6.2.10 Kids & Dogs

The kids here are great, the dogs here are not. Most of you who know me well would know I would normally think of that sentence in the reverse order; I’m not great with kids, dogs are the greatest things in the world. In this country I have developed (a valid) fear of dogs and cross the street whenever a unfamiliar one is closeby. But the kids here flock to me.
My goal by the time I leave my host family’s home is to know the names of all the kids on the street who greet me on my way home everyday. So far, I have about 3 out of 15 or so. One of my favorite things here is random conversations with curious kids, they usually go something like this: what’s your name? (which I repeat multiple times, Grace is difficult to pronounce here). Where are you from? How old are you? Do you have brothers and sisters? Then I usually explain what I’m doing here, where I’m living, how long I’ll be here etc. Then the more fun questions start: “do you know Michael Jackson?” (at first I thought sure, I know of Michael Jackson, he’s a world renowned musician, who doesn’t?) but they mean do I personally know Michael Jackson. I have to explain, no I didn’t know him, he lived very far from me, no, I never even saw him. The conversation usually continues from there with them asking me how to say lots of words in Spanish. It’s great, sometimes I learn some new words or else I leave feeling like I actually taught something or did something that I was able to actually do correctly (not a feeling I have often here…). The kids also love to ask about TV shows and movies and are greatly surprised to hear that we watch the same shows on the Disney channel as them. Although, I need to brush up on my American teen idols and Disney channel shows to really have better conversations with them.

I recently started running a few times a week here and it’s often that I have a whole entourage of kids join me. It’s great fun and at the beginning they would hold me to running appointments with them. They usually run in their flip flops (there’s one kid who never wears shoes at all) and show me good new routes in the neighborhood. I also feel better running with kids because they know how to handle the dogs around here.
Let me explain that the dogs here are not really at all like dogs in the U.S. They’re more wild animals than pets. Most roam the streets freely (I could probably count on one hand the number I’ve seen on leashes) and are not terribly friendly, although here in Tena, they’re much calmer than in more rural places. I have found a good running route and I say it’s good because there are no mean dogs who will chase me. During Peace Corps training however, we were taught the universal trick to ward off scary dogs- find a rock and only threaten to throw it, they’ve been hit enough times to know what will happen when you reach down to pick up a rock. I haven’t used this trick yet although I definitely should have one day when a pack of dogs made a nice bite hole in the bottom of my pants when running. Generally, so far, it works if I simply slow down or cross the street when a dog looks threatening.
I decided early on when I first moved here, it would be a sign that I’m integrating well when the dogs in my neighborhood don’t bark at me when I walk past at night. For the past few weeks, they sit calmly in the middle of the road when I walk past at night- integration complete.