Children do the darndest things

It has been an eventful week. We have completed 37 surveys so far, and I am happy with our pace. My role during surveying has become to play with the children so they are not terrified when I try to weigh and measure them (besides answering any questions that come up). There was one little boy (a tiny 3 year old) who thought it was hysterically funny to try to tickle my feet. But of course, when I looked at him funny or tried to tickle him, he would scream and run away. This went on for about ten minutes until he somehow stumbled when he was running from my hand reaching out to him and ended up with powdered milk all over him. Which we all thought was pretty funny. After one of my translators (Shyanne), was finished with her part of the survey, he tried to rub the tattoo off of her arm, and when it didn’t work he just rubbed harder. He couldn’t figure out why it wouldn’t come off. When it came time to measure him, we wandered across the street to find a straight post to measure him against. When I walked back to where I had left my scale, there were several women crowded around it weighing themselves, giggling, and saying, “you are so fat!” “muy sexy!”. This, of course, made us all laugh hysterically.

Our survey team has an addition, the daughter of community health educator that is working with us. She is probably five or six, and she sticks by my side, always holding my hand, leaning on me or helping me get out my measuring tools. She tries to carry the bag with the scale, but it is quite heavy. I think her presence has made the children generally less scared of me measuring them. Sometimes they think I am going to give them a shot!

I may also be surveying another village that is closer to the project HOPE base, and much poorer than Audilio Blanco. It may be somewhere that Project HOPE starts working. So I will go and see what the situation is and make a map of the area.