For the next three months I will be starting my own preschool class for 13 1-3 year old kids who are currently living with their mothers in prison. In Peru, if you are a suspect for a crime you are put in jail while they are investigating and conducting your trail. Then if you are found guilty, the time that you have already spend in jail counts towards you sentence. It is also allowed for kids under the age of 4 to live with their mothers in jail.
The inmates must pay for their rent in the jail; and if they do not pay, time is added to their sentence. The way that inmates make their money is the male prisoners weave Mantas (Peruvian blankets) while the women embellish them with embroidery, then they are sold and the inmates use the money they make to pay their rent. Most of the inmates are in prison for drug trafficking (as there are huge Coca fields on the other side of the mountains from here that supply the European market.) I have been told that most of the women in jail are not able to feed their families, so they knowingly take the risk of trafficking drugs once to be able to feed their families. The drug traffickers usually carry around 10 kilos of Cocaine on their backs and walk to the drop off point. The drug lords then call the authorities to alert them that someone will be trafficking drugs. When the police are busy with the people who have 10 kilos, a larger trafficker drives through undetected. It is a sad situation, that these women see drug trafficking as the only way to feed their families, when they are all so talented in making the typical handicrafts of the region.
The 13 kids that are living with their moms in prison, have never had any formal education, or any structured setting at that. The kids usually just run around the courtyard, while their mothers are working on their mantas or other task for the day.
For the next three months I will be gladly getting my prison tats(see picture to right) 4 days a week, in lieu of a full body search to enter the prison. I will collect the kids from the women's section of the prison and take them to another area called La Cuna. La Cuna is a very old concrete 3 room area that has been dedicated to the children of the prison. However, no one has used the Cuna in quite a while. The most recent poster that I saw in the room was 2006. The floor is half tiled and half sub-flooring showing. There are 3 or 4 bookcases that line one wall but not a book in sight. We have a slide with a broken step (it has already chalked up a bloody nose from one of the kids trying to get to the top to slide down) and a few chairs. I walk in with the kids and nothing that I have set up the day before remains, so the kids help mop up the water that is left on the floor, then we set up our chairs in a circle and start our morning.
I am still not sure what I will be doing with these kids. I planned a whole day on my first day then took one look at them staring at me blankly and threw all my lesson plans out the window. I just knew that we would be no where near learning the names of our basic body parts well enough to fill out a poster I had made and play Simon says as well as attempt Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes in Spanish.
Let the games begin... I am sure I will have plenty of funny stories that will come up in the next few months with these kids.
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