the girls jump out of the shower and normally proceed to slip their way across the wet tile, never seeming to use their towels until they have gotten as much water on the floor as possible.
One morning during my first week at Casa Guatemala I was helping the girls get dressed and brush their hair when I noticed a lone girl crying in the middle of the room. I asked her what was wrong but she wouldn’t answer so her little friend answered instead. “She wants a calzone,” she told me. Now, normally this particular girl does not cry, so I was bewildered that she was crying over the lack of a pizza pocket, especially when breakfast was only half an hour away. As we eat rice, beans, and tortillas for three meals a day, I wondered how she even knew what a calzone was. Anyways, I brushed the hair from her face, gave her a little kiss, and told her not to cry because we’d be eating breakfast shortly. At that, I considered the problem solved. Later on in the day, however, another little girl came up to me saying she needed to change her clothes because her calzone was broken. She showed me her panties and I had a sudden revelation that the morning crying hadn’t been about pizza pockets at all. It had been about underwear!
Unless a girl comes to Casa Guatemala with her own underwear (and we write her name on them), she grabs one out of the common bag after her shower. So many things here are community property. Each girl has 2 or 3 outfits that come from the big pile of donations we receive. Other than that, hairbrushes, sheets, toothpaste, shampoo, etc. are all shared and handed out by me and Eleni when they are needed. Each girl has a closet where she keeps her clothes and any personal possessions she has. Some of the girls are proud owners of hairbrushes now; Santa dropped some by for Christmas last year.
Once the girls are dressed it is time to read off the daily assignment for chores. Eleni and I post the list on the community chalkboard the night before, making sure each girl is assigned to a job she can handle. Only big girls wash the showers because the smaller ones can’t reach high enough. The smaller ones do jobs like emptying the wastebaskets. The chores range from mopping the bathroom floor to raking the ground outside the house to hanging up the towels to dry outside after the morning shower time. It can be a challenge to keep track of 46 towels, that’s for sure. Every girl has two towels that she is responsible for. Each is marked with her name and they get swapped once a week. Our newest addition to the chore chart is the assignment of two girls to wash the dishes of all of the Niñas Pequeñas after every meal we eat together. This became necessary because our girls were taking so long to wash their own plate, fork, and cup that we were always the last ones out of the comedor. Surprisingly enough, this is now the favored chore and every night before bedtime girls beg for the opportunity to wash 23 plates, 23 forks, and 23 cups. Eleni and I laugh about it every night.
Everyone in Casa Guatemala eats together in the comedor, an open-air dining facility constructed of wood that looks like it’s straight out of a summer camp movie. Two kids from each group are responsible for dishing up the plates of the others, then distributing the cups of juice and forks. Once everything is set on the table, it is time to line everyone up outside. I love helping in the kitchen and can usually be found serving juice before every meal. There’s just something about the buzz in the kitchen; it is a hive of activity as food is prepared for close to 300 people. I like listening to the Guatemalan radio station that is normally on and learning how to make the dishes we eat every day. I am determined to be able to make fried plantains and homemade tortillas before my time here is done.
When the girls hear, “Niñas pequeñas, a la fila!” they come running, lining up from smallest to biggest. They always seem to be jockeying for position, pushing each other into the right order. We have them put a hand on the shoulder of the girl in front of them, which helps them to make a straight line. Then, it is time to count them. At this point they all begin to jostle around, wanting to be the first inside even though they know there are enough place settings and food for everyone. They look like little labrador retrievers once a tennis ball has been thrown. They stand in line but their bodies nearly vibrate with the energy of wanting to run inside. As we release them, they race to find a seat at the table.
Surprisingly, eating beans, tortillas, and rice on repeat does not bother the kids as much as it bothers some of the volunteers, who buy other food in town and sometimes will skip the common meal for pasta or a sandwich at the volunteer house. A couple of volunteers took some children to a restaurant in Rio Dulce one night a few weeks ago. They told the kids they could order whatever they wanted, whether it be a hamburger or a gourmet sandwich or chicken. All of the kids wanted rice and beans.
Last week a church group from Texas brought hot dogs with them to spice things up for the kids. The kids took to them well but were very confused by the little white pieces of paper they were given. One girl, Alicia, walked up to Eleni waving her folded piece of paper. She asked what it was and what she was supposed to do with it. She had never seen a napkin before! But the confusion over the napkin was nothing compared to the girls’ looks of shock and awe when we were brushing teeth and I turned on my electric toothbrush. They all gathered around and just stared at me, not knowing what buzzing thing-a-majig I had put in my mouth. When I showed them they marveled at the ingenuity. Some girls wanted to swap toothbrushes but I declined. We share a lot around here but I thought that would be taking it a little far.
By the time the girls have brushed their teeth and lined up for school it is only 7:15 am but we have been up for over 2 hours and I am exhausted. I know now why stay-at-home moms look forward to the moment when their children leave on the bus for school every morning. I walk them to class and give them smooches goodbye, smiling because they’re cute and smiling because I get a much needed break before I get to see their cute faces again.