This is where Ina and I spent most of the
last week working on drug presentations – one for parents and one for kids. At
one point, the following dialogue occurred between us:
Ina: Please, please don’t do marijuana! I’m
doing it and I have so much good stuff!
Andrea: Okay! That’s fine, I’ll do heroin instead.
Andrea: Okay! That’s fine, I’ll do heroin instead.
It’s probably not a good sign that after
all our research, we also decided what our drug of choice would be IF we ever
became druggies.
Wednesday we returned to the base via a
series of long and arduous bus rides. At one point I was standing up, holding
on to the ceiling with one hand, talking to Salla on the phone with the other,
balancing someone’s surfboard between my legs, with an old man breathing down
my back, while the driver cruised along at a lackadaisical 100 kmph.
Our trusty agent Salla ‘booked us’ at
several venues, and on Thursday we gave 3 presentations at a high school in La
Junta (an hour away). The school principal thought it was necessary to close
easch presentation by asking for a show of hands from the abstinent in the
class, which was mildly awkward. Yesterday, we gave a pregnancy prevention talk
to 4th and 5th graders at a nearby school, drove to
Nicoya for an STD talk at a high school, and returned to nearby Quebrada Honda,
to give the STD talk to a group of young/middle aged women who meet for PE and health
classes each week. At least that’s what we were told. We burst into the
community centre a few minutes late, and were joyfully greeted by a room full
of old people. Seriously old people. I think several women were at least 90,
nearly everyone had dentures, and half of them were men. Salla looked at me and
whispered “improvise!”. I pulled up a nearly-finished presentation for parents
on talking with teens about sex, and was about to start when the power went out
and my computer died. This inspired a
whole new level of improvisation, and we went ahead and did the
glitter-spreading handshakes, just as an ice breaker to talk about STDs. They loved
this almost as much as the high schoolers. Then we started talking about
how important it is that young people have adults – parents AND grandparents –
that are involved in their lives and open resources for them about sexual
health and decisions. They were incredibly receptive and open to this, and had
lots of great questions and comments at the end. It was a very unanticipated success.
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| Presentation at La Junta College. |
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| Guava (so said the the avocado salesman who gave us one for free). It was like eating sweet mothballs with a big smooth seed inside. |
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| On the road. Again. In a stick shift with a broken speedometer and the check engine light always on. |
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| Chicks. |
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