I have No Idea what Keeps them Coming Back.

With a title like that, this post could easily be about my roommates. Roommates? But you thought I lived alone now? Oh, I do. Alone with a shit-ton of ants. I dont know what keeps them coming back, but a fellow volunteer believes that the ants in the bathroom are attracted to some kind of mold that forms on the bottom of sinks. Dont judge, I am sure you have it on your sink, too! My solution (in case you also have ants and are too cheap to buy ant-killer, too embarrased to tell your landlord that you are afraid of a bunch of ants, and sick of your home smelling like nail-polish remover from spraying ants dead all the time) is tape. Heavy duty Scotch tape. I used it to seal up the space between where my faucet connects to the wall, because (after much time spent studying their routes and behaviors) I determined that that is where the ants are coming from. This was only after I flooded a million of them out of the sink and then doused them with nail polish remover. But the solution worked. The ants always come in the morning, so the first morning I ran downstairs like there were presents waiting for me under a Chirstmas tree and went to see if there were any ants. And there were! There were tons of ants crawling all around the inside of my Scotch tape trap, wondering in their ant-like-way why they could not get out. Haha! I am bigger and stronger and will always win! They havent come back in three days now...

Anyhow, I could write a whole post about the ants that I kill on a daily basis (not ALL the ants come from that opening, so there are still many an ant in my home. Especially if I leave food in the sink over night...) but I wont. Mostly just for your own benefit, because I am sure that reading about ants in my home is not what you want to learn about my wild, exotic, Peace Corps adventures.

Instead, I write to you today about the Jovenes de Afromix. That is the group of kids that I work with out in Isla Trinitaria. Last week a volunteer friend of mine said she would like to come out and meet said jovenes, to try and figure out what it is that keeps them coming back every week. I told her I have know idea what it is, but I hope it keeps happening.

Now, I will not idealize the situation for you, its not all rainbows and butterflies and well formed groups. The Afromix kids are like most teenagers: inconsistant. There is a steady group of about 7 or 8 kids that are there every week, without fail. Then there is a trickle-in group of about 5 or 6 more that sometimes are there and sometimes are not. Then there is a large group of kids that I barely ever see. But either way, its more than I can ask for. I got lucky with my site placement, in that there were decently formed groups already here when I arrived, and Afromix was one such group. In the 3ish months that I have been here, we "formed" Afromix by joining two neighboring groups together. On Tuesdays we generally do charlas and on Thursdays we do hiphop dance class. Like I said, the number of kids varies a lot, and I have become pretty worried in the last few weeks because the majority of guys in the group have stopped coming. I think they get embarrased to be dancing and dont want to do that, and since they stopped coming for a few weeks maybe they just dont feel like coming back...? I am not really sure. But I have chosen not to blame myself for that one and just be happy with what I have got, which is a super great group of young ladies and a few young men when we are lucky.

Last week Thursday and this week Tuesday got cancelled due to lack of keys to enter the building where we meet. I was disappointed, but it was a good thing at the same time. The kids still came out both days (because no one knew we didnt have keys until we got there) and were super disappointed to not have a meeting. I know I shouldnt be happy about disappointed kids, but I gotta admit I was happy when one girl was like, "But I wanted to dance!" and when another said, "Thursday lets do a charla and not dance, because I like the charlas better!" And this week when we finally met, one said that we should go until 8:30 instead of 8, because "We didnt meet on Tuesday, and thats not fair!" We participated in a really great dance program at the end of last month, and all of my kids were super pumped about it. I dont think they get to get out of the barrio much except to go to school, so going downtown to dance in a show was pretty cool for them.

