El Día Del Niño

Last weekend I accompanied Rotary Club Miraflores to a small community about an hour south of La Paz on the Dia del niño to distribute toys and others items such as baseball caps. The community is situated near the river that flows north-south from La Paz in zona sur. In January the river diverted its course and innundated a number of houses, fields crops, and had a grave impact on the region.
We worked through a contact who was the leader of a recently formed children’s activity center (although I call it a “center” it was simply someone who cared enough to plan activities for the kids around their dusty small soccer field- from all accounts it had been a great success). All told we distributed items to more than 50 children from ages 4ish to 15ish. They greeted us with a covered tent area adorned with local flowers, two liters of pepsi and plenty of energy. Each child came up to us and shook our hand before getting a toy and a hat ( a display of manners the director was proud of). We then shared pepsi and some candy with everyone. All the kids were lined up according to age groups in single file lines. Once we finished up the formalities however, I, along with others, suggested we begin the real job at hand- challenging the locals to a little game of soccer.
The president of Rotary Club Miraflores, the Secretary of the club, myself, and a couple other kids formed one team- the other team consisted of entirely too talented 9-10 year olds equipped with high altitude lungs, discipline and the burning desire of champions.
After a 30 minute battle between the two forces, random searches for lost soccer balls in the brush, and a continuous stirring of dust, the match ended. Indeed I can’t remember who won, but it matters not. We’ve arranged to schedule a rematch in the coming weeks.
After we finished the game, a number of the families overwhelmed us with plates of delicious food! It was far too much for us to handle and made me feel even less worthy than I did already- a great morning!

From there I went on to class where I did a presentation on the Spanish Colonial destruction of Andean territorial planning, culture, and daily life. Got to read some really cool laws from the 1500's. I'll try to write another blog about it!