This picture has nothing to do with anything. Just thought some of you might like to see me. This is Luki, the host family dog, and me in my kitchen.
And now for the blog...

Mom used to take us to this park in St. Paul called ¨Treasure Island.¨ We would chase each other around, performing daring stunts on the high, wooden playground in order to escape capture, and she would read a book, glancing up regularly to make sure we weren´t doing anything too dangerous.

She trusted us out there. We were all well-balanced, athletic kids, and we could handle the stunts we were pulling, so she modified her style of parenting, letting us do things normal parents would never allow -- disregarding classic chapters in the book How to Raise Your Child the ¨Right¨ Way.

Children in Bolivia play with knives. Not like weapons. My host uncle during training gave his 5-year-old son a large knife and a stick of cane sugar, and the kid went at it -- not very gracefully or with coordination. I got worried, so I took over as if I, as an ¨adult,¨ could do better. I nearly sliced myself four times.

Children in Bolivia eat dirt. They do. I´ve seen it. I used to sample the soil a couple times while making mud pies and soups, and I think I turned out all the healthier for it. Much like I think I have avoided being hit by Bolivian cars numerous times by using my playground acrobatics. Everythign is so sterile in the US. It´s like we´re living in fear of nature. I´m not saying we shouldn´t cover our mouths when we cough, wash our hands before we eat, or leave chemicals on the bottom shelf for our children to chug, but I don´t think a spoonful of dirt every once in a while will kill us.

Ana and Sofía are constantly making mud meals. They sift through the soil and only use the finest dirt for their ice cream creations. I tell them their rice looks delicious, slurp the air above their soup, and fondly reminisce about my younger years.

¨One Year Meds¨ is coming up in two weeks. Peace Corps will reunite my group for the first time in nine months in Cochabamba, and we will be poked and prodded and searched for amoebas and giardia. I´m pretty sure I´ve been living with at least giardia, if not a parasite, for quite a while now. We´ve learned each other´s tricks and, aside from a few flare-ups, we now live in harmony. If the Peace Corps doctors find my friend, I´m going to try to ¨just say no¨ to the drugs that will kill it. I mean, it´ll just come back, and then we´ll either have to get used to each other again or I´ll have to keep attacking it and ridding myself of it over and over, suffering all the while. It´s in everyone´s best interest that I be allowed to keep it.

Despite my recent rant about eating dirt, I do believe it is in Bolivian children´s best interest to learn to wash their hands regularly. Remember the wise and popular saying, ¨Don´t sh*# where you eat.¨ Now change that to, ¨Don´t eat where the unfenced and untethered family pig sh*#s.¨ If Bolivian children´s mud pie ingredients didn´t have to share cupboard space with the pig´s toilet, I might encourage them to have a spoonful of dirt too. But as it is, I embarked on another handwashing campign on Thursday and Friday with the señoras of the PAN centers.

In the ¨Primer Taller de Capacitación a Educadoras, Manipuladoras y Autoridades de la Comunidad¨ Carlos, Lourdes, Ana and I embarked on a mission to train all the PAN techers and cooks in one fell swoop. We brought in a doctor, a nutritionist, and an expert on early childhood development. We reviewed the procedures for filling out boring but necessary paperwork. We taught them to use the weights and heights of their children to measure their overall health and growth progress. We played educational games. We played not-so-educational games. We put them up in the hostel in Valle (cleverly named ¨Valle D´Vino.¨ Get it?). We fed them and tried to bond them together into a community of señoras united toward the same noble purpose of nurturing and educating the under-6-year-olds in our care. We spread messages of love, cleanliness, nutrition, education, and properly-completed paperwork to the far reaches of the valley.

Were the messages received and processed? Will PAN children wash their hands before eating nutritious meals? Will I no longer have to toil for hours over senseless scribbles on forms that are missing key information? Time will tell. Until then, I will keep thanking Mom for my agility in dodging pedestrian-unfriendly Tarijan traffic, and I will thank goodness Ana and Sofía don´t share the yard with a pig.