The kids are alright

This morning, as I was drinking coffee alongside a two-year-old drinking coffee, while a seven-year-old lit a fire by lighting a piece of paper on fire from the gas stove, a twelve-year-old balanced on a second story balcony railing to get clothes from the clothesline and a thirteen-year-old did laundry for 13 people on a concrete version of a washboard, I started thinking maybe kids in the U.S. are a little mollycoddled. I'm not advocating for any of the above activities; I had to actively hide my shock. However, it does seem like there could be some middle ground where kids in the U.S. have chores and responsibilities, and along with that they have certain freedoms from a judgmental and overprotective culture. I'm all for seatbelts, bike helmets, sturdy railings and admonitions to be careful. It's just that kids have to learn to take and manage risks sometime. I fear that too often kids are turned loose at 18 or so, and never having learned how to live without someone protecting them from every possible negative outcome, they end up drinking too much beer as a freshman in college and falling out of a window at the ATO house.

Disclaimer: I know that I have no children of my own so it is easy for me to make recommendations that someone else's child risk cracking his head open by standing on railings.

All of that said, my family here is extremely warm and loving. And funny. The kids are like kids anywhere. They like to tease and play Uno and argue about property rights violations for various coveted items. They are so nice to me I get embarrassed. I'm not used to having someone cook for me every day. I'm not used to someone doing my laundry. It's pretty nice but when I see how hard everyone works, including the kids, I do feel guilty. I've been pitching in where I can. I make the world's ugliest tortillas, but they are getting better. I like to think that my tortilla making is the evening's entertainment. The other day I also bought a pineapple and five mangoes on the street. I've never been a big fruit person, and now I know why. The fruit in the US typically has no flavor and the texture is terrible. Here, I could eat fruit all day long and be perfectly happy. The mangoes are sublime and I crave them.

Being here is like a do-gooder's Canyon Ranch. I eat simply but am fully satisfied. For example, this morning I had beet greens and tortillas for breakfast. What, you say? That sounds terrible. No, mi amigo. You would be wrong There were so good. Eating like that, combined with walking everywhere and no booze has me feeling pretty good. Losing weight, helping people. A perfect program. However, I now have a pair of pants that I can down pull down without unzipping or unbuttoning so I think I will buy a belt when we go to the market at Chichi. I do not want to cause an unnecessary, and potentially damaging, scene by having my pants fall off in the middle of the street.

More later -
kf