Castigos and a Food Fight

Here in Bolivia, we can actually have the kids do physical labor when they misbehave unlike in the states. For the kid’s “castigos” or punishments, they have to take a machete and go cut however many pieces of wood that they were told to cut for their punishment. Two of the boys must have done something pretty bad earlier last week because I saw two of them hacking away with their machetes at a huge tree that they had cut down. They had to cut the tree into pieces then move it to a certain place. I’m a terrible person when it comes to assigning punishments because I can’t do it. I only made a child cut 15 pieces of wood once and that was when he was being very disrespectful in class. 15 isn’t a lot when the normal assignment is 50 or 100. That was the only time I made a child cut wood so seeing these two children out cutting a giant tree into smaller pieces when it was so hot made me feel bad for them so I went to the kitchen and brought them both cups of water telling them to drink it. They did so gladly and I even got a “thank you” in English from one of the boys. I need to learn to be tougher and not feel badly when a child gets punished, I guess. 

Let me tell you about two brothers who have found a way to cheat the system of having to cut wood. There’s Jesús who pays other children to cut his wood when he’s assigned it. Then there’s his brother, Manfred who went somewhere in the jungle and cut down a huge tree and then chopped it into thousands of pieces. Whenever he gets any punishments, he goes to his secret spot in the jungle then just hangs out with his already cut fire wood waiting for the right amount of time that he thinks it would take to cut the amount of wood he was assigned, then he’ll bring the wood back to the mission. They don’t know that I know this, but our director knows about it and told the other SM’s. I think it’s brilliant. These are also the two brothers who like to wrestle bulls for fun. Yes, for fun. They can be a little hard core out here in the jungle if they need to be. 

This past week was my week to be in the kitchen so all of my time was spent either teaching or preparing meals. Last night the group of kids that I’ve been working with in the kitchen, and myself, made popcorn for supper then started making bread for breakfast the next morning. Jesús is the oldest in the kitchen and he’s been really good this week at making himself look busy while actually doing nothing. Sabbath night I was determined to make him work with me so I dragged him over to the bread while he gave me several excuses on why he couldn’t make the rolls. No me importa. I showed him how to roll them correctly which was comical because I had just learned how to roll them three minutes earlier and he knew it. He grudgingly began to roll the bread and in no time at all we had finished.
(There they are grudgingly making bread and trying to pretend that they aren't having that much fun)

I turned around to congratulate him and there he was, bending down to get to my eye level and blowing flour off of his palm onto my face and hair. If you start something, you had better be prepared to continue it so I picked up a huge handful of flour and rubbed it all over his hair and the hair of one of the girls that had egged him on to throw the flour on me in the first place.  We all ended up with white hair, flour streaked faces and arms covered in it. I think I got more than the others though because all of the other kids ganged up on me. It got in my nose, mouth and my clothes until I thought I was leaving a trail of flour every where I walked. It was my first food fight and it was a good one.