Karma

Written Sunday May 1st

Us healthers are a good breed. We are in the Peace Corps because we want to help people - well, everyone who is in the Peace Corps obviously wants to help people and work on international development, but, personally, I think that the Health group is a step beyond that. We get in there and get to know that people. We have to get them healthy so they can then go on to maybe work on their business or on agriculture or on municipal development, or one of the other projects within the Peace Crops. We organize support groups for those people living with HIV/AIDS, we teach anyone and everyone about preventing the transmission of HIV/AIDS - don’t forget our awesome condom demonstrations - we work with malnutrition people - especially children, we teach mothers how to take care of their newborn babies. Maybe I sound full of myself, and I don’t mean to, but I’m just trying to explain what it takes to be a health volunteer for the Peace Corps. We work with the population on a very personal level - we have to make them trust us and earn their confianza in order to even begin and try to make an impact on their lives. We can spout on about wearing condoms and being cautious tell pigs fly, but they are not going to listen and apply unless they feel comfortable with us.

So, all this being said. Some of us here in the health group wanted to go out and do more good deeds. Two weekends ago, we went to the orphange in La Paz to spend some time with the children. Damarise had gone their once before and asked the Nun if she could come back with friends to just spend time with the kids because they looked in desperate need of some love and attention. So, that weekend we all went and had an awesome time playing with them. They loved all our cameras and sun glasses, they showed us all around their rooms, we played games and colored, and they loved watching Jeremy play the guitar. So, this weekend, because it is our last here in La Villa, we wanted to go back one last time. Tricia brought hair ties and ribbons and Lauren brought fingernail polish - which the girls just loved. After endless piggy-back-rides, hugs, dancing, and photos, some of us started giving the girls French braids and manicures. After half the girls were done, a different group of people arrived. I guess they come over to help out at the orphanage sometimes, and their kids were with them. So, we had three more girls that wanted to join our make-over session.

I was at the other end of the table giving manicures, but after a little while, I over heard part of a conversation some of the others were having…apparently they had just noticed some of the girls had head lice! We all became a little tense after that, and we finished the braids and manicures as fast as we could. We called the PCMO (Peace Corps Medical Officer on duty) and asked what we should do. She instructed us to go to a pharmacy - if there was one open - and get some lice shampoo. We needed to all use the shampoo and let it sit in our hair for 10 minutes. Luckily, we did actually find an open pharmacy - and it did have the lice shampoo - so we were good to go.

We bought three bottles, because they were very little, and there were seven of us. I wasn’t too worried about it because I didn’t actually do anyone’s hair, but I gave my fair share of piggy-back-rides, so I knew that to be on the safe side we ALL needed to shampoo our hair.

The shampoo had a very strong odor, but other than that, it wasn’t too bad. It didn’t sting my head or anything like that, but it shore stung a lot when i accidentally got some suds in my eye. Also, for some reason, I sneezed about 20 times when I was rinsing it out of my hair - I’ve stopped now, which is good.

What else was there to do while waiting 10 minutes for the shampoo to set?

So, now my hair smells weird, but I’m hopefully lice free! This whole situation was a little on the comical side I have to admit. We went to do a good thing and spend time with the kids at the orphanage, and we end up having to give our selves the lice treatment - Karma! BUT, I don’t know what we are getting karma for - like I said, us healthers are a good group!

Washing my hair with the lice shampoo reminded me of when I was about four years old. In Port Alexander one year, practically everyone got lice at the same time. My mom, me, my sisters, and the Davis family were all over at my house. We all had to take a bath and have our hair shampood with the special lice shampoo, and wash our clothes and our bedding. After my bath was over, I climed the latter to the loft to go get dressed. I had apparently missed the part where we needed to wash all the clothes too, because I proceeded to put on the clothes that I had already been wearing. My mom was angry, to say the least, because now I needed another bath. For those of you who know what PA was like in the 80s, you know that meant more water needed to boiled on the old barrel stove, which was not what my mom really wanted to be doing all day long. There were six of us kids that needed baths, along with my mom and the Davis’s mom - so that was already a lot of water that needed boiled, which also meant a lot of water that had to be fetched from the creek behind my house. It was just a bit of a long process. I don’t remember much of this day because I was pretty darn young - but I sure remember the look on my mom’s face when I came back down the latter with the same clothes I was wearing before my bath. I swear her eyes could have burned a hole right through me!

Keep your finger’s crossed that none of us will end up with lice - because down here, like it was in PA, it would be a heck of a process to actually get rid of them all. You have to wash all your clothes and bedding with hot water and then leave them out to dry in the hot sun for about 4 days to be on the safe side. But, nobody washes clothes with hot water here, and to do so, I would have to boil a heck of a lot of water, and in this heat, I would almost rather just have with lice!