The amazing race…

It sounded like a good plan. Walking tour and end-of-the-week drinks with our group Friday afternoon. Leave before dinner with Traci and Sharon to walk back to Los Rosales and meet their driver who would take them back to Dubrovnik. We would ask him to drop me off at the train station. Leaving Los Rosales a little after 5, I would have a little time to kill at the train station before my train to Sarajevo, but it seemed worth it to have company walking back and a ride with my luggage. Almost too easy, right?

The hiccup was that Sharon, Traci, and I got back to Los Rosales as planned at 5:00, met our driver waiting on the driveway, but found the door locked. Who would have a key? Why wouldn’t we have talked about that with anyone??

Don’t worry. I’m sure the security guard is here. He can let us in.

Hmmm… No guard? Well, I think I saw someone in the building across the way.

I find the teacher in the next building. Sure, she says, I will find key. You can go. I can call.

Meanwhile, we are thinking. Are there other keys inside? Are there any open windows? Could we fit through the bars on any of the lower windows? Or the back patio sliders? Maybe we should go back and get a key from the group…? We did have 3 of them this week – where would they all be?!

Minutes later the teacher comes out with the phone. Mirna, she says. I take the phone. This is Kira. Yes, I know our group has 3 keys. I see. There are no others. I understand.

Ok. A quick check on the doors and windows. Sliding doors on the back patio are open, but we can’t fit through the bars (gave it a good shot though. My head fit through, but not much more). Upstairs window is open. We stand on the little wall next to it. How the heck would we get up there? We jump in the car. We have to find our group.

It’s only been 30-40 minutes since we left our group in an Ali Baba cave bar in the stari grad, but somehow the number of people in the Old Town seems to have tripled. And why do they all seem to be slow-moving and elderly? Traci knocks against a merchant’s table as we rush towards Ali Baba bar.

Yes, the hostess remembers our group. They left 5 minutes ago. She doesn’t know where they went. To that side, she points vaguely. We sort through all we collectively know about where the group was headed: 1) someplace with covered outdoor seating in a “garden” setting, 2) no view of the river, 3) walking distance, 4) not in old town, we think. Sharon practically knocks over a nun as we rush off.

30 minutes later, feet sore from running on cobblestones, having crossed the bridge at least 8 times, we are trying not to be desperate. Plan A, Traci thinks she’s seen a key we might be able to reach that would unlock the padlocks on the bars at the patio sliders. Plan B, we recruit a Roma child to climb in through the patio bars. (only much later do we discard this plan, realizing that once he had climbed inside, we would have to be able to direct said Roma child to find a key to the front door – problematic, not only due to the language barrier, but because we have no idea where such a key might be.) Plan C, we somehow get Kira into the tree, onto the ledge, and in through the open 2nd floor window.

The window - note tiny ledge!

5:40 finds me kicking my shoes off, looking hopefully at the birch tree and the tin ledge that goes around the building at the level of the 2nd floor. I easily reach up to the branches with a boost from Traci, but I’m wishing I had done more pull-ups. I laugh nervously, giddy with the ridiculousness of the situation. I’m not sure I can do this!

The tree - fit for climbing??

Traci confidently instructs me to stand on her shoulder, and in moments I am climbing from Sharon and Traci’s shoulders into the tree. Sliding over to the ledge, gripping the pink stucco with my fingers, around the corner, and I’ve grasped onto the open window! With a cheer, I easily climb in through the window, saying a silent prayer of thanks that Kelly and I thought it was stuffy this morning and left our window open. I grab my bags and run downstairs.

I feel relieved to be inside, but we still don’t have a key to open the front door. I have no idea where it could be. When I get downstairs Traci and Sharon are at the patio doors, peering through the bars. I’m rifling through papers on the desk, in the kitchen, opening drawers. Traci’s trying to tell me where she remembered seeing the keys to the patio bars. Somewhere on a keychain with a flipflop.

