Saturday, March 27, 2010

Jajecepilla va´era!

Jajecepilla va´era! Or, in English, I have to brush my teeth! This was the basis of the song that two other volunteers and I were singing with elementary aged-kids in Guarani this week. We taught some kids who had never before used (or probably seen for most of them) toothbrushes. But I am getting a little ahead of myself. Allow me to properly set up the week.

This past week was practicum week, which meant that I went with two other trainees to visit a volunteer at their site. We were tapped to go to one of the most rural sites. After about 2 hours of driving on Monday morning from Guarambare we met up with a dirt road that we followed for several miles before reaching our community, a small town of about 750 people. It has two elementary schools, one which is more near the ´center´of the town and another which is way out in the middle of nowhere. We would be working at both, giving dental health talks to all of the students from both schools, and helping to set up the library which the volunteer had started. I would be staying with a family whose parents speak Guarani, while I speak very little Guarani. This indeed led to hours of entertainment at the dinner
table, where I had to resort again to smiling and nodding, something I
haven´t done since I was first studying abroad in a Latin American
country in Buenos Aires long ago. I used all of the words I knew, and
even found out the exact quantities of their animals: 75 chickens, 10
pigs, 12 cows and ox´s, and 2 dogs. Yes it was fun for everyone.

Anyhow, after about 9 hours of rain Monday night and Tuesday morning,
school was canceled for Tuesday. Yes thats right we have snow days in
Chicago they have rain days in Paraguay. At first I thought it was
just a cop-out not too have school, but when I walked to the school to
work on the library with the kids gone, I found out why. In order to
arrive I had to wade through a recent formed river. I attempted to
long jump the river in parts, but this only ended up in my getting my
shoes wet. I then resolved to just roll up my khakis and take off my
shoes to wade through huck fin style.

The rest of the week we gave about 12 different talks on dental health
and helped with the library. Thursday was the highlight, when we
showed the kids at the super isolated school (no running water in this
one) how to brush their teeth and they were all holding the
toothbrushes like flutes or cigars or something, definitely not like
toothbrushes though. The first class was drooling a lot once we got
about 1 minute in to the brushing, and we realized it was because we
forgot to tell them that they should spit out the excess paste.
Overall this was one of the coolest things I think I´ve done so far,
pictures hopefully will follow sometime.

A funny story from Thursday morning, as I went to put on my shoes at
630 in the morning before heading to school, a huge toad jumped out of
one of them. I screamed like a little girl and nearly had a heart
attack, which caused my host mom to rush into my room speaking rapid
fire Guarani. I said the broken Guarani equivalent of`` I have frog
in shoe´´ and she laughed harder than I think I have heard anyone
laugh since I´ve been here.

So life is alright here right now, we find out about our sites in
about a week and a half. Next week is holy week, which means a little
bit of vacation and seeing out they celebrate in our little town.
Hope everyone is good,

Mick

2 comments:

  1. hahaha I really liked the image of a frog jumping out of your shoe, superb post. when do you teach the kids how to floss? I could use some reminders about that as well haha.

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  2. Thanks for the comment, linds. Yea...flossing is a long shot here. I busted out some floss today actually, in front of my host mom and she thought I was going to play some kind of game. First brushing, then maybe flossing...one step at a time...

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