“Ohana Means Family”

            Within a few days of arriving at the Hogar, I was charged with organizing and managing the library. The girls, especially the younger Santa Ana chicas, always clamour for library time (at times even pounding on the door when it’s closed), and the one question I heard incessantly throughout the day was “¿Cuando va a abrir la biblioteca?”(When are you going to open the library?). Since I had been given the role of “encargada de la biblioteca,” I started instituting several practices which I hoped might encourage the girls to expand their minds and learn during their time there. I requested that the girls play with math flashcards or read for at least 15 minutes before playing with puzzles or doing other preferred activities. There are several older girls who seem to be in the habit of reading regularly, and I was hoping to foster that pure enjoyment of reading in the younger girls, too. However, it seems that many of the younger ones struggle with anything more than the most basic sounding-out of words; often, they simply flip through their favorite stories, glancing at the pictures without understanding the story. So, I tried reading aloud with them. I allowed the girls select the books, so I’ve now read Snow White and the Seven Dwarves about three or four times, but have completed very few of the less popular stories (aka those which lack princesses). Given the typical monotony of choices, I was thrilled to be handed a Lilo and Stitch book the other day (one of those books based on a movie, which are always a little awkward, in my opinion).

            I had promised to read with Lulu in particular, but a couple other girls gathered around for a few pages. Surprisingly, the constantly energetic and distracted Lulu sat contentedly on my lap for so long that my legs started falling asleep. I sincerely hope I have more opportunities to read and play games with her—though she seems to have made a poor impression on the staff and the sisters, I believe she has the potential for growth and improved self-control, if she is placed in a creative learning environment with close personal attention. For example, she struggles with math more than her peers, but, when we played a math game the other day with several other young girls, she was quite eager to continue. Perhaps this was partly because she liked earning crayons as prizes for answering the flashcards problems correctly. Nevertheless, I think she was starting to get the hang of subtraction, and she didn’t lose interest in the game as quickly as she usually does.

            But, back to Lilo and Stitch. For those of you who don’t know the story, Lilo is a feisty, opinionated little girl who lives with her older sister, Nani, because the two of them are orphans. Nani begrudgingly allows Lilo to adopt a bizarre blue “dog,” Stitch, which is actually an experimental alien creature on the lurch, designed (by a blundering “evil” scientist) to wreak havoc everywhere. The girls seemed to enjoy the tale, despite the manly, hoarse voice in which I was obliged to read it. Of course, already struggling to overcome the cold that was changing my pitch and timbre, I nearly had to stop reading altogether when we reached the part of in which Lilo reads Stitch a bedtime story. During the story, she explains to her strange friend that “Ohana means family, and family means no one ever gets left behind or forgotten (in Spanish, abandonada).”

            I read the line with tears gathering on the brim of my eyelids, swallowing a sudden ache in my throat, which was not at all related to my cold.  Until that moment, I hadn’t considered the theme of the story I was reading to these girls. I couldn’t help feeling overwhelmed by the cruelty of reading that line to children who had been abandoned by their own families. In that moment, I only wanted to wrap them all in an embrace and tell them that I loved them, that God loved them, and that they were not alone, that they had a different kind of family.

            But, perhaps the irony of the situation was not as readily apparent to them, as they seemed intent on continuing to read for a few pages more. Stitch decides to separate himself from Lilo because his destructiveness is threatening the stability of her “family” (in fact, an imposing social worker named Mr. Bubbles nearly removes Lilo from her sister’s care). Then, the action picks up and Stitch ends up having to help Nani and others save Lilo from other aliens intent on recapturing the fugitive blue creature.  During our reading time, we did not arrive at the final scenes of the story, but I would encourage all my readers to watch this clip (from the end—spoiler alert--in fact, watching the whole movie, though it’s silly at times, wouldn’t be a terrible idea):  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gf0cgfO5bE8&feature=related

This is essentially what I would have liked to say to the girls after reading with them, but I didn’t have the chance. I suppose it will have to be something I show them, instead.