Good lord. There they are! I open the padlocks and the bars swing open. Traci and Sharon rush inside and by 5:55 we are loading our bags into the trunk. The Los Rosales teacher is standing outside with the driver. Mirna will be on tv in 10 minutes, she tells me. Great, I say. Let’s not tell her about all this. Maybe after.

Not much time to chat. We jump in the car, amazed that I’m still going to make my 6:30 train to Sarajevo. I don’t know what our companions think of us or what we did tonight, bug I feel like I’ve been on The Amazing Race and my team came in first tonight, despite our unorthodox approach. It’s amazing what the right team can do.

It seems to be a running theme on this trip. When the right people come together, unbelievable things can happen.

Love to Bosnia

Gina again, signing off…

We're famous! Megan, Sharon, Mirna, and a mom at the press conference

So today we got our 15 minutes of fame in Mostar. A national press conference was held at noon at the school. I had a hard time keeping track but I think there were 2 tv stations and 2 radio stations. Mirna and Sharon shared what we did this week, and two parents spoke about how hard it is to find services for children with autism in Bosnia. A dad said that parents usually keep their children at home because others don’t understand their behaviors. We sat on the side, our loyal speech students translating quietly in our ears. At this point the tears came. I looked across the table at Kelly and and she started to well up as well. Pretty soon we were all trying our best to keep it together. Senka gave me a hug from behind and I felt an immense gratefulness for what I experienced this week.

Amazing speech pathology students from Tuzla

I want to thank Bosnia for this amazing experience. During our short time here we worked with amazing young college students who are dedicated to helping children with disabilities. We worked these people to the bone and they were professional, gracious, and connected to the needs of the families they served. Bosnia is very lucky to have such wonderful young people entering the professional world.

Our team: Mirna, Gina, Senka, and Brooke

I’m also grateful for the families who invited us into their home, fed us, and told us their stories. I never feel the openness and generosity during home visits in the US that I did this week. And thank you to the amazing teachers who teamed with us and helped us to understand cultural beliefs and backgrounds of our families.

And for the children that we served… We can leave knowing that we gave them our very best clinical advice, and parts of our hearts as well.

Do videnja Bosnia. Hvala.

Day 6 -The End is Just the Beginning

This morning, as I ate breakfast, Wendy and I were talking wistfully about baths and big fluffy robes and kushy beds with lofty duvets. I told her that my wish, as I waited for my own family to arrive in Mostar, was that my hotel room would be ready and that I would be able to lounge a bit before they arrived. Wendy, being Wendy, gently asked me if I was aware that the chances of that happening were somewhere between slim and none. Yes yes, I said, but I am putting the wish to the universe because you must first wish something for it to ever come true. She wholeheartedly agreed, and we all went about the business of getting ourselves out of the dorm we’d called home for the last week. We gathered the towels, cleaned out the fridge, looked under beds for any items left behind. Gina and Debbie gave the last of the supplies to Mirna, the SLP from Los Rosales who worked so hard to organize this trip.

Gina, Debbie, Lucinda, Sara, Brooke, and Wendy piled into the the Dubrovnik-bound Party Bus, Dva (2 in Bosnian), and away they went. Mirna was kind enough to call a cab to come for me, and within 5 minutes, I was walking up the steps of Villa Fortuna. I walked in to the lobby, was greeted warmly, and, in typical BiH style was offered coffee and something to eat. Or, she said, my room was ready and I could go up and put my bag down. I immediately launched into a rambling soliloquy about having taken cold showers for a week at Los Rosales while I was here working as part of a group of speech therapists who went into the homes of kids with autism, you know, autismo, and would it be ok if I took a hot shower and then took coffee outside? Looking somewhat overwhelmed and mystified, she told me that this was of course ok.

I don’t know how it is possible that I drove just a couple of miles and suddenly found myself a world away from where I have been for the last week. I was given a little tour of the room and then left by myself. I filled the bath with *steaming* hot water and lowered myself in. There was a slight breeze coming in through the vented skylight, and I watched the clouds give way to lovely blue skies. Having grown so accustomed to being surrounded by others this week and being born with an inability to shut my trap for even 5 stinkin’ minutes, I began to give thanks to the wonderous universe that had made my morning’s wish come true. I gave thanks for each of my teammates, for my Moscow-bound better half, Kira, for Soliday, for Franjo, Sejla, Irina, i Ivana, for the families who welcomed me into their homes, for every person back home who donated and prayed and supported us every step of the way. And then I wondered aloud about what comes next. I heard a response as if it had been translated for me from Bosnian into English: for this question, there is not one answer.

