Good Things, Bad Things

Tonight my 7 year old friend lost a bill worth about $15. Some might think that this would discourage adults from sending their babies off to buy them stuff, including rum and cigarettes (and this 7 year old in particular gets sent on many trips like that). Instead, it was physical retribution for losing the money. I’m sure you can remember back to a time when having a $20 bill was a really big deal and losing it, especially if it was given to you by adults, and they knew you’d lost it, would scare the pants off of you. Well, my friend was very upset with what she had done and watching that really made me wonder if further consequences were needed, since she absolutely knew that what she did wasn’t a good thing.

Of course the idea of happening upon a $500 bill of my own in our search for hers came across my mind. I could give the 7 year my money this one time, and save her from being hit this one time. But that would only work once, if it even worked. My interfering could have serious repercussions for my relationship with her parents. The other alternative, of trying to handle it with them straight on would obviously have repercussions this early on in my service. I can’t wait to people know me here better and I feel comfortable with them enough to present alternatives to choices they make on a daily basis. That is probably the last thing an anthropologist would want a Peace Corps volunteer to say, but it’s how I feel about hitting kids, dealing with Haitians, and about the way they treat dogs.

I made a small step with the latter part the other day… you see, the puppy I will soon be making my own and her 2 siblings live at my project partner’s house, which is also a town hangout. So I was there playing with the puppies the other day and a bunch of kids were around too. I showed them that if they move slowly and quietly with the puppies, and their mom, and pet their backs and bellies, that their mom wouldn’t try to bite the kids in defense of the puppies. I didn’t get to the “let’s not throw rocks at small dogs and tiny puppies” lesson, but baby steps. Baby steps.