Kids Say the Darndest Things

I was walking to the internet cafe this evening, writing my latest blog entry in my head, when I stopped dead in my tracks. I saw something so crazy, I couldn´t believe my eyes. I stared in disbelief and finally when I came out of shock, I went to examine it to see if it was real. In a clothing store, right next to the internet cafe I always go to, was a UC Davis Aggie Jam tee shirt in the display window! A bright golden yellow, UC Davis tee shirt, in my little town, in Peru! And they were selling it! It was circa 2003. I remember everyone that went to the Aggie Jam got one for free, they were all over campus. I don´t have any money on me right now, but I am totally buying that shirt.

Okay, now back to what I was going to write about before my whole world was turnd upside down by a tee shirt.

I was never formally trained to work with kids. While I do feel I have some what or a nack for managing rugrats, there are still times I feel I have no freaking idea what I´m doing. I know kids ask a lot of questions, and I know sometimes they are questions that they wouldn´t understand the answers to even if I told them. But the cultural differences and the fact that they are under the law of nuns, there are some questions I don´t know how to tackle. And then there are questions so out of left field, I´m amazed they even have heard of these things, and these are the questions that always embarras me. Case and point, one of the little girls in the orphanage asked me today if I had pubic hair. That might not have been such a big deal, but then she asked me if I had a lot or a little. It´s not every day a 7 year old makes you blush.

That wasn´t the only "fun" question" I was asked today. I was talking to kids at my table during lunch about my job at the other home I work at. One of the little boys asked me if the girls who had babies were married. I said no and he asked me if they were going to hell for that. I was at a loss. How do you explain to a little boy, sexual abuse and the horrible repercussions it has on young women. I finally said to him, it wasn´t their fault they had babies, God knows that and he´s not mad at them.

It´s pretty unusal to get so many loaded questions in one day, but that´s why I´m writing about it. It was a special day. I´ve been taking the kids to the dentist in Lima in the evenings. Tonight I took two little boys. Of course, everwhere I go I get cat called. Even when I am holding hands with little kids. Today one of the little boys asked me "how come all the men make kissing noises at you when you walk by them?" That might now seem like it´s that tricky a question to tackle, but out of the three, it was the hardest one in the end to deal with. I ended up saying nothing more than the men where uneducated and it offended me.

Today I got mad. It´s a rare thing for me to get mad. Usually I never get more than frustrated or irritated. It usually takes something significant to make me fume with intensity. I have to start this story with an expanation of the public transportation in Peru. It´s not public, they are privatized busses. For this, there is no regulation or fixed price. The cobrador is the doorman who opens the door and comes around the bus to collect the money. Depending on where you are going and what day of the week it is, the fare can change. Because there is no set price that foreigners know how to pay, the cobradores always try to over charge them. Seeing as I am white and taller than every cobrador I have ever met, they always try to rip me off too. And I ride the micro busses everyday, so getting ripped of is a daily battle for me.

It is an issue of extreme irritation to me. Since I know what the fare is everywhere I go, I am able to fight for the appropraite amount of change I should get back. This gets very tiring and always puts me in a bad mood. It´s silly cause in reality, I am only fighting for about 15 american cents, and it´s not that big a deal. But it is the principle of the thing. Usually once I demonstrate I know what the fare is and demand my change, I get little resistece and they hand the change right over. Sometimes I even get a look of respect from the cobradors. But sometimes I have to put up a real fight. In the end, I always get the appropriate change. Today on the micro bus, I was paying for myself and the two little boys I was with, and the cobrador tried to rip me off big time. And when I told him to give me my change back he refused. He claimed the fare was always that much and we started to argue back and forth. I could see the crowd on the bus was agreeing with me and that I was kind of scaring the kids. He would not give me my money back and there was really nothing I could do about it. But he wasn´t ripping me off, it wasn´t my money. The orphanage pays when I take the kids somwhere. I think this is what made me so irate. I wanted to scream at him "you are stealing from an orphanage, what kind of man are you?". But I didn´t cause that would have made the kids feel horrible. Instead I sat an brewed in my anger. As I was getting of the bus I said it to him when the kids couldn´t here. He looked shocked, and I felt good. After only a few minuets I didn´t feel so upset.

And now that I saw the UC Davis tee shirt, I am feeling great. I am interperating this sign of good things to come. Things have been great for me lately, but I´m hoping with omen, things are only going to go up.