Touché, universe, touché.

I am taking coffee in the courtyard now, clean and rejuvenated. My family will be here soon, and I wonder what I will tell them. My stories will come out over the course of the coming weeks, months, and years, I’m sure. And some experiences will probably never see the light of day, because I don’t know how I could possibly put them into words.

Back in the bath, before I got out of my warm, watery cacoon, I had another conversation with the universe. I figured that, since I had them on the line and was on a roll, I ought to make a couple of new wishes. I wished to stay in touch with my new BiH friends. I wished to stay involved in the treatment of my little N, D, and S however I can. And I wished, most of all, to come back here someday.

-kcb

Pictures Worth a Thousand Words

My partner, Traci, our interpreter and trainee Alex, and I have been burning the candle at both ends this week.  We are overflowing with touching, powerful, funny stories about the human experience.  Since we’re too exhausted for text, we’ve found some highlight pictures:

‘s Mom is explaining the problem: he insists on putting dirty dishes in the drawer when he’s done eating instead of the dishwasher or sink. Our solution: we return the next session with visual strips and teach the family the strategy of reverse chaining.

Ahhhh….State Regulation: Debbie, the team OT, came with us and provided state regulation through a variety of means, such as frozen cantaloupe. That got A in a state of readiness for communication–perfect!

Upon request, A will give his mother a kis

“Where’s the chocolate?” Using the now custom-programmed page, M is inquiring about her favorite treat which is hidden in the yellow egg her sister is holding.

Cheers! Enjoying a dinner out in Old Town. The dinner table then turned into a work station as we powered down to write a social story for J about getting haircuts with a soft call to prayer from the local mosque in the background.

wgg

Last day: spa day

Old Town, Mostar

(Gina here, signing in…)

Silence is not something that you experience when you’re living with 9 other speech-language pathologists, but right now the house is quiet so I think I can write another post.

Today was Brooke’s and my last day with kids – we went to “D”s house. This was our fourth visit with this family, and our lovely occupational therapist Debbie joined us this morning. Debbie explained that D feels touch and smells odors differently than we do, and that she probably needs more sensory input. She gave mom a deep pressure massage on her arms and jaw to show how this can be calming for her daughter. Mom has been through a lot – the Bosnian war with four children, a recent divorce, and endless caregiving for her daughter with special needs. I think Debbie’s massage was probably her favorite part of the week, and very much deserved!

Debbie and D's mom

When we left mom gave me a hug from the side and didn’t let go – we all stood there chatting for awhile. I think it was hard for her to accept that our time with her was ending. Luckily, our Bosnian counterpart, Mirna, is a consultant at D’s school so she can help continue the programs that we introduced. And hopefully mom has come away with some good ideas on how to help D become more independent.

I know that I have learned more in this week than I do in an entire year working in the schools – it was intense, and Brooke and I had a few moments where we looked at each other and said “Now what?!” But hopefully these families have come away from the experience feeling that they have learned something as well, and that we’ve made a positive impact in their lives. It certainly has been worth every minute.

Day . . . ? – Luscious, Ripe, Peaches are Good for the Soul

I’ve lost track of the days. Um, yes, tonight is Wednesday night. So this means that we’ve been here for 4 days, yes? Yes. I think this is right. And look, it appears that my writing style is mimicing my verbal output – a deevolution into broken, Bosian-Croation-mixed-up-word-order-howyousay?-uh-Engleski.

