Anyways, so I found myself working in the library alone. At times this can be overwhelming because there are anywhere from 10-25 children that come on any given day but usually it’s pretty fun.
So one day last week I opened the library and let in a few of the kids that were waiting outside. I hadn’t been feeling well so I brought an orange to serve as my lunch. Call me evil but I did not want to share this orange (contrary to Peruvian custom) so I made sure I ate it as discreetly as possible. However, apparently it smelled pretty strongly and at least one kid, Mayte Juliana, noticed.
“Lindsey, gift me a piece”
Now I gift things to these children ALL of the time, but at this minute, I really didn’t want to hand out my entire orange (because that is what would happen, because after giving away one piece, another child would ask for a piece, and then another, until all of my orange was gone and I would be left with an empty tummy.
“No Mayte Juliana, sorry”
“Whyyyyy?”
“ Because I don’t want to.”
“Well, Lindsey, you really need to learn how to share.”
A five year old told me I needed to learn how to share. I couldn’t keep a straight face and burst out laughing in Mayte’s face and handed a piece over.
Then it started… “Lindsey, gift me a piece, Lindsey I want one!” until I had only one piece left. I hid the piece in my lap until Mariecxi came over and knew what was up when she said my “pants smelled good- kind of like an orange.”
I gave up after that and handed over my last piece while giving Mayte a death stare that said “I told you so.”
That being said, now I always shovel my afternoon snack into my mouth BEFORE heading to the library.
I was faced with another unexpected, yet awesome afternoon when I walked over one day last week and saw six children outside yielding machetes and shovels. They informed me that they were creating a garden because the library needed landscaping. As the afternoon wore on, more and more kids came over, come with plants and others just wanting to play in the dirt. A crew formed that walked around the houses nearby and asked for plant cuttings from their gardens/yards to plant in the library. I finally got to use the compost I had been making in my host family’s backyard for the past two months and by the end of the say, we had planted 17 trees, plants, and flowers. Unfortunately, I don’t have a green thumb and the one kid that knew what he was doing got called home to eat dinner so a few days later, a third of the plants had died (which was to be expected since the majority of cuttings were just branches that had been hacked off a bush and then stuck in a pile of dirt) but as of today, half are still alive and hopefully rooted! It was very refreshing to see kids take an interest in their environment (because generally speaking, my town (and perhaps Peru in general) is not known for that) without any prodding on my part.
On a similar note, before Kerri left, she encouraged the kids to begin collecting used plastic bottles, old tin cans and used paper and bringing it to the library so that we could sell it and make money (while recycling it at the same time). We finally had accumulated a decent amount of each material- 5 kilos of plastic, 1 ½ kilos of tin cans and a bunch of paper. The kids wanted to sell it to make money to buy more books. We managed to sell it all to guy that comes by every morning on his mototaxi to buy used plastic and tin and the like. While we did get jipped a little bit, we made 5 soles. While it may come out to around $ 2.25, it’s still better than nothing and we can buy a new book with it. Yay!
So there you have it, my little successes that make life here interesting and make the days pass by way too quickly.
No comments:
Post a Comment