Activities in Chichica

Hey all,
Just a quick update on how things are going. Muchachos Guías have had a couple more activies, a first aid activity and a ropes course. They were both fun and the kids enjoyed them. I made a practice dummy out of my laundry (named Jenita) for the first aid lesson which we used to practice rescue breathing, splinting, etc. They also learned what to do in case of snake bite (everyone here is deadly terrified of this) and transporting victims. The¨"ropes course" was a series of games that I set up, like the Spiderweb (to crawl through without touching the string), the Minefield (a mute partner leads a blind partner through empty bottles without knocking them over), the bridge of death and the bridge of insanity (walking across bridges made of bamboo and rope, respectively), and the crocodile river (where they all had to swing across the "river" and also transport a bucket of water without spilling it, which they didn´t manage to do). All these were designed to practice teamwork and the kids had a blast. They also decided on their own to have a fund raiser while I´m gone this next couple weeks, selling chicheme which is a kind of porridgey drink made from corn. Next up. . . stargazing on Cerro Plata.

There was also a community meeting with my regional leader Andi to discuss whether they want a future PCV who specializes in business, which is their real need here. However, despite my confirmation, reconfirmation, and many flyers which all displayed the date and time of 1:00, the corrigedor (which is the equivalent of the county commisioner) sent out invitations to people in the surrounding communities for 9:00 am. So they all started arriving about 4 hours too early, and the corrigedor comes to me during my English class telling me that everyone is there, so I had to go over and explain to everyone that the person facilitating the meeting wasn´t scheduled to get here until 1:00. They were all understandably angry, some of them had walked 2 hours to come to the meeting. Then the corrigedor said that they were hungry and needed someone to feed them (aka me). Fortunately on the way over I had decided to buy some coffee to pacify everyone, so I said I didn´t have money to feed them but I did have coffee. And it worked, everyone was a little less grumpy and many stayed for coffee and the meeting. The attendance was good even with this snag, if that hadn´t happened a lot of people would have been there.

Anyways, I am now in the process of traveling to regional meeting, I´ll let you know how that goes in a few days. Oh by the way, check back to the last post to see photos of Ngabere week and english classes. I am behind again, I don´t have time to post the first aid photos. Next time. . .