Kira and I have been working our everloving arses off. We all have. But since I’m writing this, I’m going to tell you about me. Allllllll me. And Kira, who at this point is part of me, and I of her. But first, a little bit of background. Those of you who have been following our journey over the last year have been privy to some of our challenges related to organizing this thing. We had ideas about scheduling, but, in the end, we didn’t know our schedules until Sunday afternoon. The different stakeholders made schedules for their students and each of them had different visions for how the week would look. Some teams had 3 visits a day for 3 days, while others, like Kira and I, have the same number of visits, but stretched over 5 days. Last night, Kira and I felt low. Not “omgtakemehomemama”-low, but “we’re going to work all week and everyone else is going shopping with Alma”-low. Today was to be our hardest, longest day and we were looking hours of prep work straight in it’s shifty, taunting eyes. We cried a little, and our team rallied around us, volunteering to help with anything we need. Our very own picture printing, laminating, velcroing army. Filled anew with the love for these women, Kira and I went to our room to write a social story for one of our kiddos. We were asleep by midnight(ish) and up by 6:30.

Franjo, our wonderful, loyal, doting, and constant companion, arrived at 7:30 with his typical, “Ha-lo! Are yuu ready for this day?” He gave quick road sign tutorial to Wendy, and then we were off to the races. We picked up Sejla, and met Irina in the parking lot of yet another concerte apartment building. We were to see S., who, on paper, has Cerebral Palsy (CP). The sweet mother greeted us and gave us our first introduction to Cockta (say it “coke-ta”), the communist-era’s answer to Coke. Super tasty stuff, for the record. With Turkish coffee, Cockta, tiramisu, and candy in front of us (buzzzzzzzzz), we set about getting a case history. It felt like we were putting together a puzzle without the benefit of the box to look at — a random tidbit here, a corner there — and slowly, even though we thought we were putting together a CP puzzle, it became clear that no, we were in fact putting together a very, very different puzzle. We hadn’t yet seen him, though, but for a brief few minutes at the Center on Monday. He cried from the next room and we told her it was ok if she brought him out. Suddenly, the last piece, the very center piece, dropped into the puzzle with a deafening thud. We left the house a hour later and said, “We don’t know much about much, but we do know that most certainly is NOT CP.” Oh, to be at home, with CDRC or Providence or Emmanuel at our disposal for a referral for a chromosomal analysis and developmental work-up and barium swallow. Not a bad start to the day, but an unexpected one, to be sure.

Because we are morphing, changing, evolving, melding ever-so-slightly with our surroundings, we took a coffee with our team before our next visit and quite enjoyed the the break and the lack of urgency about the visit we had coming up in an hour. Just before we left the Koffe Bar Stefana, we gave our team a crash course in PECS, assigned everyone a role, and gave the game plan. This was going to be a tough sell for this family, and the visit started off rather, how you say, chilly. Chilly in a 5th floor walk-up with no AC on a 90 degree day might be hard to imagine, but the family had tried pictures and didn’t like them. Because we are either stubborn or stupid (or, more likely, both), we didn’t deviate from our plan. We jumped off the bridge and grabbed their hands on our way over the edge. I swear, this kid had used the Google to find a YouTube video on what PECS training might look like. In all of our combined years of practice, neither Kira or I had ever seen a student march through the steps of learning requesting like D. The parents, however, remained unimpressed. We have done this, they said again, clearly starting to believe that we ourselves might be a bit slow. Kira and I exchanged a look, a nod, and went for it. We put out two pictures. Would he attend to the pictures? Would he discriminate between the uninteresting toothbrush and the beloved Binky? Yes, he would. He would do it first with prompts, then independently. He would try his old way of requesting the Binky (kissing an adult’s hand) and then become frustrated when it didn’t work. And then . . . he would return to the picture and thrust it into his beaming father’s hand. The family starting pulling out items he might request and having us take pictures so they would have them for him to use. The chill was gone, replaced by warmth and wonder. Stupid and stubborn had paid off.

Franjo’s gastronomic tour of Mostar continued with another lunch to die for. I really can’t get into this now, but if you ever have the pleasure of spending any time with Franjo, you must simply eat everything he tells you to eat. This is the path to true happiness and enlightenment.

