The Hokey Pokey

The best part of not having a plan is that I can create it on the fly. I had thought about staying in Guatemala for a month so that I could spend a month volunteering in Nicaragua before heading to the Olympics, but alas, I really like living in Xela. This city is walkable, I love my family here, I´m learning Spanish, and there are tons of opportunities to volunteer. I´m not exactly sure how much longer I will stay, but definitely another couple weeks. I´m down to 7 lives, and so that may determine my length of stay as well.

At work, I´m visiting the daycare centers, guarderias, in the area with the doctors to weigh the children and help them get checked out. Children aged 2 months to 7 years stay in these centers while the parents work until the children are old enough to attend school. We weighed the children in this hanging machine that people use to weigh meat. The children, for the most part, had fun hanging in it while we weighed them. Then, I sent them over to Christina to figure out their height. After that, each one saw the 3 local med students who evaluated them for various ailments. One girl weighed significantly under the standard weight for her height. She is severely malnourished and is lacking a lot of amino acids. She will be given special attention to ensure that her weight gets up to normal. And after the doctors found over half the children with lice, I will need to put my hair up for tomorrow´s day care center.

While the doctors checked the kids, I played with the rest. We colored together although their attention spans only last so long. After awhile, I had to make up games to keep them entertained. We played a game of on the river and on the earth where the kids had to jump back and forth on an imaginary line depending on what words I yelled out. Then I attempted the hokey pokey. The kids thoroughly enjoyed the game although, I couldn´t figure out how to say in Spanish, "you shake it all about" so I resorted to just the physical demonstration while humming the words. The hokey pokey works universally. Then, I listened to them recant songs in Spanish on how to brush their teeth and wash their hands. They are so precious. I took a photo with them although, in the picture, one child was quite upset to have to join everyone, but the others loved the photo op.

By the way, I read in the newspaper how all the kids from the recent kidnappings reported earlier have been returned either free of charge or the family had to pay much less than the requested amounts. However, Helga´s friends remain missing with no new information.