As much as I love dancing, teaching dance, learning dance (my girls started teaching the Reggaeton dance last night, complete with a "get low" section where you make an "ass smaking motion"), and seeing my kids dance around all happy, what I really love is the charlas. The point of a charla is to get the kids thinking, talking, and learning about new things. Most of what we have focused on thus far is sex and the human body. The thing is that no one really talks to kids here about those kinds of things, so many of them dont know what is going on inside of their own clothing. Enter Theresa, who is not at all embarrased to speak openly about orgasms, the G-spot, wet dreams and semen. Its pretty common here, as it is in the states, for kids to start experimenting with sex at a pretty early age. All of my jovenes are over the age of 16, and I am pretty sure that most of them have already lost their virginity. I find it really concerning when kids (or adults) are having sex without really taking the time to understand their own bodies. So for that reason, I like so speak openly with the jovenes about these kinds of things, and because I want to help them create a "safe space" where it is okay to speak openly.

The most fun charla that we have done so far was one that I call "Musical Chairs of Truth" where I prepare pieces of paper with words on them. Each paper is put on a chair, and I play music from my Gpod (thats a Generic Ipod, for those of you who are not hip to the lingo) as they go around the chairs. When the music stops, they have to write down the first thing that comes to their mind when they see the word on the paper. When everyone has gone to each chair, we all sit down and go around the circle reading all the comments and discuss. It was interesting to see what they thought of the different words, and the discussion that followed was always interesting as well. A few observations...

1. Menstration
"Dirty. Ugly. Why does it come every month?"
We talked about why it comes every month, and the prometora from the area (who I believe is in her 50s) told them that for her it is nothing but a memory, so we talked about how your period stops when you get older. Then I tried (relatively unsuccessfully) to tell them that your period is wonderful thing, and should serve as a reminder that the female body can make life. They were like, "Yaaaa, Tere. ¡Es feo!" (Whatever, Theresa. Its gross!).

2. Orgasm
There was a woman in the group who has two children (she's married and older than the rest of them). She did not know what an orgasm was. She thought that I had written it wrong and meant to write "organ" or something. Most of my jovenes were unsure about what it was, too. My counterpart and I did our best to explain. We said that it is a sensation that you feel inside of your own body when you are sexually pleased. The response was raised eyebrows, some girls said they think they have had one. We told them that if they are not sure, they probably were not having an orgasm.

3. Tampons
It is widely believed in Ecuador that tampons cause you to loose your virginity. Most of my girls already knew that I use tampons, because they have found them in my backpack. I have already talked to some of them about how to use a tampon--where you insert it, what happens when its inside of you, no-it wont get lost inside of you, no-it doesnt make you not a virgin (which reminds me that I should give a charla about "virginity" and if its a physical or a mental concept...), and let them take one home to put in water to see what it looks like when it expands. When we did the musical chairs, some of the girls that I have already talked to about tampons nodded their heads as I was explaining it to the group, but one girl was adamant that she would not use them because she is a virgin.

4. Oral Sex
"Es feo, okey."
I was totally shocked that they thought oral sex was gross. I remember being their age and being super curious about oral sex, it was openly discussed among my group of friends, and we would trade horror stories about our experiences. We might have thought it was weird, but I dont think we thought it was gross. And (at least it seemed) it was something that most people my age were doing. Here, that is not the case. All of my jovenes seemed to agree that it was gross and that they would never want to give or receive oral sex. Luckily, this one came after we had already talked about virginity and how they all thought it is a good thing to be a virgin when you get married (whether or not they are all still virgins we did not discuss). So I asked them if vaginal sex is out of the question so as to save your virginity, why was oral sex considered "gross" and not an alternative? The response was raised eyebrows (which is really all I am looking for sometimes, I guess).

5. Pregnancy
Gracias a Dios, most of the girls said that its something they are not ready for. Lets hope that translates into using condoms...(wishful thinking, I know. But at least we talked about it).

So what keeps them coming back? I hope they come back because they have this space and this time to talk about these things that they think about but are not supposed to talk about. I hope they come back because they know that I will be there, and that I will not ditch out on them. I hope they come back because they feel like they are actually learning something. I just hope they keep coming back.

So there you have it, thats what I do on Tuesday and Thursday nights. I hang out with a rad group of teenagers, dance around to reggaeton and hiphop music, and talk about sex.

Until next time...

Sweet (wet) dreams,
Theresa