The afternoon was a final push to prep materials for our third and final visit with N.’s family. N. is the very epitome of the phrase “bull in a china shop,” and so, upon Debbie’s recommendation, we presented a sock filled with pinto beans (literally) to help him with sensory input. I think he too watched YouTube for how to react to the intervention. Kira and I were giddy with the instant calm that came over him as we put it on his neck. It is for you to keep, we told the mom, and she thanked us profusely. But wait, there’s more! we said. We had spent the majority of our first 2 visits talking about safety concerns and how he struggles to follow the rules. It was him we were up writing a social story for, and after we presented it to mom and dad, N. snuggled up in Irina’s lap to read it with great interest. This too, we made for you to keep. Yes? the mom said, looking at us with the most amazing expression of disbelief and joy. We then introduced a keychain with their top 5 rules for him, to pair with the social story. How did you do this? she asked, flipping through it. She handed it back to us and we said, no, we made it for you to keep, and here is a bag of other options for you to try for other situations. No! she said, her expression now approaching the surprise make-over recipients on Oprah. I think you can guess how the whole family reacted when we gave them a spinning whirley-gig to keep. She told us that we were not what she expected . . . Kira and I hung on Shejla’s every interpreted word . . . she thought we would come in and tell her what she had done wrong with him . . . we instead were so warm and open and made her feel hopeful for him. This family has, every day, put out a beautiful spread of food and drinks (grappa yesterday ) and, as we say in the biz, this mom is “on it.” She asks good questions, independently does research, follows through, and believes in her child. N. is high-functioning, a boy who, in the States, could quite easily be mainstreamed and independent within months of entering public school. He is the boy who has made me weep on more than one occasion, because here, they kicked him out of kindergarten. What we gave seemed like so little, but I was so thrilled to have given her a little bit back, and to change her opinion of SLPs, pediatric professionals, and Americans.

Today was a good, good day. I don’t remember feeling like this about being a speech-language pathologist since the first days of grad school. There cannot be any high, chemical or otherwise, that will top teaching a child a skill that will help them communicate with the world around them. No can be in this way. No can. In the States, we so often see children who have had oodles of therapy, parents who have all the information they’ve ever wished for, and what we offer is solid and dobro, but the system can bog you down. Tonight, I am thinking of the peaches Lucinda bought at a roadside stand yesterday. These weren’t supermarket peaches, but were instead of the blemished, imperfect heirloom sort. Oh! But they tasted so very lovely in my sour cream and cereal this morning, so perfectly ripe and of the season. These children and families are like those peaches. They are perhaps blemished, imperfect in the eyes of many. But they are ripe. And ready. Even that which might to others look unacceptable, undesirable, and worthy of nothing more than the compost heap, can, with the right care, be sweet beyond your wildest dreams.

-kcb

(btw, I have great photos to go with this post, but our internet is, how you say, not with big lucky right now. hopefully tomorrow i will be able to share. thanks for your patience.)

Dario’s dragon

This dragon is a symbol of all I love about my job right now. After an exciting and exhausting and emotional day, I’m lying in bed. It’s really time to sleep – but all I can think about is this little dragon and wonder whether 4-year old Dario will be intrigued enough with it to actually ask for it tomorrow. He’s the child who brought me to high-fiving, up off the couch cheering this afternoon when he handed his dad a picture of his binky as a request. I was as proud of him as I was of his parents, for letting him get frustrated enough to try his new system.

So the dragon stands for Dario and my excitement to go see him again tomorrow, but because I just had to go steal it out of a someone else’s therapy bag, it’s also a symbol of my colleagues’ bravery and creativity and resourcefulness this week. Everyone is working hard to make a difference for these kids. Whether I’m thinking about the group of exceptional ladies I came here with from Portland, or my onsite team of superstar social worker/ chef extraordinaire Franjo, quick and curious university student Sejla, local sponge and fashion queen SLP Irina, and therapy savior and invaluable emotional support Kelly – I’ve rarely had the opportunity to work with a team that made me more proud of my field.

Gotta get to sleep so I can get up and be an SLP tomorrow. I can’t wait!