It was an exciting week with the Not Forgotten group from Alabama, the boys each received a new pair of tennis shoes and we went into Iquitos to see one of the first 2010 World Cup games, France-Uruguay. Here are some photos from the week. More can be found at Flickr.
This Friday my next work team arrives in Iquitos/Puerto Alegria. I am particularly excited for this group since they friends and family from my home church in Dearborn. While many are “Peru veterans,” this will be their first time in the jungle at Puerto Alegria and I’m looking forward to showing them the place I have been working.
Somebody from the last work team brought a deck of SET cards with him last week and left it with me to play with the boys.
We have SET at my house, but out of the three in my family, I am by far the least qualified to be teaching how to play the game. My brother and mother far supercede me in SET abilities. When the boys asked me how I learned how to play SET, I told them that I learned from my brother, an expert.
In SET, there are about 50 cards, each with various symbols, (beans, ovals, diamonds) colors (red, green, purple), shading (solid, empty, striped), and number (one, two, three). With the 12 cards placed on the table, you have to find a set – they either need to have all similar characteristics or all different characteristics. The magic rule is “if two are _____, and one is _____, it is not a SET” (for example, if two are red and one is green, it is not a SET).
Despite my inexperience, I taught two of the older boys, Romario and Ananias, how to play the game. Once those two learned, the three of us effectively trained a small army of SET players, who have in turn, tutored another group of players. Every day, they ask if we can play the game. Age is no advantage in this fast paced game. Junior, one of the second group that learned how to play, told me that we had to practice so he could beat my brother Randy when he comes next week. Junior, who is 10 years old, said he had to beat the expert!
Once those two learned, the three of us effectively trained a small army of SET players, who have in turn, tutored another group of players.
SET is one of those games I do not mind letting them play all day, or mind when they ask me to get it out for them. Like Rummikub or Mastermind, SET takes a lot of analytical thinking which is always a good skill to develop.
I am anxious to see if any of the boys can beat my brother, Randy. There are a few that have become really fast and could contend for the title expert!
Since last August, there have been a few additions to the Casa Girasoles Puerto Alegria home.
With its unique location, Puerto Alegria is the most multicultural home that Scripture Union operates. While the majority of the boys here are from Iquitos, Belén and the surrounding areas, a handful are from farther away.
A few years ago, three brothers from Brazil came to Iquitos with their mother. Their father had traveled by boat for 5 days from their small town in Brazil in search of work in the “big city.” After months of not hearing from her man, the mother came with her three boys to Iquitos to see what he was up to. Upon their arrival, she found him living with another woman, supporting her and not caring about the family he left in Brazil. The mother had nothing to do but find her own work in Iquitos. What she found did not pay much and she couldn’t take care of her three boys. Along the way she came across Gene, who, at the time, was the house parent of Puerto Alegria, and asked him to take care of her three boys until she was able to herself. They came to live in Puerto Alegria with the other abandoned boys, not speaking very much Spanish.
More recently, about 3 months ago, a group of 7 boys from the region of Caballococha, at the border between Peru and Brazil, have come to live in Puerto Alegria. From Caballococha, it is 3 days by boat, traveling all day and all night.
These 7 boys make up just a small part of the multiculturalism of Puerto Alegria. When they arrived, they did not speak Spanish very well (and some still do not). Their first language is Tikuna, one of the most difficult languages in the world.
Little by little, I have been learning a few phrases and important words from both Dairo (12) and his younger brother, Waldair (10). I don’t know how the words and phrases are spelled, just a pronunciation guide (of mixed Spanish and English pronunciations) for how to say it.
“Ta-ku ni a cue-ga.” What is your name?
“Joe-aa ganee Kate” My name is Kate
Every once in a while, I will catch a few of the 7 who speak Tikuna talking together, of course in Tikuna. It’s very interesting to watch them since they are so animated with their conversations. It is not just because they are happy, or excited about something, it is because they are speaking a language they understand – they do not have to think about it.
I understand how they feel. I am by far no expert in Spanish. Yes, I studied it in college and I have lived abroad for an extended period, but I am still lacking in my ability to recreate my “English-speaking personality” into Spanish. Jokes just do not make sense, and some things just don’t translate despite how hard I try or how many times I explain it. I lose a bit of my personality and gain something different in Spanish.
After a few days of lessons with Dairo, I asked him to sing a song for me that he learned at home. He was a little hesitant at first, and shy about singing while I recorded, but he finally overcame all of that. Here he is singing Demos Gracias al Señor in Tikuna.
Life is always different when you live with 40+ boys and 10 support staff.
Things take longer to do, require a little more planning, and not to mention – it is always an adventure, there is always something going on, somebody to talk to, somebody to have fun with.
A large group setting works both ways. In almost every way it is a lot of fun, like I said, there is always something going on. But, when it comes to illnesses, it is not pleasant.
A few days before the group arrived, I noticed a few of the boys were rubbing their eyes. The next day, the same three boys came to breakfast with blood red eyes, like they had been crying all night. Unfortunately for the rest of us, this was not the case – they had contracted pink eye, conjuntivitis.
It was just 2 days before the small group of 3 infected boys turned into almost every boy in the house, and it did not stop there. A day later, I got it in my right eye, along with many others from the Not Forgotten team. For the next few days, we were constantly putting drops in our eyes, walking around with blurred vision and just looking like a complete mess.
Thankfully, by the time the team left this morning, almost everybody has gotten over the infection.
Mery, the house mother, was talking to me yesterday with her little 2 year old son, Timoteo, and she mentioned that she thinks he might have varicela (chicken pox). It is not looking like he has it, but thank God I already did!
The 2010 World Cup began today and it has taken Peru by storm. Despite Peru will not be represented in this year’s competition, fútbol is fútbol regardless of who is playing (just as long as it isn’t your team’s arch-rival; Alianza and U in Lima, Real Madrid and Barça in Spain, the list goes on).
During the time I spent in Lima, I saw countdown clocks til the first game, advertisements every commercial break, posters all over the city, and entire sections of department stores like Saga Falabella converted to World Cup fever. Even Wong, one of the grocery stores has promotional posters and life-size cutouts of soccer players hanging from the ceiling.
So, despite being away from the city and outside the reach of traditional electricity from Iquitos, I doubt I’ll miss very many of the games.
Case in point, we went into Iquitos today with all 40 boys to see one of the first games – Uruguay vs. France. Unfortunately it was not a very spectacular game, neither team scored a goal, but it was fun to go to a restaurant and watch the game, and just to be away from the house for a bit.
Hopefully we will be able to watch a few more games over the next month!
Here’s a commercial that I see almost every time I walk past a television.
