The rollercoaster has begun

So Peace Corps really let´s you know that training and the next two years will be like a roller coaster ride of emotions. Happy times mixed with sad times. I didn´t really think it was any more like a rollercoaster than at home until the past few days. Yesterday, one of my favorite people in our training group left. She is the third person to leave, making our group size 31 (Environment has not lost any trainees, so we´re still 18). I felt really depressed about her leaving since I felt that she and I were going to be really good friends over the next two years. Due to the nature of PC, you really cherish the good friendships that you can make in country. So that was a big blow for me. After hugging her goodbye, Prima, Borracha, and I did our ¨teatro¨ (play) for a very poor community where the houses don´t have running water or bathrooms. They don´t even have proper walls or rooves. I described this community earlier. It is sizeable...there might be about 250 houses or so, although I´m a terrible estimator. Yesterday I learned that there are only a handful of latrines that serve the entire community. As we drove up the steep mountainside up the rocky, unpaved road, we went to the concrete fútbol field (cancha) where we were supposed to do our teatro as part of a program organized by the local Health Center. We waited on the cancha as some kids surrounded us shouting the title of our play. Prima and Borracha had done the play already that morning for the local school as part of their health group project. Another trainee who I will call ¨Presidente,¨ since he is the President of the trainee´s association (it´s supposed to simulate a real Peruvian association), joined us as the narrator. As I fearfully watched kids run down the dry mountain slope of loose dirt that had an almost vertical incline, other kids told us that some Americans are supposed to do something down the road, and people are waiting there. Of course Americans had to be us, so we moved all of our stuff down the road and found a bunch of waiting Peruvian mothers and a billion kids next to two blue tents. As we waited for the Health Center to arrive, we figured we should do something with the kids. Thanks to Mrs. Berkowitz, my elementary school Hebrew teacher, I knew that this would be the perfect time to play ¨Red Light, Green Light, 1, 2, 3.¨ It was so much fun and they were so excited to play. Then a van came and lo and behold, we found out that other Americans were there to provide free medical care and medicine to this community. Ah, that´s why Peruvians are more than on time to an event...so off we went again to the cancha. There we found our contacts from the Health Center setting up a large carnival-like tent, an impossible task with the fierce wind blowing. We were high up in the mountains during the time when the wind is strongest, and it was a really stupid idea to have a tent like that. Anyhow, it provided the kids with a huge toy to play with. They were running in and out of the tent, hanging onto it so it wouldn´t blow away, climbing up the basketball hoop, landing on top of the tent and whatever amused them. Those kids need a playground, and they need it badly. At first, there was hardly anyone there. I mean, how can lectures about nutrition and maintenance of food compete with free medical care?? But slowly, as the Health Center gave their talks, people started trickling in. Two of the Soup Kitchens showed up to take part in our ¨healthy food entreé competition¨(un concurso de comidas). By the time we started our play, we had about 20 mothers there, maybe 40 kids, Borracha´s mom and family friend, and 2 people from the PC Training Center. Despite screwing up a lot of lines and me sniffling the whole time because of the wind and the dust, we had a great time and the kids loved it. The play was about a girl who loves being dirty, eats without washing her hands, gets sick and learns how to wash her hands. I was the mother and acted like an overprotective mother in a telenovela-ish style (aka dramatic). I wore traditional clothing from Ancash, a department in the Sierra. Prima was my daughter, the main character, and she got to pretend to poop and diarrhea 3 times using wet dirt. Borracha was a parasite that ran around the crowd scaring little kids. Presidente was the narrator and Doctor who started the night off by making everyone shake their hips. Afterwards, the Soup Kitchens gave us portions of the food they prepared. I felt so guilty eating their food while all these poor little kids were watching us, probably super hungry. I remembered learning that the teacher in that community had said the kids have a hard time concentrating in class because they come to school hungry and leave school hungrier. Even though my food was delicious, I just wanted to give it to all those kids, but it would´ve been extremely rude. Our consolation was the fact that we provided both soup kitchens with many prizes. In a large market bag they use here, we had stuffed mandarin oranges, onions, garlic, sugar, oil, dish detergent, hand soap and a book with a PC cult following, ¨Dónde No Hay Doctor,¨ (Where There is No Doctor), which is a book that explains how to care for hurt or sick people without being able to get immediate medical care. I hope they thought it was an awesome prize, and that everything will be of use to them. In the future, I will be returning to this community because I have begun visiting the childcare centers here. The kids kept on asking me when I would return, so it was nice to be able to say, ¨in two weeks,¨ rather than ¨seeya, good luck for the rest of your hard life.¨